What Campbell's Can Teach Us About Crisis Response

I've accidentally replied-all to the entire company before. We've all had those moments. But secretly recording your VP calling your soup "garbage for poor people" while he rants about coming to work high? That's a different category of workplace disaster entirely.

In November 2025, Campbell's Soup found itself dealing with exactly that scenario when former cybersecurity analyst Robert Garza filed a lawsuit that included an hour-long recording of Martin Bally, the company's Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer. The recording, made during a November 2024 meeting, featured Bally allegedly claiming Campbell's chicken came "from a 3D printer" and describing the products as food for people he wouldn't serve at his own table.

The public response was swift and brutal. Social media exploded with angry consumers threatening boycotts. Florida's Attorney General launched an investigation. And Campbell's had to defend the quality of products they'd been making for 155 years against claims from their own leadership.

But here's where this story gets interesting from a PR perspective. What happened between the time Garza reported this internally in January 2025 and when the lawsuit became public in November tells us everything about why crisis management isn't just about responding to public disasters.

THE TIMELINE THAT TELLS TWO STORIES

Garza started working for Campbell's in September 2024. Two months later, he sat down with Bally for what was supposed to be a salary discussion. Instead, according to court documents, he got an extended rant that included racist comments about Indian coworkers and disparaging remarks about Campbell's customers.

Garza kept the recording to himself initially. Then, on January 10, 2025, he reported Bally's behavior to his direct supervisor, J.D. Aupperle. Twenty days later, on January 30, Garza was fired. Campbell's maintains the termination was "for good reason" and notes Garza was only with the company for less than five months.

Fast forward to November 20, 2025. Garza files his lawsuit alleging retaliation and a racially hostile work environment. The recording goes public. Within days, Campbell's terminates Bally and issues strong public statements defending their food quality and denouncing the comments as "vulgar, offensive and false."

The public response was textbook crisis management. Organizations that respond quickly to crises with transparency and clear messaging tend to fare significantly better than those who delay or obfuscate. Campbell's checked those boxes once the situation became public.

But that January-to-November gap? That's where the narrative gets complicated.

WHAT ACTUALLY MATTERS IN A CRISIS

Campbell's response once the recording went viral was solid. They didn't hedge. They confirmed Bally's identity, terminated him within days, and addressed the false claims about ingredients with specific, verifiable facts. They posted a dedicated page titled "Campbell Soups: The Facts About Our Chicken" that explicitly stated their chicken comes from USDA-approved suppliers and emphasized their "No Antibiotics Ever" policy.

They even clarified they don't use "3D-printed chicken, lab-grown chicken, or any form of artificial or bioengineered meat" in their soups. That kind of direct, fact-based communication is exactly what you want during a crisis.

But the question that lingers is why it took a public lawsuit for these actions to happen. When an employee reports a senior executive making racist comments and disparaging company products, what's the protocol? Garza claims he was terminated in retaliation. Campbell's says his termination was unrelated. The optics, regardless of the truth, aren't great.

THE REAL CRISIS ISN'T ALWAYS THE ONE MAKING HEADLINES

Here's what keeps me up at night about this story. Bally worked in IT. He had zero connection to how Campbell's makes their soup. But his comments reveal something more concerning than misinformation about ingredients. They suggest a culture where a senior leader felt comfortable making those statements at all.

When your VP is badmouthing your products, mocking your customers, and making racist comments about colleagues, you don't just have a PR problem. You have a leadership problem. You have a culture problem. You have a "what else is happening in your organization that you don't know about" problem.

The most damaging crises often aren't the ones that go viral. They're the ones that fester internally until someone decides they've had enough and brings receipts.

WHY INTERNAL CRISIS RESPONSE MATTERS JUST AS MUCH AS EXTERNAL

Most companies focus their crisis management planning on external threats. What happens if we get hacked? What if a product recall happens? What if someone posts a viral complaint?

Those are important questions. But Campbell's situation highlights an equally critical question: What happens when the threat comes from inside? When your own leadership becomes the story?

Campbell's had to defend their food quality against claims made by someone who was supposed to represent the company. That's exponentially harder than defending against an outside critic because it raises the question of credibility. If your own VP says this, consumers wonder, maybe there's something to it.

The answer isn't just damage control after the fact. Organizations need systems for addressing issues when employees report them internally, long before they become lawsuits or headlines.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Campbell's will likely survive this. They're a 155-year-old company with strong brand recognition and loyal customers. Their quick public response helped contain the immediate damage. Their factual approach to correcting misinformation about ingredients was exactly right.

But the lawsuit is ongoing. Consumer trust has been shaken. And they're dealing with questions about their internal culture that can't be answered with a press release about chicken sourcing.

The real test isn't whether they weather this particular storm. Every company has crises. The real test is whether they use this as a catalyst to examine how they handle internal complaints, protect whistleblowers, and ensure that their stated values actually match their operational reality.

Because the next crisis won't come with a convenient year-long warning period between the incident and the public revelation. When everyone has a recording device in their pocket and disgruntled employees have platforms to share their stories, there's no such thing as a private executive rant anymore.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR BRAND

If you're managing communications for any organization, Campbell's situation offers a clear lesson. Your crisis management plan can't just address what you'll say when things go wrong publicly. It needs to address how you'll handle things when they go wrong internally.

That means having clear protocols for investigating complaints. Protecting employees who report concerns. Ensuring that your response time to internal issues is as fast as your response time to external ones. Making sure that the timeline of who gets fired and when doesn't create a narrative where it looks like you're punishing the messenger.

Because in the end, the best crisis communication strategy is building an organizational culture where the crisis doesn't happen in the first place. Where senior leaders don't make racist comments or disparage the products that pay their salaries. Where employees who report concerns are protected rather than terminated.

Campbell's moved fast once this became public. They said the right things. They took decisive action. But the questions about what happened in those months before anyone outside the company knew about the recording? Those are harder to answer.

And those are exactly the questions your stakeholders will ask when your turn comes.

If your organization needs help building crisis communication protocols that address both external threats and internal vulnerabilities, contact us. Because the goal isn't just managing the crisis when it hits the news. The goal is creating systems that prevent it from getting there in the first place.