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Ferrero commits $50M to US marketing with a Nutella Super Bowl debut; Constellation leads Hiyo's $20.8M Series B; healthcare brands adopt FMCG playbooks.
Ferrero is spending $50M and a Super Bowl slot to make Nutella a US mainstream staple. Constellation is doubling down on Hiyo. And healthcare brands are raiding FMCG's own playbook — which should make every CPG marketer uncomfortable.
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 clearing your schedule for this morning.
Klara: Ferrero is taking Nutella to the Super Bowl — and spending fifty million dollars to make sure nobody forgets it.
Marco: Constellation Brands is betting again on a non-alcoholic functional drink called Hiyo — and this time it feels less like curiosity, more like conviction.
Klara: And consumer healthcare brands are stealing pages straight from the FMCG marketing handbook.
Marco: Let's get into it.
Marco: Nutella is going to the Super Bowl — and Ferrero is putting fifty million dollars behind it.
Klara: Let's give that some context. Nutella has always had a devoted following in Europe, but in the US it's never quite broken out of its niche — that weekend breakfast thing, the toast spread your kids ask for. Ferrero, the Italian family-owned company behind Nutella, Kinder, and Ferrero Rocher, has been quietly growing in North America for years. But quietly is the key word.
Marco: Not anymore. For 2027, Ferrero has committed fifty million dollars to US marketing — their biggest spend in that market, ever. And the centrepiece is a Super Bowl slot. First time Nutella has ever appeared in the big game. To put that in perspective, a thirty-second Super Bowl ad alone costs around seven million dollars. This isn't a test. This is a declaration.
Klara: And it's a smart one. The Super Bowl isn't just TV. It's a cultural event. People watch the ads on purpose. Brands get analysed, shared, and talked about for days. For a brand trying to move from cult favourite to mainstream staple — something you just always have in the cupboard — that kind of attention is genuinely hard to buy anywhere else.
Marco: The real question for me is what happens the day after. You can win the Super Bowl ad conversation and still lose the shelf. The campaign has to connect to what's in stores, what's on promotion, how retailers like Walmart or Kroger are positioning the product. The ad is the spark. The rest of the marketing machine has to be ready to catch the flame.
Klara: I'd also say the creative itself will matter enormously. A fifty-million-dollar commitment doesn't guarantee a fifty-million-dollar idea. Ferrero will need a message that travels — not just in the US, but in how it reflects back on the brand globally.
Marco: Now let's move to our next story.
Marco: Constellation Brands has put money into the same non-alcoholic drinks brand twice — and that's worth paying attention to.
Klara: A bit of context. Constellation Brands is one of the biggest alcohol companies in the world — they own Corona, Modelo, and a string of wine and spirits brands. For the last few years, they've been watching the no-alcohol and low-alcohol category grow and trying to figure out how seriously to take it. Most big players have dabbled. Constellation has gone further.
Marco: This time, they've led a twenty-point-eight million dollar Series B funding round for Hiyo — that's a second investment in the same brand. Hiyo makes what it calls social tonics — non-alcoholic drinks designed to lift your mood using functional ingredients like adaptogens, which are plant-based compounds people use to manage stress and energy. The pitch is simple: all the social occasion, none of the alcohol.
Klara: And the fact that Constellation has come back for a second round tells you this isn't a hedge. A hedge is when you put a small amount of money into something just in case it works out. This is different. This is a conviction — they believe the no-alcohol occasion is real, it's growing, and they want a brand that owns it.
Marco: Which is the challenge I'd put to any brand manager listening. Drinking occasions are fragmenting — a Friday night out, a work dinner, a weekend brunch, they're no longer automatically alcohol moments. The question is whether your brand owns the occasion itself, or just the product inside it.
Klara: Though I'd note that functional claims are under real scrutiny from regulators in both the EU and the UK. Saying a drink improves your mood isn't straightforward to prove — or to advertise. Hiyo will face that hurdle in any European expansion.
Marco: A story worth watching. Now, on to our final story for today.
Marco: Consumer healthcare brands are quietly borrowing the FMCG marketing playbook — and it's a signal worth paying attention to.
Klara: A bit of background. Consumer healthcare sits in an interesting middle ground. Think brands like cold and flu remedies, vitamins, allergy tablets — products you buy at the pharmacy or the supermarket without a prescription. For years, these brands marketed themselves more like medicines than like, say, a jar of Nutella. Rational messaging. Claims-led. Less emotional.
Marco: That's changing. Companies like Opella — which owns brands such as Doliprane and Allegra — are deliberately shifting towards FMCG-style brand building. That means investing in mass reach, building emotional connections with consumers, and thinking about consistency across every touchpoint — not just the pack on the shelf. The Digiday reporting frames this as a direct response to shifting health habits, with consumers now treating wellness as a lifestyle rather than a problem to fix.
Klara: And honestly, I find it a little ironic. The FMCG model — reach lots of people, repeat your message, make them feel something — was built on selling everyday products. Soap. Cereal. Spreads. Healthcare brands spent years thinking they were above that. Now they're copying it.
Marco: Which is the uncomfortable question for anyone sitting in an FMCG marketing role. If healthcare companies are raiding your playbook, does that mean you're still actually executing it well? Because the risk isn't just that they catch up. The risk is that they take the fundamentals more seriously than you do — because they had to learn them from scratch.
Klara: I'd add a note of caution though. Healthcare still carries regulatory constraints around what you can actually claim in advertising. The FMCG playbook works beautifully when you can be emotionally expressive. When a regulator is watching every word, it gets harder.
Marco: True. But the brands that figure out how to be emotionally resonant within those constraints — that's where the real competitive edge will be.
Marco: Today's thread — whether you're Ferrero swinging big on the Super Bowl, Constellation backing a new kind of drink, or a healthcare brand borrowing from the FMCG rulebook, the move is the same: commit fully, or don't bother.
Klara: So look at where your brand is hedging — and ask whether half-in is really good enough.