Episodes

  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 23, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 23, 2026
    Jun 23 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 23, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • AB InBev's CMO Marcel Marcondes has used Cannes Lions to publicly map out a decade-long marketing transformation — and the methodology behind it is directly replicable for any FMCG portfolio brand. • New research reveals a structural tension at the top of FMCG marketing organisations: CMOs are optimising for internal power rather than the long-term brand building their companies actually need. • Ocean Spray's decision to recruit its new CEO directly from Nestlé signals that the cranberry co-operative is betting on Big FMCG discipline — brand management rigour, portfolio thinking, and global scale — to arrest its decline in a crowded functional beverage market. Fun fact: Supermarkets typically make almost no profit on groceries themselves — the real money comes from charging brands 'slotting fees' just to place products on shelves, a practice that costs the average mid-sized CPG brand between $1 million and $3 million annually before a single unit is sold. This means a new product can be commercially dead before consumers ever see it, purely based on a brand's ability to pay for the shelf space itself. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins
  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 22, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 22, 2026
    Jun 22 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 22, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • A new multi-retailer data alliance is about to give FMCG brand managers unprecedented cross-retailer audience targeting — and a glimpse of what retail media looks like when it scales beyond individual grocery silos. • Co-op's new summer brand platform is a masterclass in how a retailer — not an FMCG supplier — is now doing the category-level consumer recruitment work that brands used to own. • WhistlePig's decision to offload its own warehousing signals a broader strategic shift among premium spirits challengers — from asset-heavy craft authenticity to leaner, brand-first business models. Fun fact: Walmart's private label brand Great Value generates an estimated $27 billion in annual sales, making it larger than most standalone CPG companies — yet Walmart spends virtually nothing on traditional advertising for it, relying entirely on shelf placement and price advantage. This means the world's biggest 'brand' by retail volume has almost zero brand equity in the conventional marketing sense. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins
  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 21, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 21, 2026
    Jun 21 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 21, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • AB InBev's Brahma is using the World Cup to make a bold local brand play in Brazil — a masterclass in how global FMCG brands weaponise cultural specificity during mega-events. • Diageo's exit from East African Breweries is now one legal hurdle closer to completion — a move that will fundamentally reshape its brand footprint across one of the world's fastest-growing beer markets. • Revlon is staking its entire comeback narrative on fragrance — a high-risk, high-emotion category bet that offers brand managers a live case study in post-bankruptcy brand resurrection. Fun fact: The average supermarket scanner fails to read a barcode correctly roughly 1 in every 1,000 scans — and because of this, Walmart mandated in the 1980s that all suppliers pre-attach UPC barcodes to products before shipment, a logistics requirement so costly it effectively drove dozens of small consumer goods brands out of national retail entirely. That single policy reshaped the FMCG supplier landscape more than almost any marketing decision of that era. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins
  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 20, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 20, 2026
    Jun 20 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 20, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • L'Oréal's CMO is betting on a direct OpenAI partnership to win the zero-click search era — and every FMCG brand manager should be watching how a category leader rewires its entire content operation around generative AI. • Kraft Heinz is reorganising into three global regions under CEO Steve Cahillane — a structural bet that faster local decision-making can unlock growth that centralised management has failed to deliver. • AB InBev has named Mondelez's outgoing CEO Dirk Van de Put as its new board chairman — a significant governance move at the world's largest brewer that reshapes the leadership picture at a pivotal moment for the global beer category. Fun fact: Heinz once ran a ketchup bottle upside-down — with the cap at the bottom — exclusively in Australia before any other market, and sales jumped 17% because shoppers found it easier to dispense. The insight came not from R&D but from watching consumers store their bottles cap-down in their own fridges, something Heinz had never officially recommended. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins
  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 19, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 19, 2026
