Soup-er woman
By Richard Deitsch
Spelling out Campbell’s
success strategy
Denise Sullivan was just 13 when she and her
12-year-old sister Maggie forged a business plan
Sullivan’s roof in Elberon, New Jersey.
For the four Sullivan sisters, the family business was business, and along
with mom Connie’s cream of mushroom casseroles and her meatloaf,
dinners consisted of Dennis, a high-ranking executive for Bell and AT&T,
serving his daughters a healthy education on profit margins, test markets
and product launching.
But the business lessons didn’t stop
there. Every Saturday, the sisters had to
choose a household chore written on a
piece of paper inside a glass jar in the
kitchen—dubbed the “jobs jar”—and
as part of learning negotiating skills,
they were allowed to swap chores as
long as all the chores were completed.
The sisters were also charged with reading at least one book a week, and delivering an oral or written report on it.
Denise and Maggie presented
their father with a business plan that
assured value (they would save money
by getting their ears pierced at the
same time) and long-term growth
(they explained to their father that
earrings were not a fad). Permission
was granted, and Denise and Maggie
ended up getting their piercings at a
nearby jewelry store. (In a story that
makes for good cocktail-party con-
to get their ears pierced. Constructing business
plans was not an uncommon occurrence if
you lived under Dennis
versation, the person who pierced
their ears was Douglas Springsteen,
father of Bruce Springsteen.)
Strong foundation, strong amibition
Denise Sullivan Morrison’s childhood formed the groundwork for her
business success. After working in
executive positions at Nestlé SA,
Nabisco and Kraft Foods, last August
she became chief executive officer at
Campbell Soup Company, the global
manufacturer and marketer of food
and beverage products headquartered
in Camden, New Jersey. She is the
12th CEO of Campbell since the company’s founding in 1869, and one of 20
women running Fortune 500 companies in 2012.
Running a major company had
long been Morrison’s desire, and in a
Wall Street Journal story on the family
in 2007, Morrison, then the president
of Campbell USA, boldly proclaimed
that she wanted to be the CEO of a
Fortune 500 company.
“One of my friends called me up at
the time and said, ‘What did you do
that for? What if you don’t get it?’ But
that never crossed my mind,” Morrison
tells The Connection. “I believe that
when you have goals you declare
them, and I believe in setting long-term goals and working to achieve
them. I always had a long-term plan
for my career and I was willing to do
many different positions along the
way to develop the skills to not only
get the job, but to be great at the job.
So I put it out there.”
She has since been put in charge
of a company that is the world’s larg-
est producer of soup, with a
roughly 60 percent market share
of the $4 billion global soup
category. But Campbell is
much more than the iconic
red-and-white soup cans.
Its holdings include
Pepperidge Farm cookies
and crackers, V8 juices,
Prego spaghetti sauce, Pace
Mexican food sauces, and
Swanson’s chicken and
broth, as well as a host of
international products such as
Arnott’s biscuits and crackers.
Total sales in 2011 were $7.7 billion.
Morrison’s sister Maggie, now
Maggie Wilderotter and the chairwoman and chief executive officer of
Frontier Communications, says she
believes Morrison’s CEO declaration
was a subtle way for Doug Conant,
then the CEO of Campbell, to know
her objectives. But Conant, Morrison’s
longtime mentor, who had hired her
at Nabisco, already knew of her
desires. Now retired, he says she
always had CEO qualities.
“It takes a couple of qualities to
be CEO-ready,” Conant says. “I think
in terms of what [author and busi-
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