A Keg of Ketchup Will Make You Rethink Your Career

I was reading a post on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7423016998617473025/) by Jason Feifer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonfeifer/), the Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. In a recent article, Jason was interviewing Gary Vaynerchuk (https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyvaynerchuk/) about how marketing has changed, specifically through a redefinition of the mid funnel. The traditional idea of a funnel still exists, but where and how momentum is created has shifted.

In the post, Jason shared a story that stuck with me. Heinz once posted a simple image on Instagram about a fictional keg of ketchup. It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t even particularly strategic. It was, by most standards, a “stupid” idea.

But it caught.

The post went viral, and instead of ignoring that signal, Heinz leaned into it. They took what worked, refined it, and eventually turned that one throwaway idea into a full marketing campaign tied to the Super Bowl. A joke became a brand moment.

What really hit me was this; the exact same approach can unlock your own career growth.

I’ve talked about marketing yourself before, all the way back in Episode 018, Selling Yourself (https://managingacareer.com/18 ). At its core, marketing is about understanding the needs of your customer and aligning your product to those needs. In your career, the “customers” are the leaders who influence your advancement, and the “product” is you.

Traditionally, career growth follows a familiar funnel. You build awareness through visibility (Episode 081, Visibility - https://managingacareer.com/81 ), you demonstrate value over time, and eventually that narrows down to the “purchase” decision; a promotion, a bigger role, or expanded scope.

But this is where Gary’s insight becomes so useful. The traditional funnel doesn’t work the same way anymore. In the modern world, social has become the mid funnel. That means you don’t have to start with a perfectly crafted brand or a fully formed strategy. You can start by testing ideas.

Simple ideas.

Rough ideas.

Even ideas that feel dumb or unfinished.

If an idea hits, you work it in the lower funnel; executing, refining, and proving it delivers results. Once it’s proven, you expand it upward, where it becomes part of your reputation and your brand.

That’s exactly what Heinz did with a silly idea about a keg of ketchup…and it’s a playbook most professionals never realize they can use.

When it comes to their careers, most people have traditionally focused on the ends of the funnel; either the upper funnel or the lower funnel.

In the upper funnel, the goal is recognition. You bring big ideas to meetings. You look for moments to contribute something bold. You try to get your name and your thinking in front of leaders who matter. There’s an element of performance here; a desire to stand out. At its worst, this looks like jumping up and down and shouting, “NOTICE ME!”

In the lower funnel, the belief is almost the opposite. You expect your work to speak for itself. You execute…and you execute well. You hit deadlines. You deliver quality. You take pride in being reliable and consistent, trusting that results will eventually turn into recognition.

In reality, both ends of the funnel matter. Living exclusively in the upper funnel without execution comes across as fluff and self-promotion. Living exclusively in the lower funnel without a personal brand (Episode 043, Personal Brand - https://managingacareer.com/43 ) feels invisible, no matter how good the work is.

But in a modern marketing world, it may be time to try something different.

Instead of starting at the top or grinding endlessly at the bottom, start in the middle.

Work the mid funnel first. Test ideas in low-risk ways. Put thoughts, perspectives, and small experiments into the world and watch how people respond. If something resonates…if it creates pull rather than push…then you scale it.

In marketing, Gary’s point was simple. Organic social media is where you test ideas cheaply and quickly. You don’t overthink them. You don’t turn them into million-dollar campaigns. You post, you watch, you learn.

At work, your mid funnel works exactly the same way…it’s just not called social media.

At work, it’s the water cooler; real or virtual; where you run an idea by a peer.

At work, it’s a small demo shown to a single stakeholder.

At work, it’s an informal focus group that pokes holes in a broken process.

At work, the mid funnel is small experiments and low-risk initiatives you try before you ask for permission and before you allocate real resources.

Mid-funnel career moves aren’t about being loud. They’re about being observable.

For an individual contributor, this shift can look subtle but powerful.

Upper-funnel you says, “We should completely rethink how our team reports metrics.”

