THE LEAD: Secretary of Education Linda McMahon managed to confuse AI (artificial intelligence) with A.1. (steak sauce) while delivering her comments at the ASU+GSV Summit last week.
The gaffe became fodder for all sorts of internet humor, but company responsible for making the condiment saw an awesome opportunity and took full advantage of the mistake:
A.1. Sauce capitalized on McMahon’s blunder by posting an Instagram post on their verified account saying, “You heard her. Every school should have access to A.1.”
“Agree, best to start them early,” the picture attached to the post reads.
Other Instagram users loved the response from the Kraft Heinz-owned brand. One user even commented, “I will be buying a bottle or two because of this post.”
KRAFT-ING MARKETING GOLD AGAIN: Kraft Heinz, which markets A.1., has a decent track record of grabbing a cultural moment and running with it. The company took advantage of the “Barbenheimer” explosion by introducing a pink “Barbie-cue” sauce and has also linked a ranch dressing to Taylor Swift. In each case, the company drew attention to its brand, garnered some nice free media publicity and avoided the kinds of gaffes often associated with trying to ride a trend.
Despite the random uncertainty in the market these days, the stock closed up on Friday and has shown a gain from $27.60 on April 9 to $29.33 on Friday. Although that time frame corresponds with the comments McMahon made about A.1., it’s a bit simplistic to say the gains were solely connected to that mistake.
In its rating of best food stocks to buy according to billionaires, Insider Monkey rated Kraft Heinz at the top of the list for a number of reasons, including global supply chain and reliance on AI (not A.1.) for keeping factories humming. Still, people are saying they’re buying a bottle or two of the steak sauce as a result of the gaffe:
So far, A.1.’s loyal fans seem to be in support of its “new sauce.”
“My husband wants a bottle for his desk,” one commenter wrote under the brand’s post. “He teaches middle school, at least until they replace him with A.1.”
BLOG FLASHBACK: Kraft Heinz isn’t alone in taking advantage of dumb situation with some marketing genius. As we noted back in 2018, Country Time Lemonade drew a lot of attention after it created its “Legal Ade” defense fund for kids who had been fined for not having a business permit to run their lemonade stands.
Like the A.1. effort, this worked because it was on the right side of the argument, made fun of the utterly ridiculous and didn’t run a significant risk of hurting its brand with this maneuver.
Other organizations tend not to be as lucky when they jumped in on trending hashtags or didn’t think about potential blow back before entering the larger discussion.
DISCUSSION TIME: What do you think Kraft Heinz should do next? Ride the wave? Leave it alone? Try something else? Also, what other marketing maneuvers have you seen that tried to connect with a trend? Did they succeed or fail in your eyes? Why?
