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Consumer goods giants increase ad intensity as rivals pull back, Coca-Cola's Mr. Pibb leads 2026 growth, and Nestlé faces a Texas lawsuit over baby food safety.
FMCG brands are spending more on ads while other sectors cut back — and Nestlé is fighting a Texas lawsuit over heavy metals in Gerber baby food. Two stories every brand manager needs to understand 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: Morning — three stories that genuinely compete for your attention today.
Klara: FMCG brands are spending more on advertising while everyone else pulls back. Coca-Cola has quietly turned a forgotten brand into the fastest-growing label of 2026. And Nestlé is facing a serious lawsuit over heavy metals in baby food.
Marco: Big strategic questions in each one.
Klara: Let's go.
Marco: A new report shows that consumer goods companies are actually increasing how much they spend on advertising — at the exact moment many other big industries are cutting back.
Klara: To understand why that matters, you need to know what's normal. Most companies treat marketing budgets like a tap — when the economy gets uncertain, the first instinct is to turn it down. That's been the default behaviour across most sectors right now.
Marco: But FMCG — that's the consumer goods world, your food, drinks, cleaning products, personal care — is moving in the opposite direction. The report shows that compared to other major spending categories, consumer goods companies are actually growing their share of advertising intensity. They're spending more, relative to everybody else who's pulling back.
Klara: And "share of voice" is the key idea here. Share of voice just means how much of the total advertising conversation your brand owns. If your rivals go quiet but you keep talking, your share of that conversation goes up — without necessarily spending more in absolute terms.
Marco: Historically, brands that hold or grow their spend during quieter periods come out the other side with stronger brand recognition and lower cost per impression — because fewer competitors are bidding for the same attention.
Klara: I do think there's a real caveat though. Not every FMCG brand has the budget headroom to do this. The big players — your Unilevers, your Nestlés — can absorb the risk. Smaller brands may not have that luxury, and the report shouldn't be read as a universal green light.
Marco: That's fair. But for brand managers heading into the next planning cycle, this report is genuinely useful ammunition. It gives you data to push back when finance wants to cut your marketing budget. The case for holding spend just got stronger.
Klara: Numbers in hand, argument ready. Right, let's move on — our next story is up.
Marco: Coca-Cola has turned one of its forgotten brands into the fastest-growing label of 2026 — and it's worth understanding how.
Klara: So, a bit of context. Coca-Cola owns a lot of brands beyond Coke itself. Some get all the attention and investment. Others sit quietly in the background, barely touched for years. Mr. Pibb is one of those quiet ones — a flavoured soft drink that's lived in the shadow of Dr Pepper for most of its life.
Marco: Dr Pepper has always dominated that spiced cherry cola space. Mr. Pibb existed, but nobody was really pushing it. It was what brand managers call an "under-resourced portfolio asset" — a brand you own but haven't really invested in. It's a bit like having a house you've never renovated and wondering why nobody wants to buy it.
Klara: And now, apparently, Coca-Cola decided to renovate. According to Marketing Dive, Mr. Pibb has been named the fastest-growing brand of 2026. That's not a new product. That's an old brand, deliberately repositioned and properly funded for the first time in years.
Marco: What's striking is that this growth didn't come from launching something new. It came from choosing to back something that already existed. That's a very different — and often cheaper — path to growth than building a brand from scratch.
Klara: Though I'd want to know exactly what "repositioning" actually looked like in practice. Was it a packaging refresh? A media push? A different retail placement? Because the strategic lesson only travels if we understand the mechanism. Without that detail, it risks becoming one of those case studies that sounds great but doesn't tell you what to actually do.
Marco: Fair challenge. But even without every detail, the core idea holds — audit what you already own before you go looking for something new.
Klara: Our next story is coming up right after this.
Marco: Texas has just filed a lawsuit against Nestlé and Gerber over heavy metals found in baby food — and it's the kind of story that should make every food brand manager put down their coffee.
Klara: Baby food is one of the most scrutinised categories in FMCG. Parents are understandably cautious. Regulators watch it closely. And brands in this space have spent years building trust around safety and quality — because that trust is essentially the entire product promise.
Marco: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has now sued both Nestlé and its US baby food brand Gerber, alleging that their products contain arsenic and lead. That alone is serious. But the lawsuit doesn't stop there. It also alleges that Nestlé falsely marketed these products — so you've got a product safety claim and a deceptive advertising claim sitting in the same legal action.
Klara: That combination is what makes this different from a typical regulatory dispute. On its own, a safety allegation is damaging enough. But when you add the accusation that the brand was actively misleading consumers about what was in the product — that's a trust crisis of a different magnitude.
Marco: And even if the legal outcome takes years to resolve, the reputational damage moves fast. Other state attorneys general will be watching. European regulators — including EFSA, the EU's food safety authority — will be watching too.
Klara: Though I think it's worth holding some caution here. This is one state's lawsuit at this stage, not a federal ruling or a proven finding. The allegations still have to be tested in court.
Marco: Absolutely true. But here's the lesson regardless of the outcome — if you have health or safety claims on your packaging, you need to be certain the evidence behind them is watertight. This case shows exactly what happens when that certainty is questioned.
Marco: The thread running through today — the brands that win long-term are the ones that keep investing, keep their portfolio sharp, and never let safety slip below the line.
Klara: So pick one of those three. Which one does your brand actually have a problem with right now?