In just three years, Geoff Baillie has helped transform the marketing strategy for an ordinary, everyday condiment into a case study highlighted in ad industry textbooks. 

As a creative director at independent Canadian agency Rethink, Baillie, 29, has been working with his creative partner, Zachary Bautista, to infuse a rush of innovative ideas into Heinz Ketchup’s marketing. They included the brand’s 2022 Cannes Lions-winning “Draw Ketchup” campaign, which demonstrated how many consumers subconsciously picture a Heinz Ketchup bottle when asked to draw a bottle of ketchup. The concept arose from one of Baillie’s elementary school assignments asking his class to illustrate the mental image they held of various items, and the campaign came together in under a month, he said.

In addition to being honored by Cannes, the “Draw Ketchup” campaign was featured in Pearson’s Fundamentals of Marketing textbook. Baillie also developed an AI-focused spinoff to the “Draw Ketchup” campaign that similarly revealed that generative AI models also closely associate Heinz’s distinct bottles with ketchup. Beyond the “Draw Ketchup” push, Baillie has shaped Heinz Ketchup’s marketing more broadly since early 2020, when he and Bautista created an exasperatingly difficult jigsaw puzzle that boasted 500-plus pieces in the brand’s signature shade of red. 

Along with his work for Heinz Ketchup—which has netted him a plethora of Clio Awards, Cannes Lions and other accolades before the age of 30—Baillie has also produced campaigns for Ikea and Molson Coors, including Ikea's “Window Shopping” campaign that transformed the windows of people’s homes and apartments into “living” out-of-home ads.

Baillie has spent his entire career in advertising at Rethink, moving from an internship at the agency into a full-time role in 2018. Last month, he received a promotion to creative director, demonstrating the growth he says he’s continuously undergone at the agency. Earlier this year, he began teaching remotely at the Toronto outpost of the Miami Ad School in an effort to help encourage similar growth among those just starting out in the industry—and learn a thing or two himself. 

“[Teaching] refreshes your perspective, because you're talking to people who are brand new to advertising, who are not cynical at all, and who are really hopeful about the future of the industry,” Baillie said. “That can kind of reinvigorate you.”

If you could have dinner with one person, alive or dead, who would it be and why?

I’d honestly say Bob Dylan. He’s probably the artist who’s loomed largest in my life from a young age and I still really love his music. I listen to it every day. And he’s been present at so many crazy moments throughout history, and the fact that he still makes music in his early 80s that’s on par with the music he made when he was young is pretty inspiring.

What are the top two social media sites you use on a regular basis?

Instagram is far and away No. 1, and TikTok is something I’m trying to get myself to use more because everything hits there first before it gets to Instagram Reels a few weeks later.

What’s currently on your bedside reading list?

Right now, I’m reading Bob Dylan’s book “The Philosophy of Modern Song.”

What was the last show you binge-watched?

I don’t binge-watch shows too often, but I really loved “Succession.” When it was airing, I’d watch each episode twice and then watch a long YouTube video about the episode in case there were jokes or something in there that I didn’t get the first time. To this day, if I need a rest or something, I’ll pull up “Succession” montages on YouTube, and I’ll probably be doing that for the rest of my life.

At what age do you hope to retire?

I look at my dad, who’s 67 and attempted retirement and lasted a whole four months before he just went back to a more scaled-down version of what he did for work. I think he’s just not made for retirement, and I kind of feel like I’m not made for a long retirement, either. So, I don’t know—optimistically, maybe my late fifties or early sixties.