The company immortalised in the popular imagination by Andy Warhol’s pop art soup cans is set to drop “soup” from its name, rebranding as Campbell’s Company as part of a shift in focus to other foods it sells.
The 155-year-old company began as Anderson & Campbell, named for the fruit merchant and canner who started the business in 1869, going through a series of name changes before settling on Campbell Soup Company in 1922. According to the Guardian, president and CEO Mark Clouse is hoping that investors will vote to take “soup” out of the name at the company’s general meeting in November. After more than a century of being synonymous with soup, Clouse believes the new name will better reflect Campbell’s growing product line.
“We will always love soup, and we’ll never take our eye off of this critical business,” Clouse reportedly said during the company’s investor day on Tuesday. “But today, we’re so much more than soup.”
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The New Jersey-based company owns several other brands, from the baked-goods brand Pepperidge Farm, acquired in 1961, to Synder’s-Lance, maker of Cape Cod Potato Chips and Pop Secret popcorn, bought in 2018. Campbell’s sales of such snacks grew by 13 percent last year, with Goldfish cracker snacks on track to become the company’s largest brand by 2027.
Soup sales, by comparison, only grew 3 percent in 2023, but the Guardian says sales could see a sharp uptick as the population ages in many of Campbell’s core markets around the world. The food category is generally more popular with older people and for many of them Campbell’s is synonymous with soup.
Some may even remember when pop art icon Andy Warhol first immortalised the familiar Campbell’s soup can in the early 1960s with a series of 32 canvases, one for each variety sold by the company at the time. The complete set now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and will remain strongly associated with the company.
