• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, July 12, 2011

Campbell Soup has an analyst's meeting this morning -- the first for CEO-elect Denise Morrison, who takes over for Doug Conant at the end of the month. In a walk-up to the presentations, the Wall Street Journal's Paul Ziobro says that the Street is anticipating a "restaging" event and a company press release promises that its top executives have "looked at everything with fresh eyes and charted a new direction for the company."

The problems are numerous but can be reduced to the reality that less has not yielded more. Among the diminishing developments that have impacted the 140-year-old brand: Fewer ads. Fewer new products. Reduced sodium. Steep discounts/lower prices/slimmer margins.

"Campbell already has offered glimpses of changes, promising to end deleterious promotions, focus on brand-building advertising that entices consumers to buy soup and the launch of premium 'Slow Kettle' soups later this summer that will try to appeal to a younger generation," Ziobro writes.

In an Ad Age piece last month, Al Ries wondered if "we" hadn't killed brand advertising, what with all the brand extensions that not only offer "new and improved" versions but also keep the original products on the shelves, where they offer the consumer more choice (at least of the same brand).

Take Campbell's Tomato Soup, for example. A new version with "25% less sodium than our regular product" sits next to the regular product on shelves. What Campbell's exactly means by the claim is a source of confusion, but consumers vaguely interpret it as implying that "the 25%-less-sodium product doesn't taste as good as the regular product and the regular product has too much sodium, otherwise why introduce a 25%-less-sodium product?"

So why buy either? As Stan Laurel would say, "this is a fine mess you've gotten us into, Ollie."

And as Diane Brady and Matthew Boyle reported in Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently, new CEO Morrison many have been born for the job but she's going to have a tough time getting the company out of the jam it finds itself in.

Morrison grew up in Campbell's home state of New Jersey, the eldest daughter of the CFO of Cincinnati Bell, Dennis Sullivan. "Dinner table discussions for the four Sullivan girls, recalls Morrison, were more likely to revolve around the discipline of test marketing than school gossip," Brady and Boyle write. A protégé of Conant since they were both at Nabisco, she has also worked at Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, and Nestlé.

Her push for producing better-for-you foods has not been without controversy -- reminiscent of some of the criticism of PepsiCo's CEO Indra Nooyi.

"As president of Campbell USA, Morrison oversaw what she likes to call a sodium reduction 'journey' to cut salt across a wide swath of Campbell's regular soups," write Brady and Boyle. "John Stephenson of Toronto's First Asset Investment Management calls the push a 'folly' and compares it to Coca-Cola's launch of New Coke in the 1980s."

Quoth Stephenson: "You cannot piss off your core customers. And those customers said, "This is crap! We like the salty soup!'"

Morrison also takes some heat for launching an ill-fated advertising war with Progresso and other marketing miscues, but the board and Conant evidently never lost faith in her abilities.

Look for Morrison to talk about "more consumer advertising and brand-building, ramped-up efforts in emerging markets, and new recipes aimed at Millennials instead of the Baby Boomers who have slurped chicken noodle for decades," Brady and Boyle tell us. And she's not backing down on her sodium-reduction program. "She argues that her controversial moves to cut sodium, with more than 200 'heart healthy' products in the portfolio, allow her to focus on creating new 'taste adventures,'" they write.

Will Potassium-Fortified Chicken Noodle Soup be among them?

Jennifer Corbett Dooren reports in the Wall Street Journal this morning that a study in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine led by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that potassium -- which is found in fruits and veggies such as potatoes, spinach and bananas -- can somewhat offset the damaging effects of high sodium intake. How much you wanna bet that potassium-enhanced products will soon be coming to cans and jars and aseptic packaging near you?

A webcast of the investor presentations investor.campbellsoupcompany.com began at 9 a.m. EDT today and is expected to run until about 12:30 p.m.