Campbell Soup Company

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Campbell Soup Company

GOLDFISH CRACKERS CAMPAIGN
MAKE IT CAMPBELL'S INSTEAD CAMPAIGN

1 Campbell Place
Camden, New Jersey 08103-1799
USA
Telephone: (856) 342-4800
Fax: (856) 342-3878
Web site: www.campbellsoup.com www.pepperidgefarm.com

GOLDFISH CRACKERS CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Pepperidge Farm, Inc.'s Goldfish crackers, introduced in 1962, had by 2004 evolved into a megabrand available in more than 24 individual flavors and varieties, from the original cheddar to peanut-butter-filled sandwich crackers and crispy rounds. At the end of that year Goldfish sales in the United States were $168.5 million, making it the number two snack-cracker brand behind Nabisco's Ritz crackers. But despite its ranking the Goldfish brand was slipping; in 2004 sales of the crackers dipped 8.3 percent from the previous year.

To lift its iconic brand out of the doldrums, Pepperidge Farm, a division of the Campbell Soup Company, looked beyond its agency of record—Young & Rubicam Advertising in New York—for creative help. The company charged BrightHouseLive, a small Atlanta-based agency known for its unique approach to marketing and advertising, with developing a clever new marketing campaign for the Goldfish brand. BrightHouseLive created a television-focused campaign that featured an animated goldfish character named Finn. The campaign, which began in January 2005, also included in-store and online marketing and new packaging for the Goldfish crackers. A budget for the campaign was not announced, but according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, a unit of the United Kingdom-based market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres, in 2003 Pepperidge Farm spent $16.3 million on advertising for its Goldfish brand, a figure that was almost unchanged from its spending in 2002.

The new campaign, as well as its spokescharacter, Finn, seemed to resonate with consumers and helped increase sales of Goldfish crackers by about 5 percent within several months of its launch. Media insiders also praised the campaign, using a variety of adjectives to describe Finn, from lovable and funny to spunky and irreverent. Additionally the Campbell Soup Company credited the campaign and its spokescharacter with boosting Pepperidge Farm's sales in 2005.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

According to its website, Pepperidge Farm's humble beginnings in 1937 were in the kitchen of Margaret Rudkin, the mother of three children. To ease the allergies of one of her children, the industrious mom began baking bread for her family that contained none of the preservatives or artificial ingredients found in commercially baked bread. Her efforts in the kitchen soon evolved into a small business named for the family farm in Connecticut: Pepperidge Farm. The first product, whole-wheat bread, gained in popularity with consumers and in the 1940s, as the business grew, the line was expanded to include oatmeal bread, dinner rolls, and stuffing mix. The peripatetic Rudkin also added to the product line by collecting recipes during her international travels, including European-style cookies that she discovered while traveling in Belgium in the 1950s. In 1961 the Campbell Soup Company acquired Pepperidge Farm. The following year Goldfish crackers were introduced after Rudkin discovered the snack cracker during a trip to Switzerland and returned with the recipe and permission to market it.

Ogilvy & Mather had served as the Pepperidge Farm ad agency for 40 years. In 1995 it resigned from the Pepperidge Farm and Goldfish crackers account, reportedly because of a business conflict, and agency Saatchi & Saatchi/New York took over the account. When a smiling face was added to the original goldfish in 1997, "Smiley" the Goldfish icon was born. Saatchi & Saatchi created the accompanying tagline, "The snack that smiles back." In 1998, following a consolidation by the brand's parent company, Campbell Soup, Young & Rubicam Advertising in New York won the Goldfish account. The agency introduced a new campaign for Goldfish crackers in 2003 that included the theme song "Jingle for Goldfish." The campaign, which targeted kids 8 to 12 years old, featured two scruffy, longhaired musicians playing acoustic guitars and singing the jingle. Television spots placed the singing duo in a variety of settings, including on a school bus and in a classroom. At the request of Pepperidge Farm, Atlanta-based BrightHouseLive joined the team in 2004. BrightHouseLive created an updated campaign for Goldfish crackers that featured a new animated spokes-character, Finn the goldfish. The campaign was released in January 2005.

