The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2022
Curtice Brothers lets Tripadvisor reviewers unknowingly test its ketchup
The brand placed free bottles at Berlin's worst-rated restaurants, so blunt Tripadvisor reviewers rated the product without knowing it was there.
Curtice Brothers
What it had to solve
Curtice Brothers sells premium ketchup and claims it makes any food taste better. That is a claim anyone can make and nobody will believe on faith, especially from a brand asking a premium price.
How it works
Curtice Brothers sells a premium ketchup, and its whole pitch is that the ketchup can make anything taste better. That is exactly the kind of claim any food brand can make and no shopper has to believe.
So the brand designed a taste test with an unusually hostile jury. Working with Ogilvy Berlin, it found some of Berlin's lowest-rated one-star restaurants on Tripadvisor and gave them free bottles of ketchup to put on tables. New reviews then arrived from the platform's famously blunt diners, people rating meals quietly improved by the ketchup, with no idea the ketchup was the subject of the experiment.
The reviews moved: one-star restaurants crept toward two stars, and in the strongest cases reached three, with comments flipping from 'Horror story' and 'Terrible' to 'A Solid C+' and 'Not the worst option.' The work is filed in the D&AD awards archive under Digital Marketing.
Why it lands
- Reviewers were hostile and anonymous, the most credible jury a premium claim can face.
- The product was tested in real meals, so the proof was experiential rather than asserted.
- Every improved review became earned media, written by strangers with no stake in the brand.
- The hidden test made the claim discoverable later, as the story itself became the campaign.
What it did
Targeted restaurants' ratings moved up from one star toward two, and in the strongest cases to three, with review language flipping from 'Horror story' and 'Terrible' to 'A Solid C+' and 'Not the worst option.' The work is filed in the D&AD awards archive under Digital Marketing.
What you can take
Instead of buying praise from people who owe you something, build a situation where harsh strangers give your product an honest verdict without knowing it is on trial.
Since then
The experiment ran in Berlin in early 2022 and entered the awards cycle, where the D&AD archive files it under Digital Marketing; the archive records the mechanism rather than sales figures. Its reusable shape is the unknowing taste test: find the setting where your product is already changing the outcome, and let the most unforgiving reviewers in that setting deliver the verdict.
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