Prego (from the Italian for "You're welcome!") is a trade mark brand name pasta sauce of Campbell Soup Company. It was introduced internationally in 1981 and is based on a family recipe of one of the chefs. Prego eventually became the number one selling dry grocery product of the decade.
Varieties
Prego offers many different varieties. The traditional pasta sauce is available in nineteen different flavors including marinara, mini meatball, zesty mushroom, and roasted garlic Parmesan. In Prego's Organic line, two flavors (Organic Mushroom and Organic Tomato and Basil) are made with all
organic ingredients. A third line in the Prego Pasta Sauce family is called Hearty Meat sauce. It comes in Meatball Parmesan, Authentic Italian Sausage, and Three Meat Supreme flavours. Yet another line is called Chunky Garden Pasta Sauce which consists of flavors such as Garden Combination, Mushroom Supreme, Mushrooms & Green Pepper, and Tomato, Onion & Garlic. In Asia, specific regional flavors are available, including
Tom Yam in
Thailand and
Malaysia.
Product design
The flavors of the original sauces were created with the help of
Howard Moskowitz, a practitioner in the field of
psychophysics. The process involved the development of systematic variations of specific ingredients in the formula which then were tried by voluntary subjects. After placing numeric values to each tester's perception on each of the variants, a mathematical model was created to develop the final recipe, which maximized the perceived taste while minimizing the cost of the ingredients needed to produce it. This idea of offering multiple formulas for different subjects is called
horizontal segmentation. Prego's success following its roll out of multiple flavors lead to a revolution in the food industry. The result of which was more food producers offering more styles of product to reach consumers.
Marketing
The brand was involved in a commercial controversy when it featured
Clara Peller in one of its ads. The elderly woman was shown holding a gigantic prop jar of one of the meaty varieties of Prego, saying, "I finally found it!" It was a reference to her earlier work in ads for
Wendy's Restaurants and the
catch phrase, "
Where's the Beef?" Wendy's had not authorized her appearance in the Prego commercial and stopped using Peller in its campaigns.
References
External links
Prego official website
Category:Campbell's brands