Taking Your Brand Direct to Customers Can Be a Free Lunch

With the transformation in retail and consumer products, with power shifting to consumers, with influence fragmenting, and retailers concerned about their own survival and brands, it is imperative for Consumer brands to own their relationship with consumers via direct engagement.

This requires active social media listening and responding, it means more event and occasion based marketing, more new media not more TV or Print. It means having a voice and a presence at the table, welcome but not intrusive.

Campbell Soup seems to get this with their launch of The Cantina At Campbells in Toronto. A pop up restaurant to bring the brand directly to shoppers and to engage and listen to them.

Not brain surgery but definitely smart, timely, relevant, localized, fun, and hot soup on a cold street.

According to the press release: “The Cantina by Campbell’s will offer complimentary walk-in lunch and dinnertime soup tasting options, showcasing the variety in the Campbell’s soup portfolio and inspiring recipes using Campbell’s® broths that Canadians can make in their kitchens. The newly launched Campbell’s Soup Kits provide a head start to homemade soup – try it at The Cantina by Campbell’s and guests will be able to take away free samples to make it their own at home.”

The menu is made up of four soups each day curated by  Chef Matt Dean Pettit, “who will add his technique and flare to create a variety of savoury interpretations using Campbell’s® soup. Cantina visitors can enhance this complimentary experience by using fresh garnishes to personalize their soup and make it their own.”

“I created these delicious recipes in such a way that they can be recreated at home,” says Chef Matt Dean Pettit, Founder and Chef at Toronto’s popular Rock Lobster restaurants. “We have so many diverse cultures and flavours available to us here in Toronto. Soup is one of those universal foods that unites people from around the globe and I’m looking forward to sharing my take on it.”