Heinz says a JoJo Siwa and Chris Hughes necklace lifted spaghetti hoops sales 23%

Heinz sold 23 per cent more spaghetti hoops year on year after making a custom necklace for JoJo Siwa and Chris Hughes, the company’s growth chief has revealed. Karen Owen, chief growth officer for Kraft Heinz’s European and Pacific developed markets, gave the figure in an interview with Marketing Week published on Friday, as an example of what she calls balancing the timeless with the timely.

The JoJo Siwa spaghetti hoops necklace

The American entertainer and the former Love Island contestant became one of the more unlikely celebrity couples of the past year, and at one point used spaghetti hoops as a token of affection for each other on social media. Heinz spotted it and made the pair a custom spaghetti hoop necklace, which caught the couple’s attention and took off on social media. A stunt like that costs a fraction of a TV campaign, and the category result is the kind most brand managers would take from a full year’s media plan.

What else Heinz revealed

Owen also gave numbers for the heat-to-eat bean pouches Heinz launched with Ocado in 2025 and has since taken national. The range was 60 per cent incremental to Heinz’s own business, meaning most of those sales did not simply cannibalise tins, and the supermarket pouch category grew by 30 per cent. She pointed to the Heinzeken tie-up with Heineken, which put ketchup and beer in co-branded packs, and to Too Good To Leave Behind, a campaign built on real stories of travellers having tins of Heinz beans confiscated at airport security.

The fast work comes from The Kitchen, an in-house team Heinz describes as a fan-owned agency, set up so the brand can “move at the speed of culture”. Owen’s summary of the brand is that it has been able to “continue to connect emotionally and irrationally with consumers” year after year.

Why it matters

Reactive stunts usually get judged on likes. This one comes with a sales number attached, which is why it is worth noting. The caveat is that a year-on-year uplift in one small product line can have more than one cause, and Heinz has not published how much of the 23 per cent it attributes to the necklace alone.

The more interesting point is the structure behind it. Heinz can only jump on a moment like this because it has decades of consistent brand building underneath, so the stunt reads as Heinz rather than as a random brand chasing a trend. It is the same brand that made people wait for ketchup in The Wait. For another brand turning fans’ behaviour into advertising this month, see Guinness’s Mason London collection.