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Liquid Death rebuilds its marketing org around AI, Constellation acquires SpikedAde for up to $353M, and Gen Alpha now shapes nearly half of US household spending.
Liquid Death isn't just using AI — it's restructuring its entire marketing operation around it. Meanwhile, Constellation Brands is spending up to $353M to own the RTD moment. Here's what both moves mean for FMCG brand managers.
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 to get your brain working this morning.
Klara: AI, acquisitions, and a generation that's already deciding what ends up in your shopping basket.
Marco: Liquid Death is rebuilding its entire marketing team around artificial intelligence — and it's moving fast.
Klara: Constellation Brands is spending up to 353 million euros chasing the next big drinks trend.
Marco: And Gen Alpha is here whether you're ready or not.
Klara: Let's go.
Marco: Liquid Death — the canned water brand that became famous for its heavy-metal attitude — has just restructured its entire marketing operation around artificial intelligence.
Klara: For context, Liquid Death has spent the last few years proving that even a boring product category like water can become a cult brand. They did it with sharp creative instincts and a very lean team. Now they're betting that AI can turbocharge that speed advantage even further.
Marco: At Advertising Week in New York, their chief media and digital commerce officer Benoit Vatere laid out what he's calling an AI-native model. That means AI isn't a tool they've bolted onto their existing team — it's the actual foundation the whole marketing organisation is built around. Content decisions, media buying, commerce choices — all of it runs through AI at the core.
Klara: And that's a genuinely different ambition from what most big FMCG brands are doing. Unilever, Nestlé, L'Oréal — they're all experimenting with AI. But experimenting is not the same as restructuring your whole operation around it. There's a real difference between using AI and being built for AI.
Marco: The strategic threat here is speed. If Liquid Death can produce and test ten campaign ideas in the time it takes a traditional brand team to approve one creative brief, that's a serious competitive gap. And it compounds over time.
Klara: I'd add a note of caution though. AI-native doesn't automatically mean better. A faster wrong decision is still a wrong decision. Brand judgement still matters, and that's something challenger brands sometimes underestimate when they get excited about new tools.
Marco: True — but the burden of proof is shifting. Legacy brands used to be able to say "we move carefully because we have more to lose." That argument is wearing thin.
Klara: Our next story is on the table — let's keep the momentum going.
Marco: Constellation Brands has bought a US ready-to-drink cocktail brand called SpikedAde — and the price tag tells you everything about where the alcohol industry thinks growth is coming from.
Klara: A bit of context. RTD — ready-to-drink — means pre-mixed cocktails or spiked drinks that come straight out of a can or bottle. No mixing required. Consumers, especially younger ones, have been pulling away from traditional beer and spirits for a while now, and RTDs have become one of the few bright spots in an otherwise tough alcohol market.
Marco: So here's what happened. Constellation — the company behind Corona and Modelo in Europe and the US — has acquired SpikedAde for a deal worth up to 353 million dollars. And this lands in the same week that Constellation also put money into Hiyo, a non-alcoholic challenger brand. Two very different bets, made almost simultaneously.
Klara: That timing is not an accident. When a company of Constellation's size moves twice in one week, in adjacent but different parts of the same category, that's a deliberate signal. They're not experimenting — they're repositioning their whole portfolio around where drinking occasions are shifting.
Marco: And the deeper story is about build versus buy. Constellation could have tried to create its own RTD brand from scratch. Most big players have tried that. It rarely works fast enough. So they're concluding that acquisition is the only reliable way to own the formats consumers are already choosing.
Klara: I'd push back slightly on the word "only." Buying speed is real, but integration is where these deals so often get complicated. A challenger brand's energy can fade quickly once a corporate parent takes over. Constellation will need to manage that carefully.
Marco: It's a genuine risk. But in a fragmenting market, waiting might be the bigger one.
Klara: Our third story is up next.
Marco: Our final story today is about a consumer group that most FMCG brands are still treating as a future problem — when they're already in the room.
Klara: A bit of background. Gen Alpha is the generation born from around 2010 onwards — so today they're roughly between eight and fourteen years old. A few years ago, it was reasonable to say "we'll worry about them later." But something has shifted. This cohort is growing up faster, spending more time online, and has developed strong brand opinions earlier than any generation before them.
Marco: Here's what the research is now showing. In families with children aged eight to fourteen, Gen Alpha influences nearly half of all household spending. Not just their own snacks or toys — we're talking breakfast cereals, personal care products, household cleaning. Categories that sit right in the core of most FMCG portfolios.
Klara: And the way they discover brands is genuinely different. They're moving between AI tools and influencer content in ways that older generations simply don't. They might ask an AI assistant what to buy, then go confirm it through a creator they trust on YouTube or TikTok. That's a very different path to purchase than anything brand managers were trained on.
Marco: For me, the strategic implication is uncomfortable but clear. If your brand plan still has Gen Alpha listed under "future audiences" or "emerging consumers," that plan is already out of date. These kids are influencing real purchases in real supermarkets right now.
Klara: I'd add a note of nuance here though. Influence is not the same as decision-making power. Parents still hold the wallet. So the brands that win with Gen Alpha won't necessarily be the ones that talk directly to kids — they'll be the ones that make it easy for kids to advocate for them in the kitchen or the car.
Marco: Which means earning trust with a consumer who can't even buy your product yet. That's the brief.
Marco: Today's thread — the brands pulling ahead aren't waiting to see how AI, RTDs, or Gen Alpha play out. They're already moving.
Klara: So pick the one shift from today that feels most uncomfortable for your brand — and ask why you haven't acted on it yet.