TARGET MARKET

Any parent, babysitter, or other person who had ever quieted a fussy toddler with a cup of Goldfish crackers could appreciate the value of the tasty fish-shaped treat. But with the new campaign featuring Finn, a personable animated goldfish, the goal was to help create an even closer bond between the popular Pepperidge Farm brand and the children who enjoyed Goldfish crackers. As an added benefit, the clever spots connected with the adults who purchased the product. The animated Finn also was designed to continue Goldfish crackers' appeal to tweens—kids 8 to 12 years old—and teens who had been given the fish-shaped crackers as toddlers but had perhaps stopped eating them in favor of other snacks. To further reach its target market, Pepperidge Farm introduced a Goldfish website, www.pfgoldfish.com, that enabled older kids to go online and play games featuring Finn. The site also offered a variety of activities that parents or caregivers could play with kids aged three to five years old, such as determining how many goldfish crackers tall the child was. In addition, new packaging (the milk-carton box was replaced with a bag similar to what was used for other products in the line) added to the appeal of the brand for consumers of all ages.

COMPETITION

In the snack-cracker wars, flavor, as always, was paramount, but in the early 2000s part of the battle was about the shape of the cracker. Pepperidge Farm's fish-shaped crackers were near the top of the list, with 98 percent of Americans surveyed saying that they recognized and were familiar with Goldfish crackers. Nabisco, which claimed one of the top spots in the snack-cracker market with its Ritz brand, went one step too far in its competition with Pepperidge Farm when it introduced its own fish-shaped crackers in 1998. Nabisco's new crackers were planned as a tie-in to the Nickelodeon television network's program CatDog. The new crackers resulted in a lawsuit, pitting Nabisco against Pepperidge Farm. The latter alleged that Nabisco's new crackers infringed on its Goldfish brand trademark. In 2000 a federal court upheld Pepperidge Farm's claim and ordered Nabisco to discontinue production of its fish-shaped cracker. Later in 2000 Kraft Foods acquired the Nabisco brand for $18.9 billion. While Nabisco's Ritz cracker brand claimed the number one spot in the snack-cracker market at the end of 2004, with $232.6 million in annual U.S. sales, the company was still looking for a niche in the shaped-cracker market. Nabisco introduced dinosaur-shaped puffed crackers under its Ritz brand in 2005. The new Ritz Dinosaur crackers were created in direct response to Pepperidge Farm's Goldfish crackers and targeted the same young consumers and their parents.

In 2005 the Kellogg Company introduced its own character-shaped cracker under its Keebler Sunshine cracker brand, Cheez-It. Rather than a fish or prehistoric creature, however, Keebler Sunshine's new crackers were shaped like the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants and directly targeted the kids who munched on Ritz Dinosaur and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. Targeting an older audience, in 2004 Kellogg introduced Twisterz, another variation on its Cheez-It crackers. The new shape, a twisted cylinder rather than the traditional square, was launched in time for the end of college basketball season and included combination flavors designed to please college-age consumers: Cheddar & More Cheddar, Hot Wings & Cheesy Blue, and Cool Ranch & Cheddar. The new product launch was supported by a marketing campaign created by Leo Burnett/Chicago and continued the brand's tagline, "Get your own box." With $140.1 million in sales, the Cheez-It cracker brand ranked fourth in the snack-cracker market at the end of 2004.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Although New York-based Young & Rubicam Advertising remained the agency of record for Goldfish crackers and other Pepperidge Farm brands, in 2004, when Pepperidge Farm wanted to put a different spin on the advertising for the fish-shaped cracker and update the brand, it partnered with BrightHouseLive, an agency based in Atlanta, Georgia. BrightHouseLive had opened its doors in 2003 but had quickly earned a reputation for devising unusual advertising campaigns. The creative idea developed by the agency was a primarily television campaign that featured an animated goldfish named Finn. A specific budget for the campaign was unavailable, but according to a report in Adweek, in 2004 Pepperidge Farm spent approximately $14 million from January through September on advertising for the Goldfish cracker brand.

