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Johnsonville parodies political ads on Election Day, Shepherd Neame bets on own brands with a new brewery, and Mondelez sues UK start-up Catherine's Originals.
Johnsonville turned Election Day chaos into a brand moment without taking a side. Meanwhile Mondelez is filing its second UK trademark lawsuit, and Shepherd Neame is walking away from contract brewing entirely.
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: Good morning — we've got a cracking lineup for you today.
Klara: We do. A sausage brand that turned Election Day into a marketing moment, a British brewer making a big bet on its own labels, and Mondelez going after another small chocolate startup in court.
Marco: Three very different stories, all pointing at the same underlying question of who owns the brand.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: Johnsonville — a US sausage brand — just ran a political parody campaign timed to drop on American Election Day, and the thinking behind it is worth stealing.
Klara: So give us the context. Most food brands run a mile from anything political. The fear is always that you alienate half your audience before they've even picked up the product.
Marco: That's been the conventional wisdom for years. Brands stay neutral, stay safe, stay boring. But Johnsonville looked at Election Day — one of the most cluttered media moments on the calendar — and saw an opportunity rather than a threat.
Klara: And the clever bit is they didn't actually take a political position, did they?
Marco: Not at all. They borrowed the visual language of political advertising — the grainy footage, the serious voiceover, the "paid for by" captions — but pointed it at their own product. The whole campaign plays on the phrase "how the sausage gets made." It's a known expression for messy, behind-the-scenes processes. So they made it literal.
Klara: Which means the product name does the heavy lifting. That's genuinely smart writing. You don't need a massive budget if the idea is tight enough.
Marco: That's the lesson for European food brands, particularly challengers — smaller brands competing against bigger ones with far more money. You don't buy your way into cultural relevance. You earn it by showing up at the right moment with the right idea.
Klara: My reservation is timing. Election Day in the US is an extremely charged environment. I'd want to know whether a European brand could replicate this around, say, a national vote without it feeling tone-deaf or opportunistic.
Marco: Reasonable caution. The execution here works because Johnsonville kept the product firmly at the centre. The politics was the wrapper, not the message.
Klara: That distinction is everything.
Marco: Right — our next story is on the desk, let's get to it.
Marco: Shepherd Neame — Britain's oldest brewery — is building a brand new, smaller brewery, and the reason behind it tells you a lot about where smart beer brands are heading.
Klara: Set the scene for us. Because on the surface, a brewery building a brewery sounds like just... a building project.
Marco: It does. But the story is in the why. Shepherd Neame has historically done a lot of contract brewing — that means using their production facilities to brew beer on behalf of other brands, not their own. It keeps the tanks full and the revenue ticking over. Lots of regional brewers do it.
Klara: And it makes sense when your own brands don't fill the capacity you've got.
Marco: Exactly. But there's a cost. When you're brewing for other people, you're essentially a factory, not a brand. Your margins are thinner, your identity gets diluted, and the customer loyalty sits with someone else's label.
Klara: So the new brewery changes that how?
Marco: The new facility is being built specifically for their own branded range. No contract work. This is Shepherd Neame saying — we'd rather brew less and own it completely than brew more and own nothing.
Klara: I find that genuinely compelling. It's a bet on brand depth over production scale.
Marco: For any brand manager in a legacy category — beer, dairy, bakery — this is worth taking seriously. Owning your production process means consistency. And consistency is what turns a regional brand into a trusted one.
Klara: My question is whether smaller volume is commercially viable long-term. The economics of brewing are brutal. You need scale to keep costs down.
Marco: Fair concern. But the counter-argument is margin. A well-loved own brand at the right price point can out-earn three times the volume at contract rates.
Klara: A calculated trade-off worth watching.
Marco: Our third story is up next.
Marco: Mondelez is suing another UK chocolate start-up — and this one tells us something bigger than a single legal dispute.
Klara: So who is Catherine's Originals, and what's the claim here?
Marco: Catherine's Originals is a small UK chocolate brand. Mondelez — the company behind Cadbury — has filed trademark infringement claims against them. The specifics of exactly what triggered it are still emerging, but the legal action is real and it's separate from the snowball dispute we covered previously. Different brand, different product territory, same aggressor.
Klara: Which is the part worth pausing on. Because one lawsuit could be a one-off. Two begins to look like a pattern.
Marco: That's the read I'd put on this. Mondelez appears to have made a deliberate decision to actively police the edges of its brand territory in the UK chocolate category. The artisan end of that category has exploded. Lots of small brands, lots of creative products, lots of names and designs that sit close to established territory.
Klara: And from a legal standpoint, if you don't defend a trademark, you can eventually lose it. So there's a protective logic to this, even when it feels heavy-handed.
Marco: That's true. But I'd argue the effect on the market is chilling regardless of the legal rationale. If you're a small chocolate brand planning to grow, you now have to factor in the cost of a potential lawsuit before you've even hit meaningful distribution.
Klara: That's where I'd push back slightly. The burden on challengers isn't new — it's just more visible. Smart founders have always needed legal counsel before scaling in a category with a dominant incumbent.
Marco: Fair. But the message from Mondelez is now unmistakable. If you're building in their category, build carefully — because they are watching, and they are willing to use the courts to protect their position.
Marco: Today's clearest signal — knowing when to speak and when to stay silent is one of the most underrated skills in brand management.
Klara: So look at your brand this week and ask honestly: are you choosing your moments, or are your moments choosing you?