Former Campbell's Soup CEO Doug Conant talks about innovation at the company. He discusses changing its leaders, advertising, shelving units, and the V8 drink.
How Former Campbell's Soup CEO Doug Contant helped turn around a sinking brand...
Leadership Replacement:
"We turned over, in the first three years, 300 of the top 350 leaders of the organization—which is to my knowledge unprecedented in the consumer-products industry. Of the 300 people we turned over, 150 people were promoted from within, and 150 were hired from outside: people who were high-character, high-quality."
Product Redesign:
"It's amazing to think that the microwave was invented in 1947, and it took us over 50 years for us to figure out that we can have microwavable soups. So we created an entire microwave platform with a "soup-at-hand" platform and microwaveable bowls, which began to make soup more approachable for the millennial and Gen-X generations, who weren't into counter-top cooking."
Reacting to Customer Feedback:
"The big innovation there was recognizing that over half the population didn't like the taste of V8. So we innovated with a fruit and vegetable combination called V8 V-Fusion."
Read on for more insight into Campbell's strategy. Inc writer Abraham Brown asks Doug "With Campbell's now experiencing a decline, what should new CEO Denise Morrison focus on?" Do you have any thoughts on how this legendary American company should innovate? Do you think Campbell will bounce back from this decline?
![Conversational Marketing [home]](/users/conversationalmarketing/site_logo.jpg "Conversational Marketing"){kind=logo}
http://www.inc.com/articles/201109/former-campbells-soup-company-ceo-doug-conant.html
RSS
Former Campbell's Soup CEO Doug Conant talks about innovation at the company. He discusses changing its leaders, advertising, shelving units, and the V8 drink.
How Former Campbell's Soup CEO Doug Contant helped turn around a sinking brand...
Leadership Replacement:
"We turned over, in the first three years, 300 of the top 350 leaders of the organization—which is to my knowledge unprecedented in the consumer-products industry. Of the 300 people we turned over, 150 people were promoted from within, and 150 were hired from outside: people who were high-character, high-quality."
Product Redesign:
"It's amazing to think that the microwave was invented in 1947, and it took us over 50 years for us to figure out that we can have microwavable soups. So we created an entire microwave platform with a "soup-at-hand" platform and microwaveable bowls, which began to make soup more approachable for the millennial and Gen-X generations, who weren't into counter-top cooking."
Reacting to Customer Feedback:
"The big innovation there was recognizing that over half the population didn't like the taste of V8. So we innovated with a fruit and vegetable combination called V8 V-Fusion."
Read on for more insight into Campbell's strategy. Inc writer Abraham Brown asks Doug "With Campbell's now experiencing a decline, what should new CEO Denise Morrison focus on?" Do you have any thoughts on how this legendary American company should innovate? Do you think Campbell will bounce back from this decline?