Kraft Heinz pours nearly $100M more into marketing to drive turnaround

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The Jell-O and Ore-Ida marketer has been focused on fewer but higher-impact media partnerships, recently striking major deals with the NFL and Disney.

Kraft Heinz is heaping another $100 million on its turnaround plan, with most of that investment concentrated on marketing, the company said in prepared remarks for its Q2 earnings. Marketing will now represent at least 6% of net sales in 2026, up half a percentage-point. The move follows the packaged foods giant stating it “overdelivered” on expectations in the first half, when it began deploying $600 million of incremental spend into areas including product superiority, pricing, marketing, sales and research and development.

“I see it's working virtually everywhere we're putting it. And so condiments is probably the first area where we've seen really marked improvement,” Kraft Heinz CEO Steven Cahillane said in response to an analyst question about the effectiveness of the pumped-up investment on an earnings call. “Heinz is back to growth as it should be, strong growth — strong consumption growth — which is terrific. So across the board in the U.S., we're seeing better performance.”

The marketer of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Jell-O and Ore-Ida has been directing its dollars toward a smaller number of heavier-hitting media partners as part of the turnaround. That approach recently manifested in major sponsorships, including a five-year pact with the NFL and work around America250 celebrations , as well as a strategic partnership with The Walt Disney Company that encompasses the House of Mouse’s media outlets, cruise lines, parks and events.

“Not only are we spending more to support our brands, but we are spending more efficiently. We’ve reallocated dollars towards higher-return brand media, improved efficiency through fewer, more effective media partners, and launched stronger consumer-driven creative,” Cahillane said during the earnings presentation. “Importantly, we’re measuring direct sales impact, and we are seeing clear improvements.”

Campaigns for individual brands, such as Heinz’s “It Has to be Heinz” and Philadelphia's “Really Philly Good ” — the latter of which positions cream cheese as a kitchen fixture — are also helping to shore up brand equity and establish “green shoots” in the U.S. Headcount increases have also been targeted at marketing and sales, Kraft Heinz said.

Kraft Heinz in February paused plans to split into two companies , viewing its problems as fixable. Net sales declined 1.4% to $6.3 billion in Q2 while North America, Kraft Heinz’s largest market, was down 2.7% for the period ended June 27. The results exceeded internal expectations and topped analysts’ estimates . Kraft Heinz raised its organic net sales outlook for the full year, forecasting declines between 0.5% and 2% compared to prior estimates of declines between 1.5% and 3.5%.

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Ten-figure acquisitions, new agency experiments and organizational changes are underway, but the real key may be relinquishing a sense of control.

The sense of a stable middle ground is eroding across an industry at a point of contraction, with many displaying mixed feelings about marketing s future.

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