Campaign Trail: Campbell’s Chunky Celebrates Cattlemen Like Jason Kelce

Campaign Trail is our analysis of some of the best new creative efforts from the marketing world. Check out previous columns in the archives here.

Next month, Campbell Soup Company will ask shareholders to approve renaming the 155-year-old company The Campbell’s Company. Even if it does, Campbell’s will likely remain synonymous with soup, and consumers will still know what the Campbell’s Chunky brand has inside the can: big chunks of meat and protein that make it “the soup that eats like a meal.”

Chunky has played with the ambiguities surrounding these “humps” by casting two burly football warriors — New York Giants nose tackle Dexter Lawrence and retired Philadelphia Eagles quarterback (and pop culture phenomenon) Jason Kelce — in its latest campaign. The campaign, created with Publicis agency Leo Burnett, launched on September 9 and will span TV and online video, including football broadcasts on Amazon, NBC, ESPN, CBS and elsewhere.

In his 15-second spot, Lawrence eats soup at the gym, his biceps rip through his T-shirt and a ‘Stay Sexy’ sticker – a nod to his ‘Sexy Dexy’ nickname – can be seen on the mirror. For his part, Kelce dons a robe and reclines in front of the fireplace, sipping soup on a bearskin rug. The spots speak to Chunky’s focus on football and flair.

“When we started our ambitions this year, it was really focused on bringing meaning and personality to these product features that are very differentiating compared to the competition and especially interesting in terms of bringing younger consumers into the category,” said Pete Herron, Chief Marketing Officer at Campbell’s.

The ads support the two pillars of Chunky’s brand—beef and spicy—but continue to lean toward humor and not take the brand too seriously on its way to breaking through creatively and bringing more awareness to the category.

Game won in the trenches

Countless brands rushed to partner with the NFL and its players in campaigns aimed at the start of the football season. For Chunky, an NFL affiliate since 1998 and the second-longest-serving sponsor, finding the right talent was critical to the campaign.

“When you think about who our consumers are, there are classic advertising target types, like the everyday consumer,” Herron said. “There is someone who is not necessarily always celebrated, but is someone who always works and is always reliable.”

While many brands have turned to players in so-called skill positions like quarterback (hello, Brock Purdy), Chunky made a deliberate choice to focus on the offensive and defensive lines: The players who dictate the outcome of games but without their fame or glamour. soccer teammates.

“We felt it was a really good symmetry with who our consumer is,” explained Herron. “For us at the Chunky brand, it was a really fun way to try to get through the NFL talent partnership.

With Lawrence, Chunky secured a defensive lineman who is not only one of the best players on the field, but also a charismatic and charming character off the field. The brand paired “Sexy Dexy” with the popular Chunky variation Chili Mac, playing up the asymmetry and humor of someone eating soup at the gym.

Utilizes Kelce

Kelce’s collaboration with Chunky dates back to a campaign last year that saw him in an ad alongside his brother Travis and mother Donna. Dubbed “Bragging Rights,” the spot followed the fraternal face of Super Bowl LVII.

Since then, the Kelce brothers have become ubiquitous in the media, in large part due to Travis’ relationship with Taylor Swift and Jason’s post-career antics (the couple recently signed a $100 million, three-year deal with Amazon Wondery for the rights to their podcast, ” New Heights.”). But Jason brings more than cultural cachet to his Chunky place.

“It was really this great intersection for us to be able to use him as this real connective tissue to each person, but also, he has the type of personality to really pull through the humor in a pretty compelling way,” Herron said.

Having Jason Kelce reclining in a robe on a bearskin rug in front of the fireplace might not sit well with every brand, even if it’s more PG than Burt Reynolds’ iconic 1972 Cosmopolitan center. Herron says the new Chunky campaign is easy to figure out from a weekly meeting between brand and agency called, appropriately, Monday Morning Quarterbacks.

“We would all jump on a Teams call and talk about our different teams, or different things we were seeing in culture, and different reactions to things we were seeing… We got to know each other and then we got a sense of each other’s sense of humor ,” Herron said. “Humour … can be shared, but it takes a while to get there.

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