Many consumers remember catchy marketing jingles from their childhood, like Goldfish’s “The Snack That Smiles Back.”
The snack cracker debuted the tagline in 1997. Goldfish knows it struck a chord with shoppers as consumers often still refer to it, said Chris Tutor, Vice President of Advertising and Design at The Campbell’s Company, which owns Goldfish among more than a dozen other CPG brands including Kettle, Prego and Rao’s.
Nearly 30 years later, Goldfish is recycling the tagline for its latest marketing campaign. Nostalgia wasn’t intentional, but it helps, Tutor said.
Goldfish is a key product within The Campbell’s Snack category. Sales are down year over year, but show encouraging signals, the company said in its fiscal Q3 2026 earnings report ended May 3.
“The key to improving those margins over the next couple of years is, No. 1, we got to grow Goldfish,” Chief Financial Officer Todd Cunfer told investors according to a Seeking Alpha Transcript. “We’ve stabilized the business, but it’s still kind of down 1%, 2%. We’ve got to get that to growth. That’s the biggest and most profitable piece of the Snacks portfolio.”
Part of growing the brand is this marketing campaign, which strategically launched with back-to-school shopping. Goldfish is targeting households with families, specifically with kids ages 6 to 12, Tutor said.
Tutor shares more about Goldfish’s re-introduced “The Snack That Smiles Back” campaign in the below Q&A:
Chief Marketer: Tell me a little bit more about this campaign.
Tutor: We’re excited to bring “The Snack That Smiles Back,” back. It’s a distinctive asset for the brand. It’s something that consumers are deeply connected to and they associate with the brand. It encapsulates what Goldfish is all about, which is a brand that makes everyone in the family smile.
Kids smile because Goldfish is playful and it’s fun and it’s also delicious. And parents smile because Goldfish is a snack they can feel good about giving to their whole family. It’s baked with 100% real cheese, no artificial flavors or colors.
We wanted to bring that tagline to life by showing the smiles that happen both inside a bag of Goldfish and outside. We created these handcrafted stop-motion worlds with these fun Goldfish characters that are full of personality, humor at the center of every story.
Chief Marketer: I feel like I remember this campaign with the same talking points like ‘Real cheese,’ ‘Baked, not fried.’ Is that the same verbiage? Is that intentional?
Tutor: “The Snack That Smiles Back,” it’s a distinctive asset for the brand. It has been part of the communications ecosystem for the brand for some time, but we often hear it played back from families as how they think about Goldfish. And the reasons why the brand has made families smile has been consistent for so many years. All of those things are still what resonate with families. And so, what a perfect way to celebrate those things than by giving the tagline a little bit more spotlight.
Chief Marketer: Was any of the intention trying to reignite some of that nostalgia or not necessarily?
Tutor: Nostalgia wasn’t a core driver of the idea, but it is certainly both a nostalgic and sort of modern play on how consumers talk about Goldfish.
Chief Marketer: How has the campaign gone since it launched at the beginning of August?
Tutor: It’s been going swimmingly, pardon the pun. Early days in terms of media, but the social reaction, the media reaction has been phenomenal.
Chief Marketer: Can you tell me what is ‘phenomenal?’ What would that be?
Tutor: We’re only a couple weeks in, so there’s only so much you can tell. We’ve got a lot of measurement in place to evaluate family reaction to this, but we look at things like most brands do in terms of engagement rates, how are people reacting on social? How long are they watching the content? And all of those metrics that we look at to signal engagement and enjoyment of the content are far ahead of benchmarks on the brand. With a couple weeks, all of the signals that we have access to are very positive.
Chief Marketer: I have to imagine that your brand awareness is pretty high. So, what is the goal for the campaign?
Tutor: It’s a brand equity campaign. It’s intended to deepen the emotional, the rational connection that we have with families by reminding them what has made Goldfish such a trusted and distinctive family snack for so long.
It’s a platform that’s built for storytelling and engagement. You’ve seen the first installments of this, but you’ll see how that takes shape over the coming months.
Chief Marketer: Any one of those channels that you think is really going to be an outperformer?
Tutor: The power of effective advertising is working in concert across all channels. Not speaking to any channel specifically, but what we typically see is when we activate across all channels, we have a greater impact across each individual channel as well. And so not one channel in particular that’s most important to the plan, but the fact that the plan is layered enables the total plan to be more impactful and then each individual channel to be more impactful as well.
Chief Marketer: How long did the campaign take to put together?
Tutor: It was a stop-motion production, so it was a little bit more laborious than a live action production. But from brief to start of production was relatively quick, a handful of months.
Chief Marketer: I know growing Goldfish is a priority for Campbell’s. As a marketer, how do you plan to do that?
Tutor: Everything that we’re doing in support of the brand, from our innovation strategy, to our comms, to our product, is oriented to make our consumer families smile and continue to be delighted with the brand. And so everything that we’re doing, this campaign being one of those things, is in service of that.
Chief Marketer: Is this all focused on just the classic Goldfish cracker?
Tutor: The work tends to halo to the full portfolio, but the product that is featured in the creative is our core cheddar cracker.
Chief Marketer: Is there anything else that you’re doing to appeal to parents that are looking for “Better For You” snacks?
Tutor: Everything that we do around our core product proposition, our innovation strategy, our comm strategy all is in support of what families are looking for and one of those things is Better For You. Some other announcements coming soon, but one recent announcement on that front is the gluten-free Goldfish, which launched a couple weeks ago now.
Chief Marketer: That’s big.
Tutor: Families are so excited for it. The reaction to that in social has been just incredible.
Chief Marketer: Any announcements around organic Goldfish?
Tutor: No comment.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
