Food for thought From Soup to Nuts

These are Campbell's tomato and chicken noodle soups in 1948, the year that New York City Ballet was founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein.

These are Campbell's tomato and chicken noodle soups 71 years later in 2019:

Not much tinkering there in 71 years, is there?

Despite product managers' efforts to come up with the next biggest thing, that is, the next soup that will make everyone forget tomato and chicken noodle, and despite their most dedicated efforts to move the art of soup forward into the next century, everyone still buys more tomato and chicken noodle soup than any other Campbell soup. 285,000,000 cans each year (200 million chicken & 85 million tomato).

Campbell knows that these core products are the pillars of its master brand. It doesn't expect people to conclude that it's time to try something else and to be daring, e.g., white cheddar tripe soup or chunky suspicious mushroom soup, just so the food critics will have something to write about. They don't take risks with their master brand core product, and they don't try to force people to buy something in its stead. These two soups are on the shelf wherever Campbell products are sold. And that's been the story for a lot longer than 71 years.

When the day comes that the only way one can buy Campbell's tomato or chicken noodle is in a three-pack with white cheddar tripe and chunky suspicious mushroom soups, that will signal great trouble for Campbell's and a great disregard for its loyal customer base. In a nutshell, it would be nuts.

Likewise, a spring program audaciously entitled Peck Meets Balanchine, with its irreverent implications and which sandwiches a single tasty patty between two big highly-processed nutritionless buns, has summoned ballet's Clara Pellers to sound off "Where's the beef? Where's the beef?!" As much as we admire and love Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements, we're not going to plunk down money for a Clara Peller program that is two-thirds bread. Just sayin' ...

More beef, please.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Sandra Zigars]

Haglund, Bravo!

[Haglund]

Thank you, Sandra.