6 thoughts on the food company’s handling of an executive’s recorded tirade.
Tom Corfman is a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group.
Campbell’s traditionally prepares for Thanksgiving by touting side dishes made with cream of mushroom and cheddar cheese soups, but this year an executive’s insults of its products, customers and employees set the kitchen on fire.
We’ll take a close look at how the company handled the media storm, which was ignited by a lawsuit filed Nov. 20, 2025, by a former employee who recorded a vice president’s tirade and alleged he was fired for reporting it to his supervisor.
While the company focused on defending its food, it mostly ignored how the recording disparaged its customers and insulted its employees of Indian ancestry, Bloomberg columnist Beth Kowitt wrote.
“This would be the right moment for Campbell’s to embrace lower-income customers by explicitly saying that it’s proud it can provide a product to people who are struggling,” she wrote.
The lawsuit
Campbell’s is well known for its soups, especially chicken noodle, and also makes snacks, such as Goldfish crackers and Milano cookies, and sauces, such Rao’s Homemade. Founded in 1869, the Camden, N.J.-based company recorded net sales of $10.3 billion for its 2025 fiscal year.
Martin Bally, a VP and the Campbell’s chief information security officer, said the company sells “s–t for f**king poor people” and uses “bioengineered meat” during a meeting with Martin Garza, a cyber security analyst who secretly made the recording.
“I don’t wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3-D printer,” the executive said. He also called Indian coworkers “idiots,” among many other comments during the recording, which lasts more than an hour.
The recording was quoted in a complaint filed in a Michigan state court by Garza, who worked for Campbell’s remotely. Garza alleges he was fired about three weeks after reporting Bally’s statements to his manager.
A reporter at television station WDIV in Detroit got the scoop, interviewed Garza and obtained the recording.
Hard-pressed consumers and tariffs are likely a bigger concern for Campbell’s than this controversy. The stock has been on a long, slow decline and is trading at around its lowest level in five years. We have six thoughts as we watch the story unfold.
1. Driving the coverage
A quick, firm grasp of what’s fueling a story is key in a crisis. Bally’s claims fit with increased media attention on food processing. Moreover, the recording makes this story very attractive for broadcast news and social media. The existence of a video or audio recording should be a warning that a story has the potential to take off.
In addition, WDIV’s news team helped spread the story by posting 14 reports to its news site, Click on Detroit, between Nov. 20, the day the lawsuit was filed, and Nov. 25, when it was reported that Bally had been fired. While some stories were more elaborate than others, each story gave the station an opportunity to post on social media.
2. Tell ’em to hold on
In response to the WDIV’s first story, Campbells issued what’s called a holding statement.
“If accurate, the comments in the recording are unacceptable,” the company said in WDIV’s first story, published on the same day the complaint was filed. “They do not reflect our values and the culture of our company. We are actively investigating this matter.”
The statement contains the bare minimum of the elements of a holding statement: Acknowledge the controversy, without admitting that the allegations are true. Stress the company’s values. Vow to take action.
Even at this initial stage, one might like to see a more elaborate statement, like the one the company made later.
More thorough holding statements shouldn’t come off the cuff. They should be the result of “thoughtful planning — including drafting, debating and vetting messages before the crisis,” as my colleague Nick Lanyi has written.
3. Follow up quickly
While the story was building up momentum, Campbell’s waited four days before issuing a full response announcing that Bally had been put on leave.
“We are proud of the food we make, the people who make it, and the high-quality ingredients we use,” the company said. “The comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate — they are patently absurd. We use 100% real chicken in our soups. The chicken meat comes from long-trusted, USDA-approved U.S. suppliers and meets our highquality standards. All of our soups are made with No Antibiotics Ever chicken meat. Any claims to the contrary are completely false.”
It’s a pretty good statement but took too long to issue.
4. Don’t be irritated
Campbell’s communication team revealed its irritation on three occasions. The first was on Nov. 24, when in some statements the company began quibbling about Bally’s knowledge.
For example, a spokesperson told Newsweek, “Keep in mind, the alleged comments are made by an IT person, who has nothing to do with how we make our food.”
Would the claims have been more credible if they had made by the vice-president of soups?
The next day, a Campbell’s spokesperson told WDIV/Click on Detroit that Garza was “terminated for good reason.” Maybe, but that’s irrelevant to what Bally said.
Campbell’s also complained it was blindsided by the lawsuit.
“The company learned of the litigation and first heard segments of the audio on November 20, 2025, the company said in a statement. “Neither Mr. Garza nor his lawyer ever notified us of the existence of an audio recording.”
Here’s the problem: No one cares about Campbell’s gripes.
5. Make a complete response
Campbell’s stepped up its response on Nov. 25, when it posted a statement about the case to its website which was updated the following day. The company confirmed that the voice on the recording was Bally, by now a former employee.
The company also posted “Campbell’s Soups: The Facts About Our Chicken.” It’s a thorough presentation.
“We do not use 3D-printed chicken,” the company said in one of the more memorable denials in public relations history.
It wasn’t until Nov. 27, that CEO Mick Beekhuizen joined the fray with a 84-second video. The recording “included wrong and offensive comments about our food, our consumers and our people,” he said. “It doesn’t represent Campbell’s view or values or mine. We do not tolerate this conduct. I want to apologize for any hurt these comments have caused.”
6. Activate social media
About half of all adults say they at least sometimes get news from social media, according to a Pew Research Center report released in September. Even as social media helped drive the news media’s interest in the story, Campbell’s was mostly quiet.
The company posted one identical message on Nov. 26 on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. (The most recent post on social media site X was in June 2023.)
“In the social media age, silence is deafening,” Lanyi has written. “It sends all the wrong signals and allows your critics to project their own interpretations.”
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