Heinz

Redefining a 150 year old brand’s digital presence

Boasting a product range of more than 5,700 varieties, Heinz is a much-loved household name, with its beans, sauces and soups a staple in kitchens across the world. After undergoing a comprehensive rebrand, Heinz turned to DEPT® to accelerate the digital expression of its refreshed brand identity. We were tasked with effectively and consistently communicating this through its web presence. We developed digital guidelines and designed a new website that spotlights the individual identities and personalities of its sub-brands under an all-encompassing Heinz umbrella.

Assessing the landscape

Delivering a design solution for a brand with thousands of products to showcase, that would be rolled out across more than 18 markets, requires detailed planning.

Before designing the solution, our expert team was sure to understand the nuances, needs and language of each market, working alongside the global client and each of the local market teams as well as the technical development partner to achieve the desired outcome.

In collaboration with the client team, we first took an important step back to explore many different ways to amplify the beloved Heinz brands in a digital environment.

We explored each corner of the brief, free from technical or structural constraints, to identify important visual techniques and approaches that best reflect the brand(s) online.

Developing the design system

With aims to showcase each of the individual identities and personalities of Heinz’s very well known, and well loved, brands and products – Beanz, Pasta, Sauces, Soups and more – under an all-encompassing Heinz umbrella across multiple, differentiated markets; the work we delivered needed to be both robust and flexible enough to roll out seamlessly.

A design system was identified as the perfect tool to bring structure and consistency to Heinz’s refreshed web presence.

Design systems allow for scale, efficiency and consistency of branding. They are the best practice solution to managing design at scale, providing a universal understanding of the brand’s design principles and their application; to ensure every element of the digital estate meets brand standards, and ensuring a strong identity across all digital touchpoints.

With a solid brand identity, clear understanding of the direction of travel and a concrete decision on the solution to be implemented, we designed a series of modules, components and wireframes to form the pattern library.

Only once we had these creative tools in place, did we build in the structural and technical elements to mould everything into a clear, robust, flexible and accessible design system that truly allows the Heinz brands to shine online.

Continual optimisation

Following the success of this project, we continue to work with Heinz’ global and local market teams to deliver evolutions of their digital estate, as well as market specific digital campaigns, and help them to stay ahead of the pace of change in the online world.

“DEPT® were the first people we called – they’d done such a great job on our Bull’s-Eye brand sites already. The team has really brought the Heinz brand to life in digital – building on our recent brand refresh. They are a breath of fresh air to work with. They simplify, move quickly and find quick solutions to all challenges that we throw at them.”

Henry Hepworth, EMEA Digital Marketing Manager, Heinz