I love soup.
Chicken noodle possibilities!
This month, we are plugging the American Red Cross! Even if you can’t give blood, there are many other ways to help out. Visit https://www.redcross.org/ to find out how!
SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s
https://www.fooddive.com/news/campbells-tough-snacking-business-decisions-loom/822367
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thompson_Dorrance
https://www.fooddive.com/news/why-campbells-1b-raos-brand-is-winning-on-sauce/814606
https://www.youtube.com/@goldfishsmiles/videos
Picture sources: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79809
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes: https://www.themarketinggateway.com
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
So it’s Labor Day week and not a lot’s happening in the world of marketing. This a pretty normal pattern – everyone’s getting ready for the fourth quarter and September’s sort of a time for realignment, especially as kids go back to school and vacations start to taper off.
Last week at a marketing networking event, I heard a colleague compare September to January, and that made a lot of sense to me!
As a result, in this week’s run on The Marketing Gateway, I’m going to offer three short looks at brands that are trying to turn themselves around this year.
Today, we’re going to cover Campbell’s, makers of the soup of the same name, but also the owners of brands including SpaghettiOs, Pepperidge Farm, Goldfish Crackers, V8 Vegetable Juice, Pace Foods salsas, Swanson broths and frozen dinners, Prego and Rao’s pasta sauces, Snyder’s, Lance, Archway cookies, Cape Cod Potato Chips and more.
Campbell’s has been treading water recently and has been trying to find a path to improve its market share and penetration, and I think they’re a great case study because they own many historic brands that have proven to be cash cows over time and they’re very experienced marketers who know how to fight in tough and constrained markets.
So let’s see what Campbell’s is doing and what we can learn from it in this concentrated case study!
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
The Anderson & Campbell company was founded in 1869 in Bridgton, New Jersey as a canning and preserves company, but co-founder Joseph A.
Campbell eventually broke away from partner Abraham Anderson to form his own company, which eventually morphed into the Campbell Soup Company in 1922 when a commercial technique for condensing soup was invented by employee John T. Dorrance, who’d go on to become the president and owner of the brand.
Over time, the Campbell Soup Company developed or acquired all of the brands I mentioned at the start of the episode, but the brand also got a lift in the 1960s as artist Andy Warhol began painting Campbell’s Soup cans as a form of pop art. Even today, those silkscreens are found in many museums and affirm the brand’s ubiquitous qualities. Today’s Campbell’s Soup cans still look a lot like the ones Warhol painted because you just don’t mess with the classics. And the brand’s best-known slogan, Mmm Mmm Good, has been in use since 1935 even as other slogans have come and gone.
The most important brand besides the Campbell’s brand within the company’s portfolio has long been Pepperidge Farm, which started out in 1937 but was acquired by Campbell Soup in 1961.
The brand has a number of products including breads, crackers, cookies and desserts, but their top-seller is the Goldfish Cracker, which were introduced in 1962 and which had their Cheddar cheese variety launched in 1966.
These crackers have long been a popular snack food with an iconic space that Campbell’s even won a court case back in 1999 to protect, but they’re particularly associated with children and touted as being healthier than alternatives like potato chips because they’re made with real cheese and they’re baked, not fried.
I mention this because Campbell’s has been struggling in the snack food sector, which is both a tightening market due to rising costs and also an area where consumers often demand novelty.
Goldfish crackers have done a number of things to stay current and find growth over the years with new varieties or flavors, but during tough times, experienced product marketers tend to eliminate costly alternatives and double down on the extensions that are proven sellers.
Stimulating market demand with some fresh new marketing is often helpful as well, and that’s what Campbell’s has been doing all summer, bringing in the creative agency Mischief @ No Fixed Address to help build a new campaign.
And this effort, titled “The Snack that Smiles Back” using a tried-and-true tagline, has been successful at repositioning the brand as a better-for-you snacking option for children by discussing the real ingredients, baked production method and lack of artificial flavors of colors.
A series of spots designed for digital and broadcast have stop-motion animated goldfish crackers shown doing a photo shoot – you know, “say real cheese!” – until a hand reaches in and grabs one of the crackers, revealing that we’re actually seeing the inside of a bag as two children are eating lunch. And other accompanying media have focused on the benefits as well.
The goal of the campaign is to spur growth during back to school season, and it seems to be working based on what Campbells has been telling investors.
But Campbell’s is also struggling. Net sales are down quarter over quarter by 8% and year over year by 5%. The company is laying off salaried workers and closing two of its snack plants. Even if Goldfish manages to spur growth, other brands within the portfolio need to grow as well.
One that’s been doing well is Rao’s, which was, up until recently was owned by Sovos Brands until Campbell’s acquired it for $2.7 billion in 2024 after getting approval from the FTC. Rao’s is a pasta sauce that was based on the New York City restaurant’s recipe and it’s long been positioned as a premium homemade alternative to jarred sauces like Mizkan’s Ragu brand or Campbell Soup’s own Prego line.
And premium is right – it’s like $8 a jar!
Even so, Rao’s has seen a 14.5% rise in consumption recently and benefits from being perceived as being homemade from real, fresh ingredients rather than manufactured and loaded with sugar and salt, and the brand has many opportunities to grow through creamy sauces, which are apparently having a moment with Millennials right now, as well as pasta, frozen meals and jarred soups.
For Campbell’s, it’s a billion dollar brand that justifies their purchase of Sovos. And it’s a great way to ride the current wave of demand for healthier, more natural products sold for more than the typical grocery store varieties.
Campbell’s is also pivoting its marketing strategy in general to be 85% digital through social media, influencers, ecommerce and AI-powered platforms. While they’re focused on Goldfish and Rao’s as two of their biggest growth opportunities, they want to grow all of their brands, particularly their namesake.
So if you start seeing a lot of influencers on TikTok suddenly rediscovering Campbell’s Tomato soup or Chicken Noodle, you’ll know why.
But it just goes to show, with mature brands, you need a little bit of nostalgia to keep things going, but you also need a little bit of fresh engagement to remind people why they care. And that’s exactly the strategy Campbell’s is following, even if the ways in which they’re doing it may be a little bit different from what they’ve done before.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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