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Heineken blends attention and awareness to defend ad budgets; PepsiCo drinks deteriorate while snacks hold; Revlon bets on heritage post-bankruptcy.
Heineken is changing how digital ad budgets get defended. PepsiCo's drinks business is under real pressure. And Revlon is proving heritage can be a comeback strategy.
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: Morning — three stories worth your attention today.
Klara: Heineken is changing how it measures whether its digital ads are actually working. Then we're looking at PepsiCo's Q3 numbers — and what they reveal about a brand under real pressure in two very different categories.
Marco: And Revlon is making a case that your history can be your biggest asset.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: Heineken has built a new way to measure whether its digital advertising is actually working — and it's more sophisticated than what most brands are doing.
Klara: Let's set the scene. For years, digital advertising was sold on the promise of precision — you could measure every click, every view, every conversion. But brand-building doesn't work like that. You can't always draw a straight line between an ad and a sale.
Marco: So marketing teams got squeezed. CFOs — the finance chiefs — started asking hard questions. Why are we spending millions on ads we can't prove are working? In-house marketing teams, meaning the people who manage media buying inside the company rather than outsourcing it to an agency, have been under particular pressure to justify every euro.
Klara: And Heineken's answer was to stop relying on a single number.
Marco: Their in-house media team now combines two measurements. First, attention — are people actually looking at the ad, or is it sitting in a corner of a webpage nobody notices? Second, brand awareness — is the ad actually changing what people think and feel about Heineken? Neither metric alone tells the full story. Together, they're much harder to dismiss.
Klara: What I like about this is that it speaks the language of a CFO. It's not just "trust us, brand-building matters." It's two concrete data points that show value.
Marco: And that's exactly why other brands should pay attention. This isn't unique to beer. Any FMCG brand trying to defend a brand-building budget — whether it's a shampoo, a snack, or a cleaning product — has the same problem.
Klara: Though I'd say one thing. Building this kind of measurement takes real investment and expertise. Not every brand has Heineken's resources in-house. Smaller teams might struggle to replicate it without outside help.
Marco: Fair challenge. But the principle is replicable even if the exact model isn't. Know what you're measuring, and measure two things, not one.
Klara: Next story is coming right up.
Marco: PepsiCo's latest quarterly results are out — and they tell two very different stories depending on which part of the business you're looking at.
Klara: So PepsiCo, for anyone who needs a quick reminder, is one of the biggest food and drink companies in the world. It owns both snack brands — think Lay's crisps, Doritos — and drinks brands like Pepsi and Gatorade. Running both under one roof has always been the logic: if one side slows down, the other picks up the slack.
Marco: That balancing act is now under serious strain. The snacks side is holding up. Consumers are still buying, and PepsiCo has been able to keep prices where they need them. But the drinks business in North America is deteriorating. People are buying less, and the margins — the profit left after costs — are being squeezed hard.
Klara: CEO Ramon Laguarta used the word "aggressively" when talking about cutting costs in the drinks division. That's a significant word choice for a public earnings call. And the company has already lowered its profit outlook for next year.
Marco: What this signals to me is a portfolio under pressure. When two categories inside the same company start moving in opposite directions, the instinct is to protect the stronger one. But cost-cutting in a weaker division almost always hits marketing budgets first — and that's where brand damage quietly starts.
Klara: I'd see it slightly differently. Sometimes forced cost discipline actually sharpens a brand's focus. It makes you decide what really matters.
Marco: Possibly. But there's a meaningful difference between focused and underfunded. The risk for PepsiCo drinks is that cost-cutting becomes a spiral — less investment, less visibility, weaker sales, more cuts.
Klara: A situation worth watching closely for any brand managing multiple categories at once.
Marco: Our third and final story of the day is up next.
Marco: Revlon has just launched a major new campaign — and the strategy behind it is deliberately the opposite of what you'd normally expect from a brand trying to reinvent itself.
Klara: A bit of context. Revlon filed for bankruptcy in 2022. That's a brutal public moment for any brand — it signals financial collapse, and it tends to shake consumer confidence. The instinct for most companies coming out of that kind of crisis is to strip everything back, act new, and distance themselves from the past.
Marco: Revlon has done the opposite. Their new campaign is called 'Be Unforgettable,' and it features Teyana Taylor — a musician and actress with serious cultural credibility — alongside Megan Moroney, a rising country star. Two different audiences, two different worlds, one clear message: this brand has always mattered, and it still does.
Klara: What's interesting is how explicit they're being about it. They're not hiding the heritage. They're calling it a strength. There's a quote doing the rounds from their team — "there's nothing wrong with being a heritage brand." That's a confident thing to say publicly when you've just come through bankruptcy.
Marco: And I think it's the right instinct. Too many FMCG brands panic when they feel dated and start chasing whatever feels current. The result is usually a brand that stands for nothing. Revlon is betting that authenticity — real history, real recognition — is actually harder to buy than newness.
Klara: I'd add a caution though. Heritage is only a strength if consumers still associate the brand with something positive. If the memories are neutral or even slightly negative, leaning in doesn't rescue you — it just reminds people why they moved on.
Marco: Which is why the celebrity choices matter as much as the strategy. Taylor and Moroney aren't just famous — they carry warmth and credibility. They do the emotional work of making the past feel worth returning to.
Marco: Today's thread — measure what moves people, price what holds, and don't run from your history.
Klara: So look at your brand and ask honestly: are you hiding from what you are, or building on it?