Kraft Heinz and Hello Products on their no-BS approach to purpose-driven marketing

The Ad Council was founded in 1942 as a nonprofit that aspired to use advertising to drive social good.

Since then, it has produced advertising icons like Smokey Bear and the Crash Test Dummies, and memorable taglines like, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” and, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

The organization has won some of the industry’s highest honors, from Lions to Clios and even Emmys and continues to focus on causes including adoption, child car safety, vaccinations, cancer screenings, mental health and secure firearm storage. The Ad Council boasts more than 160 directors who hail from major brands, agencies, media companies, technology platforms, ad tech and measurement firms and sports leagues.

That list includes Todd Kaplan, CMO of Kraft Heinz, and Diana Haussling, CEO of Hello Products, who recently sat down to talk about their work with the Ad Council, and creating purpose-driven campaigns that stick.

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Todd Kaplan: How long have we actually known each other?

Diana Haussling: The first face-to-face interaction was at a CES dinner. I sat near you and we chatted the entire time, but my favorite Todd moment isn’t about meeting, it’s really about your work. I happen to really, really love hip-hop, so the halftime show that you produced that had Dr. Dre, that spoke to my millennial soul.

Kaplan: That was my last one and it was Dre, Snoop and all them in Southern California. I’m from the West Coast. I’m a huge fan of hip-hop as well, so that was very personal for me.

Haussling: Do you remember the first time we met? What was your impression of me?

Kaplan: I met you at a dinner and we just started chatting, but I really gravitated towards your directness, your style. You’re a no bullshit person, and I am as well, which is why we’ve been connecting since then.

Haussling: You came to Colgate when I was the CMO of Colgate North America and spoke to our team. The inspiration was around how you actually execute the craft and think about marketing in a unique way, and it really just reinforced the level of community that we have. In the industry, you and I end up being at a lot of the same things together, and I think on the surface it just feels like networking, but it’s much deeper than that. We really have built a community. How do you feel about the community that we’ve built?

Kaplan: I love the marketing community and that’s why I like to do a lot that gives back — speaking, teaching, connecting with other people — because the next generation of marketers has to start somewhere. It’s always good to seek out your peers, have a good support group, be there for each other through the good and the bad. There’s a ton of these group chats that we’re on that seem to be pinging nonstop.

Haussling: What I love about it is you don’t really feel alone, that connectivity. It’s vulnerability, and we’re all working through the same shit.

Kaplan: That’s it.

Haussling: There are a lot of us that move a lot of things within our organizations, but then I also feel, as a collective, we get together and push things through to industry as well, and I think where we do that the best is with the Ad Council.

Kaplan: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what brought you to the Ad Council and why did you decide to become a board member?

Haussling: First, just aspirationally, to be a part of an organization that’s something that I watched as a very young marketer early in my career and not really expecting to be there or to have a seat at the table. And now to actually be in that room and be a part of something that’s not just about the work but about pushing a bigger agenda forward, which is really exciting, especially when you think about how much opportunity there is for us as a collective to drive change.

Kaplan: I would certainly have gravitated similarly to you, whether Smokey Bear or the Crash Test Dummies, you remember these things as a kid growing up. What I love now, even just as a total marketing geek, is the power of marketing to influence human behavior and use it for good to drive society forward. If you think of the Crash Test Dummies, people weren’t wearing seat belts in cars, and now, of course, you put on a seat belt when you get in a car. It seems so simple, but that’s the power of the craft that we all do in marketing, where you can connect with consumers and influence them, ideally for the better, which is what I love that the Ad Council is doing.

Haussling: We’ve talked about Love Has No Labels and the meaning and the purpose that you feel connected to. What about it really resonated with you?

Kaplan: I love the simplicity of it. It’s just people. It’s the positive point of view of humanity. We all have love; we all can connect with each other. And I love how they executed it in the simplest craft of showing kiss cams in a stadium, something that’s a very common trope that people can connect with, but seeing untold or unseen images on those, so seeing people of the same gender and using that to provoke and normalize a lot of the things that people aren’t used to seeing in movies and ads and stuff like that, and I thought it was really a smart way to drive great awareness to this fact that love does have no labels.