Prior to the creation of the campaign Pepperidge Farm devoted more than one year to conducting market research about Goldfish crackers. Included were interviews with mothers and children to determine what the brand meant to consumers. The company also worked with Character, a leading character-development agency within the film industry, to help establish the personality of the new spokescharacter, Finn.

GOLDFISH CRACKERS REPLACED WITH COOKIES ON BOOK COVER

Pepperidge Farm's Goldfish crackers could be found almost everywhere, from the lunch boxes of elementary school kids to strategic placement in the movie Christmas with the Kranks. But when the fish-shaped cracker appeared on the cover of a new novel, the waters got choppy. The book, Little Children by Tom Perrotta, was about what happened in a suburban neighborhood when a convicted child molester moved in. To the dismay of Pepperidge Farm, featured on the cover of the novel were Goldfish crackers. The book's publisher, St. Martin's Press, had failed to get permission to use the crackers on the cover, so the book cover got a makeover: the Goldfish crackers swimming across the front of the book were replaced with chocolate-chip cookies.

For the campaign BrightHouseLive created a series of four 30-second and three 15-second television spots. The initial two 30-second spots, which were first aired in January 2005, highlighted Goldfish crackers' cheddar-flavored variety. Subsequent spots featured the brand's Flavor Blasted and Sandwich Snackers varieties. Each spot showed Finn interacting with other Goldfish crackers as he made plans to help protect them from being eaten by hungry humans reaching for a snack. Finn warned, "To avoid being eaten, you've got to avoid the bowl, avoid the baggies. Cool?" One spot had Finn's advice being ignored by the other Goldfish crackers. As the crackers laughed and jumped into a bowl on a kitchen counter, a person reached into the bowl and took a handful of the crackers. A voice-over stated: "Tasty Goldfish crackers, baked with real cheddar cheese. It's a wonder they're not extinct." Finn sighed and returned to the package to try again to warn the remaining Goldfish crackers about how to avoid becoming a snack for humans. The spot ended with Finn exclaiming, "So much for fish being brain food."

In addition to television spots, the campaign included in-store advertising and Internet promotions on a new website for the product that featured games and activities for kids to play alone or with their parents. As part of a brand update, the company designed new packaging for the crackers. In an interview reported in Business Wire prior to the release of the campaign, Pepperidge Farm's vice president of youth snacks, Steve White, said that, by bringing to life the familiar goldfish as the spokescharacter Finn, "we feel confident that kids of all ages are going to love the character as much as they love the snack."

OUTCOME

At the time of the new campaign's 2005 launch, Pepperidge Farm's Goldfish crackers were among the world's most popular snack crackers, with American consumers devouring more than 85 billion Goldfish crackers annually. Within six months of the start of the campaign Pepperidge Farm reported that sales of Goldfish crackers were up more than 5 percent. Parent company Campbell Soup also noted the success of the campaign in its third-quarter report for the period that ended May 2005. The report stated, "Sales of 'Pepperidge Farm Goldfish' snack crackers experienced good gains due to continued momentum of the base brand and the favorable impact of new advertising featuring the new animated character, 'Finn.' " Besides resonating with consumers and spurring sales, the campaign was well received by media insiders. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Lewis Lazare described Finn as a lovable advertising icon that was "funny and irreverent" with "spunk and soul."

MAKE IT CAMPBELL'S INSTEAD CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Campbell Soup Company, long the dominant force in the American canned-soup market as well as a player in many other food and beverage categories, saw consistent sales losses in its all-important original Campbell's soup line throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium. These condensed soups still constituted the best-selling soup brand in the country and had one of the most recognizable labels in the world, the iconic red-and-white can, but condensed soup was being progressively upstaged by ready-to-eat brands (including Campbell's own Chunky soup) prized for their convenience. Having unsuccessfully tried numerous tactics in the attempt to revive its core business, Campbell's in 2003 hit on a combination of manufacturing, packaging, shelving, and communications tactics that positioned it to make an integrated bid, on behalf of all of its soup products, for consumers' attention. A major part of this effort was a decisive change in marketing tone, targeting, and strategy, embodied in the "Make It Campbell's Instead" campaign of 2003–4.

