The Campbell Soup Story
A Decade of Success at Campbell
In the late 1990’s Campbell Soup Company was struggling to meet stakeholder expectations. Assuming leadership in January, 2001 Doug Conant led the company to deliver superior financial performance, world-class employee engagement, and became a recognized leader in corporate social responsibility.
From 2001 to 2011, Doug Conant served as CEO and President of the Campbell Soup Company. He was the 11th leader in this iconic company’s 141-year history – faced with reversing a steep decline in market value and re-energizing a low-engagement culture. He dramatically transformed the global leadership team, reconfigured the portfolio, cut costs, revolutionized the culture, and made integral strategic investments. These efforts resulted in cumulative shareholder returns in the top tier of the global food industry.
Doug’s mission to achieve superior employee engagement was the crucial contributor to the company’s exemplary performance — and to his development of a uniquely effective leadership model that advanced stakeholder value (and which would evolve to become the ConantLeadership Flywheel). Under his stewardship, employee engagement at Campbell Soup notably went from being among the worst in the Fortune 500 to being consistently among the best.
Campbell has been widely recognized for its progress in a variety of areas during Doug’s tenure: its many honors range from receiving the Gallup organization’s “Great Workplace Award” for four consecutive years to receiving the 2010 “Catalyst Award” for helping women to meaningfully advance their careers. A lifelong advocate for ethical practices and corporate responsibility, Doug remains actively involved with many non-profit organizations and advocacy programs today. Learn more about his and ConantLeadership’s dedication to public advocacy here.