Heinz, Jack in the Box, and The Bachelorette joined Marvel Studios and Maximum Effort in July 2024 for a multi-brand Deadpool and Wolverine campaign built on
How Heinz and Deadpool Made Ketchup a Marvel Moment
The "Deadpool and Wolverine" campaign is a multi-brand Marvel Studios entertainment promotion launched in the United States in July 2024, created by Rethink, Maximum Effort, and Marvel Studios for Heinz, Jack in the Box, and The Bachelorette, using the visual similarity between the characters' red-and-yellow costumes and ketchup-and-mustard packaging as its central creative conceit.
Marvel Studios anchored the campaign to the theatrical release of "Deadpool and Wolverine" on July 26, 2024. Rather than executing a single unified advertising platform, the campaign operated as three parallel brand partnerships — each occupying a distinct cultural territory while sharing the same superhero property. Heinz claimed the condiment angle, Jack in the Box brought a limited-time food offer, and The Bachelorette introduced an unexpected television crossover. Together, the three executions made the campaign feel less like a promotional obligation and more like a running cultural joke that the audience was invited to finish.
In the United States, the campaign carried the hashtag #NowYouCantUnseeIt, a phrase that functioned simultaneously as a tagline, a social prompt, and an accurate description of the visual gag at its core. The Clapboard Score for the campaign is 79 out of 100, reflecting its creative ambition, cross-category reach, and the measurable audience engagement it generated ahead of one of the most anticipated film releases of the 2024 summer season. The campaign sits at the intersection of the food industry, television, and streaming promotion — a convergence that defined the broader marketing conversation around Marvel content throughout the period.
Maximum Effort built the campaign's strategic logic on a single consumer insight. When Ryan Reynolds received a faxed memo from his assistant comparing Deadpool's red suit and Wolverine's yellow suit to Heinz ketchup and mustard bottles respectively, the observation was not manufactured — it had already been circulating organically in social media conversation, as reported by Muse by Clios in July 2024. Reynolds acknowledged in that same interview that he does not spend much time on the internet, which made the faxed memo an even more pointed illustration of how far the comparison had already travelled. Maximum Effort's instinct was to follow the cultural current rather than redirect it.
Lizzy Goodman, Brand Communications Manager at Heinz US, identified summer as a structurally important commercial window for ketchup and mustard sales, according to Muse by Clios. That seasonal logic gave the Heinz partnership a rational business case beneath the humour. Heinz is identified as among the dominant players in North American ketchup, a category with significant competitive pressure from private-label products and regional brands. Associating the brand with Marvel's highest-profile 2024 release gave Heinz a pop culture presence that neither private-label competitors nor category rivals such as French's could replicate through conventional advertising.
The broader media environment in 2024 intensified the strategic value of entertainment partnerships. According to Ampere Analysis, the six largest content providers accounted for more than half of the approximately one hundred and twenty-six billion dollars in total content-provider spending that year, with roughly forty billion dollars directed toward subscription streaming services. In the United States, that level of investment produced an intensely competitive streaming landscape, making theatrical releases — and the promotional ecosystems around them — one of the few moments capable of commanding genuine cross-platform attention. The "Deadpool and Wolverine" campaign, as covered by Marketing Dive and Campaign Live, was framed within the trade press as part of a broader brand bonanza that used the film's release as a cultural gathering point across multiple industries simultaneously.
Rethink executed the Heinz component of the campaign. The agency's approach was characteristically restrained in its concept and maximalist in its cultural ambition: take a comparison that audiences were already making and state it with absolute conviction. The resulting execution interrupted the film's own trailer, positioning Heinz ketchup and mustard packaging against the red and yellow of Deadpool and Wolverine's costumes in a side-by-side that Ad Age, in its July 15, 2024 coverage, described as "admittedly, hard to unsee." Ad Age further noted that the campaign's credits included Rethink, Marvel Studios, Maximum Effort, Carat, The Kitchen, and Zeno Group, making it one of the more extensively resourced brand partnerships of the summer season in the United States.
Maximum Effort, the agency co-founded by Ryan Reynolds and known for its fast-turnaround cultural marketing, handled the Jack in the Box execution. As reported by Marketing Dive on July 16, 2024, Jack in the Box used the campaign to promote its limited-time Mini Chimi Bang Bangs ahead of the July 26 theatrical release — a product name that drew directly on the Deadpool character's irreverent register. The execution demonstrated Maximum Effort's characteristic approach: close the distance between entertainment property and product offer by making the product feel like it belongs inside the story rather than alongside it.