"Make It Campbell's Instead," crafted by Campbell's longtime ad agency BBDO New York, used an estimated $100 million budget and employed the conventions of reality television, which was extremely popular at the time, in a series of commercials designed to encourage the consideration of Campbell's full range of soups as replacements for a variety of meal types and snack foods. The spots were hosted by the pushy yet charming Gordon Elliott, the star of his own Food Network reality show, in which he stopped passersby and knocked on strangers' doors, asking them to try dishes that he himself cooked. The Campbell's commercials used this same premise—with Elliott intruding on ordinary families at mealtime, drivers of cars stopped at intersections, and the homes of celebrities—in order to suggest the consumption of a particular Campbell's soup variety.

"Make It Campbell's Instead" made a crucial contribution to the ongoing attempt to revitalize the Campbell Soup Company, an attempt that saw its first signs of success during the campaign's run. In 2004 the company's famed condensed-soup line saw its first sales gains since the 1980s, surprising analysts who had predicted the brand's continued decline.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Campbell's soup, long one of America's most recognizable packaged foods, fell precipitously out of favor with consumers in the 1990s and early 2000s. The demand for ever-more-convenient food products translated into the ascendance of ready-to-eat soups such as the Campbell Soup Company's own Chunky and Select brands and General Mills' Progresso. Such products took market share away from the Campbell's condensed varieties, which were sold in the famous red-and-white can—an ironic development considering the fact that a primary attribute of Campbell's condensed soups had always been the ease with which they could be prepared. Though Chunky and Select posted consistent sales gains, the core brand, condensed soup, accounted for approximately 70 percent of the company's soup operations and 35 percent of its profits, so Campbell remained committed to reviving it. In the 1990s and early 2000s the marketing strategy for Campbell's soup—with creative work chiefly crafted by ad agency BBDO New York—underwent drastic revision almost yearly, as did the roster of Campbell executives charged with reviving the brand. Industry observers characterized these changes as desperate attempts to update the product's image, and corporate analysts predicted that the declines in condensed-soup sales would continue indefinitely.

In 2002 Campbell launched a new product line, Soup at Hand, America's first "sippable" soup, which was packaged in a microwaveable container designed to fit in a person's hand for on-the-go consumption. This increase in portability, positioning soup to compete against snack and fast foods generally perceived as less wholesome and nutritious, translated into the company's most successful product launch since the introduction of the Chunky variety almost 30 years earlier. Meanwhile, the company's new president of U.S. soup, Jeremy Fingerman, encouraged innovation in Campbell's soup advertising. Long pitched to stay-at-home moms via wholesome TV imagery, the brand in late 2002 targeted college students with wry outdoor ads in select cities—Boston, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati—as a means of testing the core brand's ability to grow market share outside its traditional audience. In 2003 Campbell's attempt to assure consumers that soup was, as Fingerman put it in an interview with Advertising Age, "the superior simpler meal," gained further momentum. It included such measures as the reformulation of the condensed soups' recipes, the addition of pop-top lids to the condensed-soup cans, the introduction of new Soup at Hand flavors, the offering of Chunky and Select in microwaveable containers, and a renewed focus on supermarket shelving strategies.

TARGET MARKET

"Make It Campbell's Instead" was rooted in the company's attempt to convince consumers that soup was a better option for those seeking a simple and healthy meal. BBDO and Campbell used reality-based TV spots, some of which were scripted and some of which were not, to update the soup brands' images and make them seem relevant to "today's diverse consumer population," as president of Campbell North America, Larry McWilliams, said in a press release. The reality-based approach was, industry observers noted, a significant departure from Campbell's heritage as a traditional advertiser targeting stay-at-home moms with images of wholesome domesticity.

