A wise man once said: "should you ever come across a fool who doesn't like tomato sauce, ignore them, shun them, remove them from your life; they are backwards," and I think that neatly sums up the feelings we have towards Tommy K. You always know where you stand with it. Amidst a squirt, squeeze or pour of the good stuff, you've probably noticed the prominent '57' splattered across Heinz bottles, as well as many of their other products. It's pretty common knowledge that the number represents the variety of products Heinz has; although, it is a little known fact that in the beginning, Henry Heinz simply used 57 because he thought it was a lucky number.
Since then, the slogan '57 varieties' has stuck. However, this is not the only interesting thing about the '57'. Even though the 57 was largely a made-up number, the Heinz company assigned 57 products to a list of the varieties, according to an ad from Classic Heinz tomato ketchup was listed at No. Other products on the list included varieties of preserves, jellies, pickles, gherkins, vinegars, soups, and pastas. The ad shows that the products originated in various countries around the world.
Most of the products are still more popular abroad than in the United States. Another popular product at the exhibit is horseradish, which was the first product Heinz ever made from his family's land in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. He was eight years old when he thought of an innovative way to market his product: putting it in a clear jar so that customers could see that he had the whitest and purest roots in his horseradish.
His first food company declared bankruptcy in , but his nearly identical HJ Heinz company became successful just a few years later. His marketing strategy took off after he came up with the idea for his "57 varieties" slogan in the s, even as the number of products the company offered stretched into the hundreds and thousands.
To promote his 57 varieties, Heinz installed the first-ever electric sign on the site where the Flatiron Building now stands in New York. It was a foot, six-story tall image of a pickle with "57 varieties" written underneath. He put ads with a large 57 all over the place, including on an Atlantic City pier. He also put massive cement 57s on hillsides close to railroad lines so that passengers would see them during their trip.
All of that effective advertising and branding led the 57 varieties to become ingrained in culture, and they have come to be a nickname for many different things. For example, a bingo caller might say "57 varieties" when they pull out the "57" bingo ball, "57 varieties" in draw poker is when 5 and 7 are wild cards, and a mutt might be called "57 varieties" or "Heinz dogs.
Heinz, who founded the company in the late 19th century, was on a train one day when he spotted an ad on the side of the car which advertised "21 styles" of shoes via Smithsonian. Though this type of advertising doesn't sound particularly groundbreaking to readers in , Heinz found it to be quite catchy and it piqued his interest. He decided that he wanted to come up with a similar ad campaign for his company which would catch people's eye the same way the shoe ad caught his.
Instead of counting up the actual number of varieties his company made, Heinz decided to fudge it a little bit.
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