Soup is emotional. Heart-warming, satisfying, rich, familiar, adventurous, nostalgic – there’s a flavour and brand for every occasion. The more heightened the emotional experience the more likely we are to get Social about it and soup is right up there with the most talked about food and drink styles. There are more than 1.7 million Instagram posts hashtagged #soup and 655K twitter mentions of soup in the last 30 days alone.
So are the major soup brands taking advantage of this substantial opportunity for engagement and brand kinship development? We examined the Social Media performance two soup giants – Campbell’s and Baxters….. and we’ll be honest, the results weren’t “souper” (ouch)….
Despite 100’s of consumers paying homage to the Campbells brand by naming their Instagram profiles in its honour, the iconic soup most famous for Chicken Noodle and Andy Warhol doesn’t have a proactive presence. There are more than 11800 Instagram user posts under the hashtag #campbellssoup or #campbellsoup but still nothing from the global soup giant.
Twitter is clearly Campbell’s Social Media weapon of choice, with over 38000 Followers. But its output is managed from its home in New Jersey and its last eleven tweets were all about #Walmart when we looked. Delving deeper its content is drawn almost exclusively from US sources so little to satisfy UK fans of the condensed soup king.
Facebook on the other hand is where Campbell’s tries to be all things to all people. There are Pages for Campbell’s Kitchen, Campbell’s Condensed Soup and Campbell’s UK. But the UK Page has posted just 6 times this year and there were 4 fans “talking about this” when we checked so clearly a problem with content and engagement here.
So what of Pinterest and its predominantly female demographic that loves pinning foody images. Is Campbell’s focusing its efforts here, winning hearts and minds in the channel of choice for many of its consumers? Well it’s there, and has 1389 Followers despite having pinned only 149 times – but surely a channel with more than 5 million users and 100%+ annual growth deserves more?
So lots of gaps in Campbell’s Social Media execution…is Baxter’s exploiting the opportunity? We had to check and check again on this one. No Twitter. No Facebook (there’s a link to a Page from the website but its broken). No Instagram and no Pinterest. Nothing. Plenty of love, especially on Twitter, but its unrequited love.
Come on Audrey Baxter. Time to embrace the brave new world and engage with your consumer. The door’s open…… for now.