The commercials featured a single spokesperson, the Australian-born Gordon Elliott, star of the Food Network show Door Knock Dinners. Modeled on that program, in which the pushy but charismatic Elliott confronted people at home or on the street and asked them to eat a meal that he had prepared, the Campbell's spots showed Elliott urging strangers and celebrities to try Campbell's soup products in place of other snack or meal options. Individual commercials targeted different audiences, depending on the object of Elliott's attentions. While the spot that showed Elliott intruding on the home of TV personality and restaurateur B. Smith appealed to adult women, spots in which Elliott focused his antics on younger people were meant to appeal to kids. For instance, Elliott played basketball with the 16-year-old rapper Bow Wow in one commercial for Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. Other spots supported newly developed Soup at Hand varieties expressly developed for children, such as Pizza, Taco, and Mexican noodle flavors. The campaign marked Campbell's first sustained targeting of children.

COMPETITION

In addition to being an internally significant change in strategy, the fact that Campbell aimed its soup advertising at children was a noteworthy development in the intensifying competition with rival soup brand Progresso. Progresso's most successful recent advertising campaign, and its first to include national TV commercials, attempted to make the case that Campbell's was kids' fare but that Progresso—which was not condensed and claimed, for instance, such attributes as white meat and chunky vegetables in its chicken noodle variety—was worthy of adult palates. Launched in 1998, the Progresso campaign was called "Discover the Better Taste of Progresso," and it targeted women aged 25 to 54. One TV spot showed a male office worker eating Chicken & Stars soup from a bowl, which was positioned alongside a juvenile lunchbox and a can clearly meant to suggest Campbell's. A female coworker approached the man and said, "You know, Chicken & Stars used to be my favorite. Then I learned to ride a two-wheeler. Come on, you're an adult now. There's a better tasting soup." Print ads took the comparative concept even further, identifying Campbell's by name. Progresso sales climbed by 12 percent during the 1998–9 soup season—fall through spring—and research indicated that a large proportion of these sales increases could be attributed to the campaign. Progresso's gains were likewise in line with the industry-wide trend away from condensed soups. By 2003 Progresso's annual sales had climbed to $424 million, a marked improvement over its 1998 total of $258 million.

Progresso's most direct competitor was not Campbell's condensed lines, however, but Campbell's Chunky brand, which likewise employed messages of food quality and flourished at least partly at the expense of the original Campbell's brand. Chunky's most recent advertising retained the long-running tagline "The soup that eats like a meal" and featured professional football players being accosted by their mothers (usually played by actors), who used various humorous ruses to ensure that their sons were eating Chunky soup. Launched in 1997, the campaign ran for many years, corresponding with a period of enormous Chunky sales growth, despite the fact that industry critics typically disliked the spots' lack of subtlety and unsophisticated attempts at humor.

M'M! M'M! GOOD! TO GO

In early 2003, prior to the "Make It Campbell's Instead" campaign, Campbell unveiled a marketing, packaging, and promotions platform uniting its portable lines of soups. Recasting the well-known Campbell's slogan, "M'm! M'm! Good!"—which dated from the 1930s—the "M'm! M'm! Good! To Go" initiative consisted of the introduction of single-serve microwaveable soups as well as the inclusion of the Campbell's Soup at Hand "sippable" brand under the new "To Go" banner. Packaging and in-store materials directed attention to the convenience-enhancing innovations of the "M'm! M'm! Good! To Go" products, and a significant portion of Campbell's overall advertising budget was devoted to spreading awareness about the new and repackaged products. The "M'm! M'm! Good! To Go" soups represented one of the most promising avenues for Campbell's growth, and their inclusion in the umbrella "Make It Campbell's Instead" campaign increased the credibility of that broader effort's primary claim, which was that Campbell's products were a convenient and wholesome substitute for a wide range of meals and snacks.

