A German man who innocently purchased a bottle of Heinz ketchup got a whole lot more than he bargained for when he scanned in the bottle’s promotional QR code. Expecting to be whisked away to a website that would enable him to design his own ketchup label, Daniel Korell of Berlin was instead directed to a hardcore porn website.
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The reason for the embarrassing and hilarious mixup is that Heinz’s ‘create your own label’ campaign ran from 2012 from 2014. Consequently, the website that the QR code linked to had expired and was subsequently acquired by an enterprising porn site.
Upset, Korell took to Facebook where he voice his frustration and alerted Heinz to the matter.
“Your ketchup really isn’t for under-age people,” Korell said in a post addressed to Heinz’s Facebook account. “Even if the bottle was a leftover, it’s still in lots of households. It’s incomprehensible that you didn’t reserve the domain for one or two years. It really doesn’t cost the Earth.”
Heinz quickly apologized, and in a perhaps hasty effort to save face, asked Korell for any suggestions he might have for how future contests might be implemented. Going one step further, Heinz also said it would send Korell a bottle of free ketchup featuring a label design of his own creation.
Meanwhile, the porn site now squatting on the old Heinz link did one better, offering Korell a free year’s subscription.
