The Red Magic advertisement was first to run in 1960.  It was in newspapers and magazines.  This ad was part of an entire campaign aimed to bring customers to buy the product.  It was run during the time when the “Red Menace” of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China were feared.  These events made the ad unsuccessful.  It was not very clear who the company was targeting at the time.  This lack of success had a lot of contributing factors, starting with the ad itself.

Henry John Heinz, the founder of the company, kept a lot of values taught by his parents.  He did not use the get rich quick scheme.  He believed in respect and concern towards everyone, rich or poor.  The values that Henry Heinz used as the company standards were not very well shown in the ad.  The top of the ad reads, “Harvest time is valuable time on”.  Below this are the words “Heinz RED MAGIC”.  These words were supposed to appeal to the emotions of the reader.  There was a problem with getting the reader hooked.  The words stating “Red Magic” added to the reader’s fear at the time.  This kind of advertising had customers skeptical of the meaning behind the words.

To the left of the Heinz Red Magic, there is a picture of “Aristocratic Tomato Man” colored in red, wearing a black top hat.  His right hand is shown wearing a white glove and holding a wand that touches the top of the neck label.  The ketchup bottle is at a 45-degree angle, with the top facing to the right.  The idea behind this concept was to give the sense of a magical product.  It is assumed that the readers would have been drawn to the words Red Magic, keeping them from thinking of the product.

The background says, “The world’s largest selling ketchup”, which was an attempt to show the reputation of the company.  The idea of selling to people all over the world appeals to the credibility of the company.  There is a line of the different varieties of products that Heinz sells.  The ketchup bottle is in front of the ad with the other products lined up in the background, showing it to be the best product.  The fact that the whole world buys the products says a lot for the credibility.

The lower right side reads “Look for Heinz Ketchup, Chili Sauce, Hot Ketchup –specially featured at your food store”.  This takes away from showcasing the ketchup as being the main product being advertised.  Across the bottom of the ad it reads, “Heinz makes everything taste better”.  They underlined the word everything to tell readers what it could be used on.  Between the word everything and taste, there is another smaller version of the ketchup bottle at the same angle.  The second bottle was used to boost the readers appeal towards the product.

In the very bottom right corner is the number 57 in red with a bucket shape around it.  This is there in an attempt to appeal to the reader’s beliefs and values.  Henry Heinz used the 57 for various reasons.  The 5 was his lucky number.  The 7 was his wife’s lucky number.  At the time he used the 57 was how many different products sold by his company.  This Heinz 57 number didn’t really appeal to the reader’s sense of reasoning.

The ad did not manage to show any appeal towards the reader’s common sense, beliefs or values.  This lack of reasoning is what kept the ad from successfully contributing to sales of the product.  People could not relate to the advertisement, especially with the events that were going on at that time.  The logic of the ad could not be found.  The person reading the ad would have known the product just because of the brand name.  They would not have understood the rest of it.  There were questions left about the reasoning behind the whole idea.

The ad was meant to be aimed at families with spending time in mind.  People were supposed to get a sense of a fresh product.  The values, ideals, and qualities that the company had at the time were not very well represented in this advertisement.  This was an attempt to try to keep the business flowing.  The ad did not overall stop people from buying the product.  It just failed to capture the audience.  There were so many other ways that the ad could have been done.  The success of the company definitely surpasses the success of the ad.