How do you design a category breakthrough?
Here's what we can learn from one of the most innovative food technology companies in America.
Campbell's Soup.
(Hint: Andy Warhol wasn't the reason.)
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100 years ago, The Campbell's Soup Company had a breakthrough.
For the first 30 years of being in business, they sold little else besides produce, canned tomatoes, vegetables, jellies, condiments, minced meats, and of course, soups.
Nothing "radically different."
Until, in 1895, a chemist within the company named John T. Dorrance came up with an idea.
If Campbell’s halved the water in each can, the business could produce and ship exponentially more soup (since the excess water was no longer needed)!
Eurika!
As a result, Dorrance and Campbell’s invented “condensed soup.”
New category.
This allowed the company to drop the price of a can of soup from 30 cents to 10 cents, expanding distribution and lowering the barrier to entry for new customers.
Today, The Campbell Soup Company is a $15B company.
Campbell’s condensed tomato, cream of mushroom, and chicken noodle soups remain as some of the most popular shelf-stable foods in grocery stores all across the United States.
The secret?
Instead of COMPETING, Campbell's CREATED.
They didn’t push a new flavor (tomato soup already existed).
They didn’t spin up a marketing tagline (“Mmm Mmm Good” is hardly a breakthrough).
And they didn’t "beat out the competition" by running 2-cents-off promotions
The lesson:
The way it is now, is the way it is, because someone else replaced the way it was.
Here's how to design a category breakthrough of your own in today's Roaring 2020s 👇
categorypirates.substack.com/p/campbells-so…
Co-authored with my fellow pirates @lochhead and @EddieWouldGrow
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