Pepperidge Farm sells cookies with social connections

Pepperidge Farm, owned by the Campbell Soup Co., recently unveiled a campaign themed “Connecting through cookies”—the centerpiece of which is a Web site. Sally Horchow, the co-author with Roger Horchow of “The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections,” has been hired to serve as the spokeswoman for the campaign.

The Web site, artofthecookie.com is meant to help women—the brand’s target audience—improve their social lives through cookie-maker’s version of such popular networking sites as Facebook and MySpace. The site includes video from Ms. Horchow’s cross-country summer trip, during which she spoke with women about making and maintaining frienships.

The campaign, indicative of mainstream marketers’ efforts to take advantage of the popularity of online social networking, has a budget of $2 million to $3 million and including a survey of American women on the topic of friendship and print advertising.