Lower-funnel you says, “I’ll just keep updating the same spreadsheet every week.”

Mid-funnel you says something different; “I’m going to redesign one version of this report for one stakeholder and see if it helps them make decisions faster.”

That’s it. No announcement. No steering committee. No permission slip.

You test it. You watch how people react. You collect feedback. If it flops…nobody cares. If it works…now you have signal. And that signal is everything.

In Jason’s post, the next step was moving into the lower funnel. When something works, you refine it, optimize it, and amplify it. This is where most people hesitate at work, because amplification feels like self-promotion.

Here’s the reframe. You are not promoting yourself. You are promoting a proven result.

Lower-funnel career moves look like this; sharing outcomes, not intentions…documenting impact, not effort…making it easy for others to reuse what worked…letting managers and peers see the before and after.

This is where “I tried something” becomes “this created value.”

If you redesigned that report, now you send a quick note to your manager; “I tried a small tweak with one stakeholder. It cut their review time in half. I think this could scale.” That’s lower funnel. You’re not asking for praise. You’re offering leverage.

Gary called the final step “sending it up to brand land.” In career terms, this is when your work becomes part of how people talk about you…even when you’re not in the room.

Upper-funnel career outcomes look like this; being asked to present your approach…being pulled into bigger initiatives…your idea becoming “the way we do things now”…leadership referencing your work as an example.

And here’s the key insight. You don’t start here. You earn your way here through mid-funnel testing and lower-funnel proof.

People who skip straight to the upper funnel sound strategic but feel ungrounded.

People who stay forever in the lower funnel feel reliable but forgettable.

People who master the mid funnel become unavoidable.

Now let’s talk about leaders; managers, directors, and executives; because the mid funnel doesn’t just get ignored by individuals. It often gets quietly killed by leadership.

Most leaders don’t do this on purpose. They do it because they’re trying to be efficient, decisive, and risk-aware. Ironically, those instincts are exactly what shut down the mid funnel.

Upper-funnel leadership sounds like this; “Bring me bold ideas. Think bigger. Be more strategic.”

Lower-funnel leadership sounds like this; “Just execute. We don’t have time to experiment. Stick to the plan.”

Both sound reasonable. Together, they create a trap.

When leaders only reward fully formed ideas or perfectly executed work, they leave no room for testing. People learn quickly that half-baked ideas aren’t welcome. Small experiments feel dangerous. Early signals never surface. So instead of learning cheaply, teams either stay silent or wait until something is “big enough” to justify the risk.

That’s how innovation slows down without anyone realizing it.

Mid-funnel leadership looks different.

Mid-funnel leaders invite rough drafts. They ask, “What did you try?” before asking, “Did it work?” They create space for pilots, prototypes, and small bets that don’t require a business case or a blessing from three layers up.

For a leader, working the mid funnel might look like this.

Instead of asking for a full rollout plan, you ask someone to test an idea with one customer or one team.

Instead of demanding certainty, you ask what they learned.

Instead of shutting something down because it’s incomplete, you help shape it into something testable.

The signal this sends matters. It tells your team that learning is valued. It tells high performers they don’t need permission to think. And it gives you better data to make better decisions.

Leaders who protect the mid funnel don’t just get better ideas. They get better people. Because the people who know how to test, learn, and scale are the same people who grow into strong senior leaders themselves.

This mid-funnel approach works -- at any career level -- for one simple reason. It aligns with how decision-makers actually think.

Leaders don’t want big risky bets from people they don’t trust yet. They want small proof points that reduce uncertainty. Mid-funnel activity reduces risk. Lower-funnel amplification builds confidence. Upper-funnel exposure creates opportunity.

This is how promotions really happen. Not from one heroic moment…but from a pattern of tested ideas that scale.

The big lesson from Heinz wasn’t the ketchup keg. It was the courage to test something small…notice the response…and then go big with confidence. Your career works the same way.

Stop waiting for the perfect idea. Start testing imperfect ones in the mid funnel.

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