CEO nears 10-year goal to clean up a soupy mess

Conant's determined to take Campbell from 'bad' to best

USA Today, January 26, 2009 — Sip. Slurp.

Repeat.

That sums up the business plan at Campbell Soup before Douglas Conant took over as CEO eight years ago this month. It was the same old company doing much of the same old stuff it had been doing since it was founded in 1869. It had no clear direction. No red-hot brands. Its innovation cupboard was bare.

Pretty thin for a company whose basic product — soup — is held in such high esteem that the typical American home has six cans of Campbell's in the pantry.

Conant went to work. His self-described mission: to take a "bad" company and lift its performance to "extraordinary" by the end of one decade — that's by 2011.