The Bachelorette execution, launched in the run-up to the July 26 release, extended the campaign into the reality television genre, using the Deadpool and Wolverine relationship as a framing device. Production credits for the Bachelorette component are not publicly documented in available trade sources. The campaign as a whole generated one million seven hundred and seventy-eight thousand two hundred and seventy views and thirty-eight thousand four hundred and eighty-six likes on the primary YouTube asset, according to the campaign record. The visual grammar across all three executions — red, yellow, contradiction, and comedy — gave the campaign a coherent identity despite the involvement of three separate agencies working across three distinct brand categories.
The primary YouTube asset for the campaign accumulated one million seven hundred and seventy-eight thousand two hundred and seventy views and thirty-eight thousand four hundred and eighty-six likes, with eight hundred and ninety-three comments, according to the campaign record. Those figures represent audience engagement generated before and immediately following the July 26, 2024 theatrical release of "Deadpool and Wolverine" in the United States — the highest-traffic window for any Marvel promotional partnership.
No independently verified performance data attributing specific sales lifts or earned media valuations to the individual brand partnerships is publicly available at this time. What the structural record does confirm is that the campaign's central mechanism — the #NowYouCantUnseeIt concept — was designed to travel without paid amplification. As reported by News Design Rush and covered across trade publications including The Drum and Fast Company, the campaign generated substantial editorial attention across the marketing and entertainment press, which functioned as a second layer of reach beyond the paid media footprint.
Rethink's prior work with Heinz provides useful structural context. The agency's 2021 "Draw Ketchup" campaign, as reported by The Drum, saw ninety-seven percent of participants draw recognisable Heinz visual cues including the glass bottle, keystone label, tomato, and the number fifty-seven. That campaign generated strong earned media results, establishing Rethink's capacity to activate latent brand recognition rather than build it from scratch. The 2024 Deadpool collaboration applied the same instinct — Heinz's visual identity was already embedded in culture, and the campaign's job was simply to make that embedding impossible to ignore. In the United States, where the food industry and entertainment industry intersect with unusual frequency during major theatrical releases, that approach proved well-suited to the moment.
The Heinz Deadpool and Wolverine campaign is a July 2024 United States promotion built on the visual similarity between Deadpool's red costume and Heinz ketchup, and Wolverine's yellow costume and Heinz mustard. Created by Rethink with Marvel Studios and Maximum Effort, it used the hashtag #NowYouCantUnseeIt and interrupted the film's own trailer.
Three agencies created the campaign. Rethink handled the Heinz execution, Maximum Effort managed the Jack in the Box partnership, and Marvel Studios coordinated the overarching entertainment property. Additional credited partners, as noted by Ad Age, included Carat, The Kitchen, and Zeno Group, making it one of the summer's most agency-dense brand collaborations.
Jack in the Box promoted a limited-time menu item called Mini Chimi Bang Bangs tied to the July 26, 2024 theatrical release of Deadpool and Wolverine. Maximum Effort handled the execution, as reported by Marketing Dive on July 16, 2024. The product name echoed the Deadpool character's irreverent tone, aligning the food industry offer with the film's comedic register.
Ryan Reynolds received a faxed memo from his assistant comparing Deadpool's red suit to Heinz ketchup and Wolverine's yellow suit to mustard, according to Muse by Clios in July 2024. Reynolds and his team then approached Heinz to formalise the partnership, transforming an observation that was already circulating on social media into a fully produced campaign execution.
The campaign's primary YouTube asset reached over one million seven hundred and seventy-eight thousand views and thirty-eight thousand likes, according to the campaign record. The Clapboard Score for the campaign is 79 out of 100. No independently verified sales data for the individual brand partnerships is publicly available, though the campaign generated wide trade press coverage across the United States.
Heinz Brand Communications Manager Lizzy Goodman identified summer as a commercially important season for ketchup and mustard sales, according to Muse by Clios. The July 26 theatrical release of Deadpool and Wolverine aligned with that seasonal window. Partnering with one of Marvel Studios' most anticipated 2024 films gave Heinz a pop culture platform unavailable to private-label or category competitors.
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