Who: Campbell Company of Canada, with Zulu Alpha Kilo for strategy and creative, as well as production and post-production through Zulubot; Spark Foundry for media; and spPR Inc. for PR.
What: “Campbell’s pAIntings,” a campaign that uses AI to imagine what artists other than Andy Warhol could have done with a Campbell’s soup can as inspiration.
When & Where: The campaign launched March 12 and will run through the rest of the month. The media emphasis is on social and transit / out of home, along with a push for earned media.
Why: The brand has been famously associated with art since Warhol first unveiled his 32 paintings of Campbell’s soup cans nearly 62 years ago. This campaign leans into the connections to yesterday evoked by both the paintings and the soup itself, but with a modern twist to revisit the connection to creativity while also reminding consumers the brand is not stuck in the past.
“The Campbell’s brand is associated with positive nostalgic feelings, which is powerful, but we also wanted to create associations with being a brand of the present and into the future,” said Nadia Giannantonio, senior manager, marketing communications at Campbell Company of Canada in an email.
“Our goal was to renew the iconic status of the can in a way, leveraging today’s trends to help us connect with a younger audience, and still be inclusive to our current buyer.”
Specifically, the trend Campbell and ZAK leveraged is AI.
How: The agency asked used AI to produce paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans, much as Warhol did, but in different styles of famous artists, without actually naming the artists. There’s a Picasso-esque face behind one can, a can in a surreal landscape surrounded by dripping Dali-style objects, and an impressionistic can placed in front of a Van Gogh-like sun.
Each features the headline: “One iconic can. Many iconic styles.”
The dozen reimagined artworks are featured in social posts and in the out-of-home posters. Brian Murray, chief creative officer at Zulu Alpha Kilo, said that what made the project exciting was not knowing what they were going to get, as is often still the case with AI. To keep the “experiment pure,” they opted not to retouch the art output in anyway, including leaving in typos.
“AI has been reshaping how we think about and execute art,” said Murray. “It created a natural connectivity to re-associate our can with creativity—in a way that is both timely and inspiring.”
And we quote: “Campbell’s soup is a brand grounded in a great deal of tradition, but it’s equally important to evolve and engage with modern trends to continue to stay relevant today and for years to come.”—Mackenzie Davison, VP of marketing, Campbell Company of Canada
