Content area
Full Text
"Did you know that the best soup in the country is Heinz Cream of Tomato?" asks New Covent Garden Soup Company's head of marketing Nigel Parrott. It's a strange statement from the man in charge of the soup company that claims 'imagination tastes better'. It was also a startling discovery for the owners of the fresh soup company, who had been coasting along on moderate growth for years, blissfully unaware of consumer tastes.
"When [founder] Andrew Palmer made the first Covent Garden Soup in 1987, he used his own intuition - there was no market research," Parrott explains. As with many entrepreneurial stories, Palmer, who spotted a gap in the market for fresh soups, began with an idea, some ingredients and some thick shoe leather. He schlepped his product first round London delis, then into niche foodhalls at Harrods and Selfridges and eventually into the chiller cabinets in Sainsbury's.
"It grew organically and we used internal expertise to taste test new soups and new marketing ideas to refresh the brand and drive sales. We came up with the idea to change a soup line every four weeks - Soup of the Month. We based marketing ideas on events - Valentine's Day,...