Campbell reaches into pouch to heat up soup sales

A customer holds a can of cream of celery Campbell's Soup at a grocery store in Phoenix, Arizona, February 22, 2010.

BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - Campbell Soup Co (CPB.N) introduced a range of new products including soups with exotic flavors sold in pouches on Wednesday, as its new CEO aims to deliver on her mandate to turn around the company's ailing North American soup business.

After years of weak soup sales, Denise Morrison, who took the top job at Campbell last summer, has pledged to stabilize and then grow its North American soup business by introducing new products and reinvigorating its marketing and advertising.

The company on Wednesday introduced a new line called "Campbell's Go!" with soups sold in pouches in flavors like coconut curry and Moroccan chicken. Campbell plans to extend that line to other simple meals that are meant to appeal to younger shoppers with graphics that are edgier than Campbell's traditional products.

The company also introduced a line of "skillet sauces" that consumers can use to cook meat with, and a line of "gourmet bisques" sold in cartons, with flavors like Thai tomato coconut and sweet potato tomatillo.

All together, Morrison said the company plans to launch over 50 new items in fiscal 2013.

JP Morgan analyst Ken Goldman said he was impressed by the breadth of the new offerings, but said only time will tell how successful they are for Campbell's.

"Even if all of these products work, will their benefits be enough to offset steep declines in canned soup sales?" Goldman said in a research note. "This is a tall order given canned soup's recent struggles."

Morrison did not spend a lot of time discussing plans to revive sales of its traditional canned soups, but in an interview following her presentation at the annual Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in Boca Raton, Morrison said there would be new products there as well.

"We'll unfold more of this as the year goes on, but obviously we're going to bring news to the base can business," as well, Morrison said, noting that in the meantime, the company is also changing the label on its Chunky soups and altering its Select Harvest soups to highlight the fact that they're made with more natural ingredients.

This is not the first time Morrison has sought to update Campbell's products. Last summer, she moved to add more salt and flavor to more than two dozen soups after a health-inspired low-sodium push failed to lift sales.

Campbell, and its chief rival Progresso, owned by General Mills Inc (GIS.N), had often relied on steep discounts to sell canned soup, a practice that spurs sales but hurts profits.

Morrison has switched gears, spending on advertising to spur sales, rather than price-driven promotions.

"We will not go back to heavy discounting. We're not going to do that. But we do believe that between the levers of price, promotion, brand-building and news to the base with innovation, we will be able to be fully competitive in this business," Morrison said.

(Reporting by Martinne Geller; Editing by Gary Hill, Bernard Orr)