Campbell strategy serves up big and healthy breakfasts.

Campbell Strategy Serves Up Big and Healthy Breakfasts

Campbell Soup Co. hopes to boost frozen breakfast sales with the introduction of Big Start and Great Starts Healthy. The former is a four-variety "big breakfast" line that resembles Denny's restaurants' Grand Slam Breakfast menu, according to a report in Advertising Age. The latter is a repositioning of the failed Harvest Grain range.

Herb Baum, president of Campbell North America, was quoted as saying that the Harvest Grain name did not impress consumers as being a "healthy" product, and thus it "died a horrible death." The re-birth is being staged to accentuate healthy attributes much more than before.

The breakfast product campaign should benefit from a hefty 30% increase in overall advertising spending by Campbell in fiscal year 1992. The budget is thought to be about $250 million. In addition, overall marketing spending will rise 5%.

After a program of corporate cost cutting which included plant closures, spinoffs, personnel cuts and product discontinuations, it appears that the Camden, N.J.-based diversified food concern is ready to start slugging in earnest again. And frozens will be an important part of the lineup. "You'll see a lot of new products toward the back half of the year," said Baum.

This is regarded as welcome news on Wall Street, where analysts have suggested that CEO David Johnson has been too quick to kill new products. Among those to go was Souper Combos, a microwaveable soup-and-sandwich offering.

LeMenu, after suffering a retail sales slump of 20% last year, was renamed LeMenu Healthy. Baum explained that Campbell is "going back to the drawing board" with the range. Such is not required with highly bankable Swanson dinners, which racked up 15% greater volume.

Meanwhile, the company's third quarter earnings were $76.4 million. That was good enough for a per share dividend of 60 cents, compared with 42 cents a year earlier. The sales picture was less rosy, however, as volume slipped to $1.49 billion from $1.52 billion. On a positive note, sales were up 3% when one excludes divested and discontinued businesses from the tally.

Looking at results for the past nine months, net profits of $316.8 million reflected a whopping 31% rise over a year ago. That performance was second only to Kellogg Co. in the food industry. Sales during the same period, however, advanced just 1.9% to $4.86 billion.

Outside of the USA, a policy of rationalization over the past few years seems to be paying off. A number of financially draining European units have been sold, leaving a leaner organization intact. The result thus far for Campbell International has been a near doubling of operating earnings to $30.2 million on sales of almost $1 billion.

PHOTO : Great Starts Big Start Breakfast is new under the Swanson label. Packed by Campbell Soup Co., Camden, N.J., the upsize version of a successful smaller pack features French Toast with Scrambled Eggs & Sausages at $2.49 per 8 3/4-ounce (248 grams) box.