Campbell Soup Cans NFL Moms

Campbell Soup is canning the moms.

For the past six years, the company has been running a well-received series of ads for its "Chunky" soup that feature National Football League greats and their mothers calling them inside for dinner and serving them soup.

But starting with this NFL season, those moms will be riding the bench. The reason for the change? Campbell Soup says its new research has revealed that the company's target consumers -- men in their 30s -- are finally achieving soup independence.

Another possible factor: Chunky is slumping. While sales of the smaller "healthy" line of Chunky soups more than tripled in 2007, to $56 million, that wasn't enough to make up for a 9 percent drop, to $393 million, in Chunky's main soup line, according to Information Resources, a Chicago market research firm. (Those figures exclude sales at Wal-Mart Stores, Chunky's largest retailer.)

By reshaping its message -- the new ad campaign tries to highlight the similarities between one of the NFL's top running backs and workaday male soup eaters -- Campbell risks tinkering with success.

The "Mama's Boys" campaign has been spoofed on "Saturday Night Live," referenced repeatedly on sports highlight shows, and even spawned the "Chunky Soup Curse," after several players who starred in the ads suffered major injuries. The campaign, from Young & Rubicam, also distinguished Chunky in an advertising landscape with no shortage of brands using athletes to appeal to men.

Wilma McNabb, mother of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb and one of the first NFL moms to appear in the ads, took the news stoically. "We moms are kind of behind the scenes anyway," she said Tuesday.

In the early iterations of the ads, which began airing in 1997, NFL luminaries such as John Elway and Terrell Davis appeared with actresses playing their mothers. After Mr. McNabb starred in a Chunky ad with his faux mother, his real mother announced in 2001 that she could play herself just fine, thanks. And so she did, beginning in 2002. Since then, only real mothers have appeared in the ads.

Last season, Campbell signed its largest contingent of NFL stars and their moms to appear in the campaign. Those ads featured eight players playing a four-on-four pickup game in the rain and snow, and then returning home to mom for a bowl of soup.

The new campaign, dubbed "Working Day," features San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson. In one of the series of five ads, which debut when the NFL season kicks off on Sept. 4, Mr. Tomlinson is shown in action on the field as a voice-over describes his job in blue-collar terms.

"Another grueling day on the job," the ad begins. "You're dying to get out of those work clothes. You're hungry. You take a can of Chunky soup. You think about your day. Was I productive? Did I do right by my boss?"

"LaDainian Tomlinson doesn't need his mom to tell him which products have protein and which products don't," said Douglas Brand, brand manager for Chunky soup. "He's learned that for himself, and we've learned our consumers want to do that for themselves as well." The new campaign, in which ads tout the "lean meat protein" in Campbell's Chunky soups, includes print, radio, online and outdoor posters.

Last fall, as part of their research for the campaign, members of Campbell's marketing team visited more than 100 customers in Baltimore, Detroit, Seattle and Milwaukee. They went into their homes and collected information about their relationship to the product.

The fieldwork, conducted with the market-research firm Hall & Partners, showed that customers were ready for a more empowering message than the one sent by images of grown men heeding the call of their mothers, Mr. Brand says. Besides, 11 years is a long time for one campaign, says James Caporimo, creative director at Young & Rubicam, which is owned by WPP Group. "We got a sense they were open to a different approach," says Mr. Caporimo, who left open the possibility that the moms will return for future seasons.

One advantage for Campbell with the new campaign is that it now has only one player on its payroll, compared with a roster of stars from last year that included Larry Johnson of the Kansas City Chiefs, Devin Hester of the Chicago Bears and Maurice Jones-Drew of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Campbell spent $42 million on ads for Chunky soup in 2006 and $49 million in 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

Though the moms are off the air, Campbell isn't totally abandoning the theme. As part of the new campaign, 35 mothers of NFL players will appear on behalf of the Camden, N.J., company to raise food donations for Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks.

Source: Wall Street Journal