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FMCG majors bet on counter-cyclical ad spend, Coca-Cola revives Mr. Pibb into 2026's fastest-growing brand, and Texas sues Nestlé and Gerber over baby food claims.
Coca-Cola turned a forgotten brand into 2026's fastest grower — and Nestlé is facing a Texas lawsuit over baby food marketing claims. Here's what both mean for your brand strategy today.
In this episode:
The FMCG Marketing Daily is a concise briefing for FMCG and CPG marketers, brand managers and CMOs, hosted by Marco & Klara. New episode every day.
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Also from Marco & Klara: The Digital Commerce Daily · The Health Marketing Daily
The essential morning briefing for brand leaders in fast-moving consumer goods. Hosted by Marco and Klara — two senior strategists with decades of experience inside global CPG companies and consultancies. Every episode covers retail media and distribution shifts, brand and competitor moves from Unilever, Coke, Nestlé, and challenger brands, and the macro and regulatory forces reshaping the category. Authoritative. Analytical. No noise. Built for brand managers, trade marketers, CMOs, and agency directors who need to stay ahead.
Marco: Three stories worth your attention this morning.
Klara: Ad spend, a brand comeback, and a regulatory storm — not a bad mix.
Marco: We're looking at why FMCG majors are pouring money into advertising right now, how Coca-Cola quietly turned Mr. Pibb into the fastest-growing brand of 2026, and what the Nestlé baby food lawsuit in Texas means for health brands everywhere.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: There's a new report out showing that consumer goods companies are ramping up their advertising spend — right at the moment when many other big-spending industries are pulling back.
Klara: So let's set the scene. For years, FMCG companies have faced real pressure to cut costs. Inflation hit supply chains hard. Retailers were pushing back on prices. Many brands were quietly trimming their marketing budgets to protect margins — that's the profit left after costs.
Marco: And what this report shows is that the major consumer goods players have now made the opposite move. While other categories are hesitating — reducing what they spend on ads — FMCG leaders are deliberately stepping up. The gap between what they're spending and what the rest of the market is spending is getting wider.
Klara: This is what's sometimes called counter-cyclical investment. Which just means: when everyone else pulls back, you push forward. The theory is that you capture more attention, more shelf visibility, and ultimately more sales when your competitors go quiet.
Marco: And history backs that up. The brands that kept advertising through downturns — think Unilever, Nestlé, L'Oréal — tend to come out the other side with stronger market positions. This looks like a deliberate long-term brand-building bet.
Klara: I'd add a note of caution though. Some of this could also be short-term volume chasing — filling shelves and hitting quarterly numbers rather than genuinely building brand love. Those are different things, even if the ad spend looks the same from the outside.
Marco: True. But here's what matters for anyone managing a brand right now: if your category leader is increasing ad intensity and you're not matching it, you're essentially handing them your share of voice — meaning your slice of consumer attention — for free.
Klara: Now let's turn to our next story.
Marco: Coca-Cola has taken one of its quietest, most overlooked brands and turned it into the fastest-growing brand of 2026 — and the story behind that is worth your full attention.
Klara: So a bit of background. Mr. Pibb is a Coca-Cola soft drink that has existed for decades, mostly in the United States. For most of its life it sat in the shadow of Dr Pepper — same flavour territory, bigger rival, far more marketing behind it. Most people in the industry would have looked at Mr. Pibb and called it a brand going nowhere.
Marco: What changed is that Coca-Cola made a deliberate choice. Rather than letting it quietly fade or pulling it from the portfolio entirely, they repositioned it — meaning they changed how the brand was presented to consumers — and backed that with real investment. The result is that Mr. Pibb is now the fastest-growing brand in their entire stable heading into 2026.
Klara: And what I find interesting is that this wasn't a new product launch. It wasn't a start-up with a fresh idea. This was a company deciding that an asset they already owned had more value than it was currently delivering.
Marco: That's the lesson for any FMCG portfolio manager. Large brand portfolios are full of what I'd call sleeping assets — brands that are alive but not working hard. Most companies' instinct is to cut them or ignore them. Coca-Cola's move suggests another option: pick one, focus on it, and wake it up.
Klara: My slight hesitation is that Coca-Cola has distribution and marketing scale that most companies can only dream of. Replicating this at a smaller company, or even within a mid-sized portfolio, is considerably harder without that firepower behind you.
Marco: Noted — but the strategic logic still holds even if the execution looks different.
Klara: Our next story is coming right up.
Marco: Texas has just filed a lawsuit against Nestlé and Gerber over heavy metals found in baby food — and this is far bigger than a courtroom dispute.
Klara: Gerber has been around for decades. It is one of the most recognised baby food brands in the world, and its entire identity is built on one thing: that parents can trust it completely. That trust is not just a nice idea — it is the commercial foundation the brand stands on.
Marco: So here is what happened. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued both Nestlé and its US subsidiary Gerber, alleging that their baby food products contain arsenic and lead. But what makes this legally interesting is that the lawsuit is not only about the presence of those substances. It is specifically targeting the marketing claims on the packaging — the words and imagery Nestlé used to tell parents their products were safe and wholesome.
Klara: Which means this is a brand credibility crisis, not just a safety investigation. Regulators are looking at the gap between what was printed on the label and what was inside the jar. That is a very uncomfortable place for any food company to be.
Marco: For Nestlé, the reputational damage does not stay contained to Gerber. When one brand in a portfolio takes this kind of hit, consumers start asking questions about everything else the company makes. The trust transfer works in both directions.
Klara: I'd offer a slightly different read though. Nestlé has the legal and communications resources to manage this over a long process. The more uncomfortable ripple for the wider industry is what this signals about health claim scrutiny. Regulators across the EU are already sharpening their focus on what brands are allowed to promise. This lawsuit in Texas could accelerate that pressure considerably.
Marco: And that is the real takeaway. If your brand makes a health or safety claim — and in FMCG, almost every brand does in some form — the standard of proof regulators and courts expect is only going one direction.
Marco: Today's lesson — the brands that hold their nerve when others retreat, keep their portfolio sharp, and never let product integrity slide are the ones still standing when the dust settles.
Klara: So pick one of those three to pressure-test in your own brand this week. Just one. Start there.