A squad of cheerful red and white cans always stood at attention in my mother’s can cupboard, a phalanx of soldiers waiting to be enlisted in the critical mission of creating interesting and nutritious meals for our family. I’m not sure what my mother thought of them, but to me they were the Campbell’s Soup Army and one of their number would frequently appear on the kitchen counter to sacrifice themselves to the cause of our well-being as Mom prepared our meals.

Pork chops and onions could be cooked in Condensed Cream of Mushroom soup and posed deliciously on top of a mass of broad egg noodles. Two cans of Onion soup might simmer together for hours with a pot roast to create a melt-in-your-mouth explosion of flavour. Tomato soup might be brought to the boil and served humbly with a stack of gooey grilled cheese sandwiches. There was a can of Campbell’s Soup for every recipe, it seemed. As a child, it never occurred to me to wonder how my mother learned to make so many wonderful recipes from one set of food products.

But, as a newlywed some years later, I saw a magazine advertisement inviting me to order the Campbell’s Soup recipe collection. I had brought all of my mother’s recipes into my mental databank by then. But I ordered the little spiral-bound book anyway and became the second generation in my family to rely on Campbell’s soup for my cookery.

It wasn’t until I dove into the intriguing world of online content marketing that I came to fully appreciate the brilliance of the Campbell’s soup company. You can now sign up for their “Meal-Mail” and get recipes delivered right to your inbox, which is as clever an example of content marketing as ever I’ve seen. It is of huge service to busy families who need quick, easy ideas for meals, and a can of soup is an economical addition to the pantry—thus solving the twin challenges of time and budget in one fell swoop.

We’ve entered an era where businesses essentially need to become publishing companies in order to a) show up well online and b) demonstrate value to their target audiences. What could you be offering your potential clients regularly that would solve one of the problems they often face?

If you’d like to troubleshoot that question, feel free to get in touch with us at info@crossmancommunications.com.