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India's FSSAI issues notices to Nestlé and Abbott over infant-formula marketing; Coca-Cola lets UK consumers vote on its Christmas Truck tour stops.
Nestlé is under regulatory fire in India over infant-formula claims — a reputationally compounding moment for a brand already under global scrutiny. Plus, what Coca-Cola's Christmas Truck vote teaches every FMCG brand manager about seasonal assets.
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: Morning — we've got a packed one for you today.
Klara: Three stories that are genuinely worth slowing down for. Nestlé is in hot water with regulators over infant formula marketing in India. Then we're looking at how smaller challenger brands are now writing the rules that the big players are scrambling to follow.
Marco: And Coca-Cola is handing its Christmas Truck over to the public. Let's get into it.
Marco: India's food safety regulator has formally put Nestlé and Abbott on notice over how they're marketing infant formula in the country.
Klara: Let's give that some context. Infant formula is one of the most tightly regulated product categories in the world. That's because how you market it directly affects whether mothers choose to breastfeed or not — and that's a public health issue. Most countries, including India, have rules that ban promotional claims and restrict how these products can be advertised or sold.
Marco: Nestlé is already carrying reputational baggage on this globally. There have been separate investigations in other markets questioning whether its infant nutrition products are being marketed responsibly. So a formal regulatory notice from India's FSSAI — that's India's equivalent of a food standards authority — landing on top of all that is not a small thing.
Klara: The FSSAI issued notices to both Nestlé India and Abbott for claims and promotional activity that allegedly crossed the line. We don't yet have the full detail of exactly which claims triggered it. But the fact that India's regulator is now actively enforcing these rules signals something important — enforcement in emerging markets is accelerating, not slowing down.
Marco: And that's the strategic point for any brand manager working in nutrition. The risk here isn't just a legal fine. It's what happens to consumer trust and retailer confidence when a brand ends up in the news for this kind of thing. Product claim compliance — making sure what you say on pack and in promotions is actually legal — has to sit alongside your creative work, not after it.
Klara: I'd say the risk is even bigger for Nestlé because this is a compounding story. Each new market creates another headline. One incident is a problem. A pattern becomes a brand narrative you can't easily shake.
Marco: Well put. Let's move to our next story now.
Klara: Our second story this morning is about challenger brands — and how the smaller players in FMCG are no longer just competing with the big names. They're now writing the rules for entire categories.
Marco: For a long time, the direction of influence was pretty clear. Big companies like Unilever or Nestlé set the tone — on shelf, in advertising, in how a category was supposed to look and feel. Smaller brands fought for the scraps. That relationship has quietly flipped.
Klara: So what's actually changing? Marketing Dive looked at how challenger brands in consumer goods are increasingly setting the creative and channel benchmarks that everyone else then follows. Things like building tight communities of loyal customers before a product even launches, taking bold positions that a big brand's legal and compliance team would never approve, and going digital-first rather than waiting for TV budgets to move.
Marco: And the uncomfortable truth for large FMCG brand managers is that these tactics are working — and they're working fast enough that the big companies are now copying them, not the other way around.
Klara: What strikes me is how this plays out in the consumer's mind. A challenger brand gets there first with a point of view. The big brand arrives later with a similar message, and suddenly looks like it's following a trend rather than leading one. That's a real positioning problem.
Marco: I'd slightly push back on the doom and gloom framing though. Large brands have scale, distribution, and retailer relationships that challengers spend years trying to build. A small brand can win on social and still struggle to get consistent shelf space in Tesco or Carrefour.
Klara: True — but scale doesn't protect your cultural relevance. And that's what's actually at stake here. You can be everywhere on shelf and nowhere in the consumer's head.
Marco: Our third story is coming up next.
Marco: Our final story today — Coca-Cola is letting the British public vote on where its famous Christmas Truck stops this year.
Klara: For anyone who's never seen it, the Coca-Cola Christmas Truck is a big red lorry covered in lights that tours the UK every winter. It's been running since the late nineties, tied to Coca-Cola's legendary holiday advertising. Over the decades it's become one of those rare brand-owned moments that people actually look forward to — queuing up, posting about it, taking the kids. It's a genuine cultural event.
Marco: Until now, Coca-Cola decided where the truck went. This year, that decision belongs to the public. Consumers can vote on which UK locations the truck visits in 2026. That single change transforms a broadcast event — something the brand does *at* people — into something people feel they own a piece of.
Klara: And that's not a small creative tweak. When you give consumers a genuine decision to make, they become invested. They campaign for their town. They share the vote. They tell their friends. Coca-Cola gets organic reach it would otherwise have to pay for, plus real data on where demand actually sits across the country.
Marco: For any brand manager running a seasonal property — an annual campaign, a recurring event, a heritage moment — this is worth studying carefully. You don't have to burn down what's working. You add a layer that makes people feel part of it.
Klara: I'd add a note of caution though. This only works because the truck already means something. If the underlying asset isn't loved, handing over the vote doesn't fix that. The consumer agency has to sit on top of something people genuinely care about — not replace the thing they were supposed to care about in the first place.
Marco: That's the lesson. Participation amplifies affection. It doesn't create it from scratch.
Marco: Today's clearest thread — whether you're defending a legacy claim, chasing a challenger's playbook, or handing your brand to a consumer vote, the old idea of brand control is quietly disappearing.
Klara: So pick one thing your brand still controls tightly — and ask honestly whether holding on is protecting you or just slowing you down.