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UK alcohol duty hike alarms Diageo and Bacardi, RationAle partners LA Libations to scale non-alc, and SharkNinja's McLaren deal reframes sports sponsorship.
The UK just handed Diageo and Bacardi a pricing crisis. Meanwhile SharkNinja is rewriting the sports sponsorship playbook with McLaren F1 — and FMCG brand managers should be paying close attention to both moves.
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 chewing on this morning.
Klara: We've got the UK duty shock hitting wine and spirits hard — brands like Diageo are facing some tough calls.
Marco: Then a scrappy non-alc beer brand finding a smarter way to grow — without big beer backing.
Klara: And SharkNinja's F1 play — and what it tells FMCG marketers about sports sponsorship done differently.
Marco: Let's go.
Marco: The UK government has just dropped a significant alcohol duty increase on the wine and spirits industry — and the reaction has been fierce.
Klara: To understand why this stings so much, you need to know that duty — that's the tax the government charges on alcohol — was already one of the highest in Europe. UK consumers pay more tax on a bottle of spirits than almost anywhere else on the continent. Brands like Diageo and Pernod Ricard have been managing that pressure for years. This new hike just made a difficult situation considerably worse.
Marco: The government has confirmed a sharp increase in alcohol duty rates coming into force next year. Industry bodies have described it as "breath-taking" — which, in trade association language, means genuinely alarming. The immediate question for every spirits and wine brand operating in the UK is the same: who absorbs the extra cost? You, the brand? The retailer? Or the consumer at the shelf?
Klara: And that's where it gets really interesting for everyday shoppers. If brands pass this on through higher prices, UK consumers — who are already watching every pound — may simply reach for something cheaper. That's called trading down, and it's the thing premium spirits brands fear most.
Marco: My view is that the smarter brands will use this moment to double down on premiumisation — that means actively justifying a higher price through better storytelling, stronger brand experience, and clear quality signals. Absorbing the cost quietly is a short-term fix that erodes margin. Passing it on carelessly loses customers.
Klara: I'd frame it slightly differently. Not every brand has the equity to justify a price increase right now. For mid-range spirits in particular, this could genuinely accelerate a shift toward own-label alternatives on Tesco and Sainsbury's shelves. The premium play only works if consumers already believe in your brand.
Marco: A real test of where your brand actually stands in the consumer's mind.
Klara: Now, let's move to our next story.
Marco: A US non-alcoholic beer brand called RationAle has just struck a major growth deal — and the structure of that deal is worth paying attention to.
Klara: Non-alcoholic beer has been growing fast on both sides of the Atlantic. But here's the challenge for smaller brands in that space: building real distribution — getting your product onto enough shelves, in enough stores, consistently — costs serious money. Most challenger brands either struggle along slowly or end up selling to a big brewer. Neither path is ideal.
Marco: RationAle has found a third way. They've formed a growth alliance with LA Libations, which is one of the most connected incubator and distribution networks in the US drinks industry. An incubator, in this context, is essentially a company that helps young brands build the commercial infrastructure they can't yet afford on their own — routes to market, retail relationships, operational know-how. They've also brought in Homestead Brands as a brand-building partner. So you've got distribution muscle and brand development expertise working together, without handing the keys to AB InBev or Molson Coors.
Klara: And that last part matters enormously. A lot of the credibility in the no-and-low category comes from being independent. The moment a brand gets absorbed into a major brewer's portfolio, some consumers start to question whether it's still the real thing. This model lets RationAle scale without that credibility risk.
Marco: My read is that this is the blueprint other non-alc challengers will follow — especially in Europe, where the category is still maturing. The question I'd put to brand managers at the big brewers is a blunt one: can you actually build this kind of authenticity inside a corporate structure, or do you have to acquire it from the outside?
Klara: Increasingly, I think the honest answer is the latter. And that has real implications for how large drinks companies should be thinking about their no-and-low strategy right now.
Marco: Our third story is coming up — let's get to it.
Marco: SharkNinja — the brand behind Shark vacuum cleaners and Ninja kitchen appliances — has just struck a major sponsorship deal with the McLaren Formula One team, and the thinking behind it is genuinely different from how most sports sponsorships work.
Klara: Sports sponsorship in FMCG has traditionally been about one thing: getting your logo in front of as many people as possible. The bigger the event, the bigger the reach, the bigger the tick in the brand awareness column. That model has worked for decades. But it's increasingly hard to prove that passive exposure actually changes what people buy.
Marco: SharkNinja has structured this deal differently. They're not just buying a logo on a car. They're buying access to Formula One's fandom — one of the most passionate, globally distributed audiences in sport right now. The logic is that the fanbase itself is the media asset. Not the broadcast, not the trackside banner — the community of people who follow McLaren obsessively and talk about it constantly. That's what SharkNinja is trying to plug into.
Klara: And it's working because F1 fandom has changed dramatically. It's younger, more global, and far more active on social media than it was ten years ago. So what SharkNinja is really buying is cultural relevance with an audience that's already leaning in.
Marco: For FMCG brand managers, this should prompt a very direct question about your own sponsorship portfolio. Are you buying reach — eyeballs, impressions, passive awareness — or are you buying belonging? Those are genuinely different things, and they require different measures of success.
Klara: I'd add a note of caution here though. This model works brilliantly for a challenger brand trying to build salience fast. For an established brand with 80% household penetration, the calculus is different. You don't need belonging — you need conversion. So before you restructure your entire sponsorship strategy around community depth, be honest about what your brand actually needs right now.
Marco: That's the question worth putting on the table before the next sponsorship renewal lands on your desk.
Marco: Today's clearest signal — the brands making moves right now aren't waiting for perfect market conditions. They're choosing where to play and committing.
Klara: So ask yourself: is your brand actively choosing its next position, or just reacting to pressure as it arrives? There's a real difference between those two things.