Haussling: And their ability to scale such a simple concept was just remarkable.

Kaplan: Are there certain areas that really resonated with you that they’re currently doing or have done recently?

Haussling: A lot of the work that they’re doing around mental health right now. Our kids are surrounded by social media and a lot of these awesome things that are great but also require a lot of navigating from a personal standpoint. The Veterans Mental Health “Don’t Wait, Reach Out” campaign really resonated with me. A simple act of checking in on somebody can have such an impact. It’s not a big step forward, as you said. It’s just the simple things that you can do.

Kaplan: It doesn’t always have to be this huge cry for help. That’s the power of one simple ad … to save one life.

Haussling: And make change. A lot of times we think these problems require a big monster of some type of execution and really the Ad Council is able to break these things down into simple actions that anyone can take.

Kaplan: A lot of brands are trying to get into the mental health conversation. What separates the ones that do it authentically from the ones that don’t?

Haussling: You have to step into conversations that are relevant to your brand and they need to make sense. We’re all human, so that’s a great starting point, but sometimes brands get pushed into these trends and it comes across inauthentic, even though the intention was there. I think it’s really around how do you align it with your brand, how do you scale it and then ensuring that you can stay consistent and push that message forward, or partner with a group like the Ad Council, who really knows how to execute it well, which allows for the message to really connect with that right audience.

Kaplan: In a world right now where there’s content everywhere, everyone’s being messaged to at every single point, what actually makes a message, let alone a purpose-driven message, stick with consumers in your mind?

Haussling: It’s that human emotional connection. How do you create that human connection but also be authentic about it? That’s the biggest challenge — being able to connect with people. We often bring in individuals to help us really look beyond our brand messaging and consumer conversations and be human.

Kaplan: That’s it. Sometimes the best marketing is just so simple; it speaks to an unspoken human truth, and that’s what the Ad Council does so well. Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong, or what they should or shouldn’t be doing, but they don’t know what to do about it or they’re not thinking about it top of mind. Sometimes taking that extra step to connect the dots of, here’s how to seek help, here’s what that is, or just to raise awareness on certain issues, is really powerful.

Haussling: You do this really well, and that’s why I love coming to you. How do you find the right partners to work with? And what does that look like for you?

Kaplan: Nobody does it alone in this industry. There’s so many people that go behind everything, but the key is making sure everybody is a part of the same team. All boats rise. You need to break down those boundaries as you’re building the work to create a safe, open environment for everybody to build, and creativity builds upon each other. You hear this a lot in improv, too, where it’s the “yes and.” Yes, you want people to work together, and you need to start to foundationally set that relationship and the tone from the outset for it all to work.

Haussling: I could totally see you in an improv class.

Kaplan: If you could think of one piece of advice you would give other marketers that are trying to do social impact and do things like the Ad Council or want to get involved, where do they start?

Haussling: I think the biggest thing is creating a psychologically safe environment. These are big, meaty issues, and there’s a lot of emotion behind them. So if you don’t have a psychologically safe environment where that person with a lived experience can speak up and say, “This feels awesome, I really connect with it,” or “This may be a little bit tone-deaf and we need to adjust this way,” and really being able to leverage the breadth of knowledge and lived experience within your room requires that psychological safety, not just within your team, but also within your partners. I think the other piece that’s really critical is picking partners that know how to do this and can do it well. The Ad Council is a great example of that. And then last is this work is messy and sticky, so if you do it wrong, be accountable and just work on being better going forward because we’re all human and we’re not going to be perfect.

Kaplan: I think that’s such a great point because so many people are afraid to mess up and a lot of people feel a certain way, but … a lot of well-intentioned things get clapped back as, like, “You should have done this,” or “How did you not cast that?” It’s a great, great point.

Kaplan: Tell me about the dynamic we have together. What would be a word that you would describe how we work together?

Haussling: Can I cheat? “No bullshit.”

Haussling: I think “no bullshit” is it.

Kaplan: It might be “no effing bullshit.” The fact that we made it through this whole time with no f-bombs…

Haussling: …is a miracle.

Kaplan: …is the most impressive thing, because we’re both very authentically ourselves. And fuck, it’s crazy.

Haussling: I like how you worked that in there.