Social Rocket
Campbell’s is clearly shifting its media model towards digital: around 85 % of the working media budget is set to flow into social media, influencer marketing, e-commerce and newer AI-powered platforms in fiscal year 2027. CEO Mick Beekhuizen said so in connection with the latest annual figures.
For marketers, the scale is the key point. At the same time, the number needs to be placed in context: it describes working media, meaning the money spent on actually placing and distributing advertising. Production costs, agency fees, research or other marketing spend may sit outside this metric.
Social, creators and commerce are moving closer together
Campbell’s justifies the move by saying that the way consumers discover brands and interact with them is changing. Influencer-led programmes are meant to support, among other things, new products and brand platforms.
The group also wants to distribute its marketing funds less evenly across its portfolio. Instead, a larger share is to go to the biggest growth opportunities. Specifically named are Rao’s, Goldfish, Pepperidge Farm and Campbell’s.
This fits a broader trend in which creator, platform and commerce channels are no longer planned in isolation. Creator marketing is facing growing pressure on pricing and measurability, while platforms such as TikTok are increasingly automating campaign work with AI.
The 85 % is not a complete departure from traditional advertising
The figure is easy to over-interpret. Campbell’s is not saying that 85 % of the entire marketing budget goes to social media, or that traditional media is effectively disappearing.
What is meant is a combined group of social, influencer, e-commerce and AI-enabled platforms within the working media budget. The company has not disclosed how the 85 % is split across individual channels.
That is precisely why the move is interesting: it is not a single channel that wins, but a digital discovery-to-commerce system in which social content, creator recommendations, retail and e-commerce spaces, and algorithmic media systems work more closely together. A similar pattern can be seen with digital shoppers who draw on social, classic search and GenAI in parallel when making purchase decisions.
The strategic shift comes under economic pressure
In the fourth quarter 2026, Campbell’s reported a 8 % decline in net sales to 2,1 billion US dollars. For the full year, net sales fell by 5 %. The snacks business is under particular pressure; there, organic sales fell by 6 % in the fourth quarter.
At the same time, a cost-saving programme targets 500 million US dollars by 2030. Campbell’s plans, among other things, to cut jobs and close two snack plants. The new marketing approach is therefore not just a channel experiment, but part of a larger realignment in which investment is concentrated more on brands and activities with expected higher growth.
What social media teams can take away
For other brands, it is less the exact 85 per cent figure that is transferable than the structure behind it. Campbell’s treats social, creators, commerce and AI not as four separate specialist disciplines, but increasingly as one connected media layer.
This raises the pressure on social teams to deliver more than reach. Content increasingly has to support discovery, creator amplification, product interest and measurable commerce effects at the same time.
The interesting question for 2027 is therefore not whether traditional media will disappear. More relevant is how much brand budget will in future shift from broadly distributed awareness into digitally linked systems that bring attention and purchase closer together.