It drives marketing managers mad to find the right angle to attach their brand to a national holiday in a way that fits their identity and generates engagement. For Valentines Day, Heinz have really cracked the formula by creating 150 jars of Ketchup Caviar to giveaway to lovestruck ketchup lovers this February.

Heinz have embraced the behavioural economics principles of scarcity and the bizarreness effect to create a real buzz online. The 150 jars of ‘Ketchup Caviar’ can be won by twitter users who reply to Heinz tweets using their hashtags. The giveaway is wrapped up as the way to help you celebrate ‘Valen Heinz Day’, which is just the perfect pun. The competition has created real online engagement, with over 12,000 comments and 3,000 retweets in the 12 hours before the competition closed.

The scarcity of the product (i.e. only 150 jars) means there’s a real urgency in participating. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. The bizarreness effect is why the giveaway stands out and in the world of marketing, why it’s got so much PR coverage.