MARKETING STRATEGY

"Make It Campbell's Instead," which ran on television during the 2003–4 soup season—fall through spring—at an estimated cost of $100 million, represented a sizable risk for Campbell, because it departed from the company's previous advertising in more ways than one. The tonal dissimilarity of the irreverent, reality-based TV spots to the emotional, family-oriented advertising of Campbell's more successful past was perhaps the most obvious change in the eyes of consumers, but the unification of Campbell's full line of soups under one advertising platform was an important strategic shift as well. Larry McWilliams stated in a press release, "[W]e're single-minded in our focus to change how people think about soup. A unified platform will maximize the impact and efficiency of both our message and our media buying … Our aim is to shake consumers up with a very different creative effort that will get them thinking about soup in new ways." The campaign also featured far more individual spots than a typical Campbell's campaign, which allowed the ad agency to use a variety of different pitches tailored to specific targets and products. This comparatively drastic rethinking of the company's advertising strategy was supported by the changes in product formulation, packaging, and shelving that had recently been announced.

The TV spots were shot on location with small crews using handheld video cameras instead of film, a strategy aimed at generating a look of immediacy that was in keeping with the reality TV shows of the time. The first spot was called "Anthem," and it showed host Elliott confronting a succession of ordinary people in an office setting and on a street, asking them to try the Campbell's products newly available in microwaveable containers. Other unscripted commercials showed Elliott barging into real families' homes during meals and arguing that they should "Make it Campbell's instead" and putting Soup at Hand containers in the hands of drivers stopped at street intersections. Reflecting on the usefulness of these encounters for the purposes of advertising, Elliott told Advertising Age, "Nothing works better than letting real people tell you what they think."

These commercials alternated with others featuring celebrities who were paired with specific brands in ways that leveraged the appeal each had among particular groups of TV viewers. Elliott arrived at the home of trendsetting New York restaurateur B. Smith in one commercial, with the suggestion that she try Campbell's Select Italian Wedding soup, one of the company's most popular upmarket offerings, rather than cold sandwiches. In another commercial Elliott traveled to the Indiana home of the Dilley sextuplets, where he demonstrated for the benefit of the six siblings and their parents various ways of creating interesting new meals by adding common household mixings and toppings to Campbell's Tomato Soup. In the spot featuring rapper Bow Wow, Elliott and the 16-year-old star squared off for a game of one-on-one basketball, with the winner to receive a meal of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. In a slight twist on the other commercials' concept, one spot showed Sandra Lee, who had her own Food Network show and was the author of the best-selling cookbook Semi-Homemade Meals (in which she offered recipes that used ready-made products such as Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup), instructing Elliott in the preparation of Campbell's Seafood Tomato Alfredo.

The commercials depended, for much of their effectiveness, on Elliott's personality and his ability to generate off-the-cuff humor and enthusiasm for the brand. Leavening his brazen intrusiveness with charm and poise, Elliott was able to disarm participants in the unscripted spots, and he showed considerable personal magnetism onscreen. His behavior in the commercials was meant to seem a daring update of the long-established advertising practice of employing spokespeople.

OUTCOME

The "Make It Campbell's Instead" concept remained in place through 2004, and the company put particular emphasis on extending the appeals to children, preteens, and teens that had first been tested in the Elliott-helmed commercials. Campbell also adapted the "Make It Campbell's Instead" theme to its new Carb Request soups, aimed at low-carbohydrate dieters, and to a series of Soup at Hand efforts aimed at women who tended to skip or skimp on lunch. Overall Campbell's change in approach—from marketing within the soup category to marketing its products as the answer to a wide variety of snack and mealtime occasions—was credited with spurring the company's long-awaited turnaround, and this change was substantially driven by the "Make It Campbell's Instead" campaign. In 2004, for the first time since the 1980s, Campbell's core condensed-soup brand not only stabilized its losses but also showed sales gains, topping the $1 billion mark in total sales. Campbell's company-wide sales growth began outpacing analysts' predictions, and the company was finally credited with arriving at a workable model for generating sustained success in an evolving soup marketplace.