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Coca-Cola displaces PepsiCo at KFC; AB InBev must redesign BeatBox packaging after UK ruling; Arby's appoints ex-Papa Johns CMO Jenna Bromberg.
Coca-Cola just seized one of the biggest foodservice pouring contracts in the US from PepsiCo. Plus, AB InBev gets a regulatory wake-up call on BeatBox design — and what it means for every FMCG brand borrowing youth-coded visuals.
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: We've got Coca-Cola muscling into KFC at PepsiCo's expense, AB InBev getting a regulatory slap over BeatBox packaging, and Arby's making a big marketing hire that tells you exactly what Inspire Brands is preparing for.
Marco: Distribution, regulation, and brand leadership — all in one show.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: Coca-Cola is set to replace PepsiCo as the exclusive drinks supplier to KFC restaurants across the United States.
Klara: This is a bigger deal than it sounds on the surface. For decades, these two companies have fought hard to lock in what the industry calls "pouring rights" — meaning the exclusive contract that decides which brand's drinks are served inside a restaurant chain. Whoever wins that contract owns the cup, the fridge, and the moment when millions of people are thirsty and hungry.
Marco: KFC's US restaurant estate is one of the largest quick-service — that's fast food — beverage contracts in the entire country. Coca-Cola is walking away with a platform that puts their drinks in front of an enormous number of Americans every single day. PepsiCo, on the other hand, loses a flagship account — and that's a significant blow.
Klara: What I find interesting is how little this kind of deal gets talked about in marketing circles. Everyone focuses on TV ads and social media campaigns. But the moment someone picks up a cup at a KFC counter — that's brand contact too. Probably more powerful, because it involves actually tasting the product.
Marco: And that's the point I'd make to any brand manager. Advertising builds familiarity. Consumption builds loyalty. Coca-Cola has just bought itself millions of real consumption moments, not impressions on a screen.
Klara: I'd slightly push back on framing this purely as a marketing win though. These contracts cost serious money. The commercial terms matter as much as the brand exposure. Winning the account doesn't automatically mean winning the margin.
Marco: Fair — the numbers behind the deal will tell the full story eventually. But from a brand-building perspective, this shifts the landscape.
Klara: We'll move on to our next story in just a moment.
Marco: The UK's drinks regulator has just ruled against AB InBev, finding that the packaging on one of its brands is too appealing to children.
Klara: A bit of context first. The Portman Group is the UK body that oversees how alcohol is marketed and packaged. Their job is to make sure that alcoholic drinks don't look like they're aimed at under-18s. It's a long-standing code, but enforcement has become more active as the ready-to-drink category — canned cocktails, hard seltzers, flavoured drinks — has exploded in recent years.
Marco: The brand at the centre of this is BeatBox. AB InBev acquired it as part of a broader push into colourful, flavoured, ready-to-drink products that tend to do well with younger adult consumers. The Portman Group upheld a complaint that BeatBox's packaging is likely to appeal to under-18s. The ruling now requires AB InBev to redesign the packaging so it meets the code.
Klara: When you look at BeatBox, you can see why it caught the regulator's eye. Bright colours, bold graphics, the kind of visual language you'd associate with energy drinks or gaming brands. The problem is that when an alcohol brand borrows that design vocabulary, it starts to blur the line.
Marco: And that's the real issue for brand managers across the drinks category. The design cues that make a product feel exciting and relevant to a 25-year-old can look, to a regulator, like something that would attract a 15-year-old.
Klara: I'd say the line is even harder to draw than that, though. Youth culture and youth marketing aren't the same thing as marketing to children. Regulators don't always distinguish between the two as clearly as brand teams would like.
Marco: Which is why your design team and your legal team need to be in the same room before anything goes to print.
Klara: Our next story is up shortly.
Marco: Arby's has just brought in a new marketing chief — and the brief she's been given says a lot about what's really happening inside the business.
Klara: Arby's is a US fast food chain, part of a bigger group called Inspire Brands, which owns several restaurant chains under one roof. For a while now, Arby's marketing has leaned heavily on promotions — deals, discounts, short-term offers to drive sales. That works in the moment, but it can quietly erode what a brand actually stands for over time.
Marco: The new CMO is Jenna Bromberg, previously the top marketing executive at Papa Johns. She steps into the role on the second of November, and her mandate — her stated job — is explicitly framed as balancing brand-building with sales growth. Those two words together, "balancing," tell you something important. You don't need to rebalance something that was already balanced.
Klara: And the timing is significant. Inspire Brands is reportedly weighing up a stock market listing — an IPO, where outside investors buy shares in the company. When that's on the table, brand perception stops being just a marketing question. It becomes a financial one. Investors want to see brands with long-term value, not just ones that are propped up by this week's meal deal.
Marco: This is a pattern you see regularly in consumer goods too. The moment an IPO enters the picture, there's a sudden urgency to demonstrate brand equity — the underlying value and strength of the brand beyond its current sales numbers. Leadership hires get more deliberate. The story told to investors starts to matter as much as the story told to shoppers.
Klara: Though I'd note — talking about brand-building for investor audiences and actually doing it are two different things. The proof will be in what Bromberg's campaigns actually look like twelve months from now, not in how the appointment was announced.
Marco: Completely true. A job title and a mandate don't build a brand. Consistent decisions over time do — and that's the lesson any brand manager should carry out of this story.
Marco: Today's stories share one thread — distribution, design, and leadership can all shift your brand's fortunes faster than any campaign.
Klara: So look at one of those three in your own business this week, and ask honestly: is it working as hard as it should be?