Marketing Casserole (2 Min Read) | Vol. 179

November 28, 2025

“Food should be fun. Food should be happy.” – Dorcas Reilly

Marketing Casserole

Happy Thanksgiving! If you ate Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, you probably tasted Dorcas Reilly’s legacy. Her story also happens to be a great recipe for timeless marketing. 

In 1955, Reilly worked as a supervisor at Campbell’s test kitchen. She was tasked with creating a recipe based on ingredients any home cook would have, including green beans and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. She worked for months experimenting before settling on six simple ingredients that could be combined in a casserole. Pop it in the oven for half an hour, and you’re done. Nine tries later, she’d created the perfect fuss-free side dish – the “Green Bean Bake.” A dish you probably know as “Campbell’s Green Bean Casserole.”

It was well received but didn’t go viral until Campbell’s started printing the recipe on Cream of Mushroom soup cans in the 1960’s. Today, more than half of Thanksgiving feasts feature a Green Bean Casserole. And her recipe drives more than 40% of all Cream of Mushroom soup sales. 

Let’s be honest. Nobody’s eating Cream of Mushroom soup with a spoon. But it transforms green beans into something your relatives actually want seconds of. In 2002, Reilly donated her recipe to the National Inventors Hall of Fame®.

The Green Bean Casserole story also illustrates the recipe for effective marketing. First, solve a real problem (holiday cooking stress) with simplicity (six ingredients, one dish). Then find the perfect distribution channel—in this case, millions of soup cans already in America’s pantries. Campbell’s didn’t buy ads. They turned their packaging into a recipe card that reached every customer at the perfect moment.

One question to ponder in your thinking time: What simple solution could you put right where your customers already are?

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan
Co-author of The ONE Thing, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent & author of The Rookie Real Estate Agent