    Jun 19 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 19, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • Nestlé is using KitKat — its highest-profile confectionery brand — to make a very public bet that regenerative sourcing can become a consumer-facing brand claim, not just a sustainability footnote. • Diageo's CEO Dave Lewis is reportedly pushing for significant cost and headcount reductions, a move that will directly reshape how the world's largest spirits company allocates marketing budgets and manages its brand portfolio. • Belvoir Farm — a well-established premium soft drinks brand — is launching an entirely separate functional drinks brand, signalling that even heritage FMCG players now believe the functional beverage opportunity is too distinct to absorb into an existing brand architecture. Fun fact: Heinz once ran a UK campaign in the 1980s where they deliberately left the word 'Beanz' misspelled on their cans — and consumer testing showed the intentional error actually increased brand recall by over 50% compared to the correctly spelled version. The misspelling became so iconic that Heinz has legally defended 'Beanz' as a brand asset ever since. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins
  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 18, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 18, 2026
    Jun 18 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 18, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • Danone is taking its challenger rival Chobani to court over protein labelling claims — turning a regulatory dispute into a live brand-equity battle in the booming high-protein dairy category. • With UK campaigners intensifying pressure for an under-16 energy drink ban, brands like Monster, Lucozade, and Rockstar face a potential regulatory cliff-edge that would force immediate portfolio and marketing strategy rethinks. • Mondelez CEO Dirk Van de Put taking the AB InBev chairman role creates one of the most unusual cross-category leadership overlaps in FMCG — with direct implications for how both companies are governed at the board level. Fun fact: Heinz once ran a ketchup bottle upside-down for years before consumers caught on — but the real shock is that the company holds a trademark on the specific shade of red on its label in over 14 countries, meaning competitors are legally barred from using that exact color on ketchup packaging. The trademark was granted not for the product itself, but purely for how that red performs as a brand signal on shelf. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins
  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 17, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 17, 2026
    Jun 17 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 17, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • AB InBev is extending two of its biggest global beer brands — Stella Artois and Bud Light — into the fast-growing UK fruit beer segment, signalling a deliberate portfolio play to capture summer occasion drinkers. • Mondelez CEO Dirk Van de Put has publicly doubled down on the company's decision to remain in Russia, putting brand purpose and reputational risk back at the centre of FMCG's most uncomfortable strategic debate. • The Macallan is actively courting Gen Z not through premiumisation of everyday drinking — which that cohort largely avoids — but by repositioning single malt Scotch as the ultimate special occasion luxury splurge, a strategically distinct route from the celebrity-led Gen Z plays we've seen from other spirits brands. Fun fact: Walmart's store layout is deliberately designed so that dairy and eggs are placed at the back of the store — but research from the University of Arizona found that this 'forced walk' strategy actually reduces average basket size in modern supercenters because shoppers on quick trips abandon their carts rather than navigate the full floor. The retailer has been quietly testing dairy repositioning in select markets since 2022 as a result. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins
  • The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 16, 2026

    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 16, 2026
    Jun 16 2026
    The FMCG Marketing Daily — June 16, 2026 The essential daily briefing for brand managers and marketers in consumer goods. In today's episode: • Coca-Cola is flooding the media landscape with campaigns right before a major media and data account review — and the pattern reveals exactly where the brand is placing its strategic bets. • KFC has launched a major global rebrand built around its bucket as the centrepiece of a new visual identity — a masterclass in using a legacy brand asset rather than abandoning it. • A Starbucks promotional campaign has backfired so badly it is forcing over 2,000 store closures — making it one of the most visible marketing-driven operational crises in recent memory. Fun fact: Costco's return policy is so liberal that the retailer once had to quietly add a 90-day limit specifically for electronics after customers were returning televisions they'd owned for years — but for almost every other product category, including most food and consumables, the unlimited lifetime return policy still stands. This means a shopper can theoretically return a half-eaten jar of peanut butter purchased five years ago, making Costco's shrink management one of the most unusual cost calculations in all of retail. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
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    7 mins