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Diageo pauses its 25-year whisky collection, Mondelēz sues vegan brand Moo Free over snowballs, and Svedka crowdsources a Super Bowl ad after AI backlash.
Diageo kills a 25-year revenue stream on purpose, Mondelēz takes a tiny vegan brand to court, and Svedka hands its Super Bowl slot to consumers after an AI misfire. Three big brand bets — one episode.
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 on the desk today — and they're all about brands making calculated bets.
Klara: Diageo quietly shelving a 25-year Scotch tradition, Mondelēz taking a small vegan brand to court over a snowball, and Svedka turning an AI disaster into a Super Bowl opportunity.
Marco: Big names, big decisions — and something worth stealing for your own brand playbook.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: Diageo has quietly paused one of the most established traditions in premium whisky — and the reason behind it is more interesting than you might expect.
Klara: To understand why this matters, you need to know what Diageo was doing in the first place. Every year for 25 years, they released a limited-edition collection of rare Scotch whiskies. These releases were events in themselves — collectors queued, prices climbed, and the bottles often sold for multiples of their original price on the secondary market. That kind of annual release builds enormous anticipation. But it also trains consumers to expect something every year, which starts to undermine the very idea of rarity.
Marco: So here's what changed. Diageo reviewed consumer feedback and their own pricing strategy — and decided to put the whole collection on hold. Not because demand dropped. Demand was still there. But because they started asking a harder question: is this release still feeling genuinely exclusive, or has it become a commercial calendar event that consumers are starting to see through?
Klara: And this is where it gets really interesting for brand managers in any premium category. When something becomes predictable, it loses its power. Annual releases that happen like clockwork stop feeling special. They start feeling like a product line. And in high-end spirits, once a consumer thinks you're manufacturing scarcity rather than genuinely protecting it, trust erodes fast.
Marco: My read is that Diageo made the braver call here. Walking away from a revenue stream that was still working takes real discipline. I'd argue not enough premium brands do this.
Klara: I'd add a note of caution though. Pausing is one thing — but if they don't return with something that genuinely resets expectations, the absence could just read as drift rather than strategy.
Marco: A fair distinction. Right, let's move on to our next story.
Marco: Mondelēz — the company behind Cadbury — is taking legal action against a small vegan chocolate brand, and the move is raising some uncomfortable questions.
Klara: A bit of context. Cadbury Mini Snow Balls have been a seasonal staple on British shelves for years. Mondelēz holds the trademark on that product. Now, a small vegan challenger brand called Moo Free has launched a product called White Choccy Snowballs — and Mondelēz is demanding they pull it from shelves entirely.
Marco: The legal claim is straightforward: Mondelēz says the name and positioning are too close to their own product. But what makes this particularly pointed is the timing. Moo Free is operating in the vegan chocolate segment — a category that's growing fast and one that Mondelēz itself has been actively trying to break into. So this isn't just a legal dispute over words on packaging. It's a large incumbent using intellectual property law — essentially trademark rights — as a competitive tool against a smaller player in territory it wants for itself.
Klara: And here's where I think Mondelēz has a genuine problem, regardless of whether they win in court. The moment this becomes a David-versus-Goliath story — and it already has, given the Guardian coverage — Moo Free gets more attention in a week than they'd normally see in a year. Small challenger brands thrive on exactly this kind of visibility.
Marco: That's true, but I'd be careful about dismissing the legal rationale entirely. If Mondelēz doesn't defend its trademarks consistently, it actually weakens its ability to enforce them in the future. There's a real legal obligation involved here, not just corporate muscle-flexing.
Klara: Fair — but the brand optics still sting. Especially when consumers in the free-from aisle tend to be highly engaged and quite vocal online.
Marco: One to watch as the festive season approaches. Right, our third story is next.
Marco: Svedka vodka has turned a public embarrassment into a Super Bowl campaign — and how they've done it is worth a close look.
Klara: A bit of history first. Svedka ran an advertising campaign using AI-generated creative — meaning the visuals and content were produced by artificial intelligence rather than human designers or directors. Consumers didn't like it. The backlash was real enough that it damaged how people felt about the brand. That's a serious problem for any vodka label competing in a crowded spirits market.
Marco: So here's what they've done. Rather than quietly moving on, Svedka has gone the opposite direction — inviting consumers to create the brand's next Super Bowl advertisement themselves. That's the biggest, most expensive media moment in US advertising. Handing the creative to your own customers at that scale is a significant public admission that the AI decision went wrong.
Klara: And I think the instinct is right. When a brand makes a misstep that consumers notice, the worst thing you can do is pretend it didn't happen. Crowdsourcing the Super Bowl ad says openly: we heard you, you're in charge now. That kind of transparency can rebuild trust faster than any polished brand statement.
Marco: I'd be slightly more cautious. Consumer co-creation — getting your audience to make content for you — works brilliantly when the brand has strong underlying goodwill. Svedka is trying to rebuild that goodwill at the same time as running the campaign. If the entries are weak, or the final ad misses, they've now had two public stumbles in a row.
Klara: That's a real risk. But the broader lesson for any brand manager reaching for AI creative tools right now is this: know what you'll do if your audience rejects it. Svedka didn't have that plan ready. Now they're building it in public, under pressure, on the biggest stage possible. That's not a position you want to be in.
Marco: Today's clearest signal — controlling perception matters as much as controlling the product, whether that's a whisky release, a chocolate snowball, or a vodka ad.
Klara: So look at your brand this week and ask: are you managing how people feel about what you do, or just managing what you do?