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Clorox CMO Eric Schwartz replaces brand campaigns with always-on systems; Demi launches mid-strength spirits; political ads wreck FMCG Q4 CTV plans.
Clorox is publicly retiring the traditional campaign model — and it has structural consequences for every FMCG brand team. Plus, a challenger brand is trying to build a spirits category that Diageo and Pernod haven't touched.
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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 sharp stories on the agenda this morning — Clorox's CMO is quietly burying the traditional brand campaign, and it's worth understanding why.
Klara: Then we're looking at a challenger brand trying to carve out a completely new spirits category — right in the gap the big players have left open.
Marco: And we'll unpack why US political ad spending is quietly wrecking Q4 plans for regional FMCG brands.
Klara: Let's dig in.
Marco: Clorox's top marketing executive has just publicly walked away from the traditional campaign model — and it's worth paying attention to why.
Klara: For context, most big consumer goods companies still run their marketing in bursts. You plan a campaign, you launch it, you measure it, and then you plan the next one. That cycle — usually tied to quarterly budgets — has been the default for decades. Clorox is now saying that model isn't fit for purpose anymore.
Marco: CMO Eric Schwartz laid out a new approach covering three of their brands — Pine-Sol, Brita, and Hidden Valley. The idea is what he calls a 'system of relevance.' Instead of big campaign moments, the brand stays present and useful all the time. He described it as 'intentional but flexible' — meaning there's a clear brand direction, but the content and messaging can shift with what's actually happening in culture or in the aisle.
Klara: And the phrase 'inside-out' is interesting. That means starting from what the brand genuinely stands for, rather than chasing whatever feels culturally relevant that week. It's the opposite of reactive marketing — you're not just jumping on trends.
Marco: For brand managers in Europe, this is a structural question. Your agency contracts, your planning calendars, your KPIs — the numbers you use to measure success — are most likely still built around campaign windows. This forces you to ask whether that setup can actually deliver continuous relevance.
Klara: I'd add a note of caution though. Always-on marketing costs money and demands a lot of content. Smaller brand teams can struggle to sustain it without losing quality. The campaign model exists partly because it's manageable.
Marco: That's a fair tension. Clorox has the portfolio scale to make it work. Not every brand does.
Klara: Our next story is coming up now.
Marco: A small challenger brand is trying to create an entirely new drinks category — and it's betting that neither full-strength spirits nor no-and-low alcohol products are actually solving what drinkers want.
Klara: To understand why this matters, you need to know where the drinks market stands right now. The no and low alcohol boom — think Seedlip, Lucky Saint, alcohol-free beers — has been enormous. But critics have always argued it's a compromise. You're giving something up. On the other side, full-strength spirits haven't changed. There's been very little in between.
Marco: The founders of Quarter Proof — Rohan Radhakrishnan and his team — are now rebranding entirely and launching a new brand called Demi. The pitch is simple: mid-strength spirits as their own distinct category. Not a watered-down version of something stronger, not a substitute for something softer. A permanent middle ground built around specific occasions when drinkers want some alcohol, but not a full measure.
Klara: What I find interesting here is the honesty. The founder literally says "do I believe there's a need? A hundred percent." That kind of conviction is either a very good sign or a warning signal. Category creation — building a new shelf space from scratch rather than competing in an existing one — is extremely hard. Most attempts fail.
Marco: But the pressure this puts on Diageo and Pernod is real. They've watched the moderation trend grow for years. Neither has credibly planted a flag in the middle. A small brand doing it first forces the big players to decide whether they follow or try to acquire their way in.
Klara: My hesitation is the US-first entry. European drinking culture and regulation around alcohol marketing are quite different. What lands in America doesn't always translate.
Marco: Agreed. If Demi gets traction in the US, expect that European question to come fast. Now, let's head to our final story.
Marco: Political ad spending in the US is forcing regional FMCG brands to rip up their holiday media plans at the worst possible moment.
Klara: To understand why, you need to know how CTV works. CTV — Connected TV — is advertising on streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, or any service you watch through a smart TV. It's become a go-to channel for regional brands during the holiday season because it lets them target specific cities or regions precisely. The inventory — the available ad slots — is limited, and prices go up when demand rises.
Marco: What's happening now is that US midterm election campaigns are flooding that same inventory with political money. Political advertisers don't have flexible budgets — they have to spend by election day, full stop. So they're willing to pay whatever it takes. CPMs — the cost per thousand people who see your ad — are spiking in key regional markets right in the pre-Christmas buying window. FMCG brands that planned and budgeted their CTV activity months ago are suddenly either priced out completely or bumped from slots they thought they'd secured.
Klara: Media buyers are saying this is serious enough that brands are moving budgets in real time — away from CTV and into other channels. That's a genuine headache. You don't rebuild a seasonal campaign in a few weeks without something suffering.
Marco: The structural lesson here is blunt. Political spend cycles are predictable. Midterms and presidential elections follow a fixed calendar. There is no excuse for treating this as a surprise. It needs to live inside annual media planning as a known risk — with contingency budgets and alternative channels already mapped out.
Klara: I'd soften that slightly. European brand managers watching this can afford to feel a little removed — political advertising restrictions in most EU markets mean this specific dynamic doesn't travel. But the broader lesson does: any external event that competes for the same inventory you need should already be in your risk plan before the year begins.
Marco: Today's clearest signal — the brands that win are the ones willing to redesign how they work, not just what they say.
Klara: So look at one thing your team still measures the old way, and ask whether that metric is actually connected to how people buy today.