When asked why he decided to paint and ultimately immortalise the humble red and white Campbell soup can, artist Andy Warhol replied: "I just paint things I always thought were beautiful - things you use every day and never think about."

Never thinking about soup cans or soup packets is not an option for Mr Peter Beamish, managing director of Campbell Soup Ireland. While recognising the iconic status of Campbell, he firmly believes that, while brands are important, the substance behind them is what hooks consumers.

Mr Beamish should know - he was the man who launched Jacob's Creek wine on the Irish market in 1991 and watched its sales explode over the next decade.

While Jacob's Creek is now one of the most powerful wine brands across Europe, Mr Beamish believes simple name recognition alone did not sell the product. "Pure marketing will get the horse to the water, but it will not get it to drink," he explains.

One of the tricks in the marketing of Jacob's Creek was to go heavy on advertising spending in off-peak periods of the year, for example in January.

"We advertised heavily in January even though the conventional wisdom in the drinks industry was you only do advertising in the run-up to Christmas. But we found we could let the brand sink in at a time when the airwaves were uncluttered," he recalls.

Getting through that "media clutter", he says, is also going to be a challenge for Campbell's Irish brands, but he believes the products themselves will ultimately do the trick.

Whether it is the superficial branding of a product or the inherent qualities behind the packaging that truly matters, Campbell soup in Ireland has never achieved the iconic status it has in the US.

Possibly reflecting this, Campbell Soup Ireland was, until recent years, a minnow in the Irish food sector, with a modest turnover of just €3 million. But the company has started to spread its commercial wings in Ireland and Mr Beamish is determined to ensure competitors Unilever and Dolmio start noticing.

With a background in the drinks industry (he is a former marketing manager of Irish Distillers), Mr Beamish believes the company can become much bigger and this year the firm expects to produce turnover of €50 million (profits for Ireland are not broken out).

The driver for this growth, Mr Beamish reckons, is last years acquisition of the Erin brand from Greencore for €27 million. "The brand was somewhat dormant under Greencore because Greencore was concentrating on other things and it wasn't really central to their business," he says.

While Campbell Soup Company is a Wall Street-listed company with a $6.5 billion (€5.8 billion) annual turnover, Mr Beamish says its ethos is not one of globalisation, but of localisation.

Unlike Unilever's Knorr brand, he says, Campbell has decided that, in the soup market, local is best. Widgets are widgets, he agrees, but people in different parts of the world like to buy their own type of widget and their own type of soup.

"Irish people tend to like their soup thicker and creamier, whereas soups in many parts of Europe are very much stock- based. We have also found that Irish people tend to have a sweet tooth. We are promoting Erasco in Germany, Erin in Ireland, Liebig in France and Batchelors in the UK. We do not attempt to take one brand and globalise it."

He says each brand has a national resonance and this determination not to succumb to Starbucks-like global uniformity is what will drive revenues.

The focus on the Irishness of Erin, he says, has prompted the company to link up with the GAA and Erin now sponsors the under-21 hurling championships.

There is even a soup conference scheduled to take place in Dublin on September 19th at which Campbell will be centrally involved. The issues to be discussed are mainly technical, says Mr Beamish, but health issues - like how much salt should be in soup and what is the industry's stance on GMOs - will also be raised.

Unlike other parts of the food industry, the soup market is not under pressure from health conscious consumers, he says. "Soup is inherently low calorie and low fat, so we are confident the market will come to see us as a healthy option. We do not fear the changing tastes of consumers in that sense."

With a staff of about 175 staff and a large plant in Thurles, Mr Beamish says the company has deep roots in Ireland, unlike many multinationals. He says the Thurles plant would find it hard to compete with low-cost locations in eastern Europe or Asia but it has other advantages.

"We do continuous runs and have all sorts of efficiencies.Change has been very much embraced by the staff there. So much so that we are now winning internal Campbell business and recently won a major contract called Ryco. I am hopeful we can get more of these projects."