Consumer Brand Stories: Case Studies and Brand Profiles

Consumer brand stories are case studies and profiles of food, beverage, snack, retail and CPG brands, grouped by what they teach: failures and backlash, turnarounds, category builders and brand profiles. Each entry links to a full story with dates, figures and sources, and the list grows as new stories publish. For case studies in other fields, see the other case study sections at the end of this page.

Consumer brand failures and backlash stories

These stories show what happens when a campaign, redesign or product problem collides with consumers, and how each brand responded.

• Pepsi's Kendall Jenner ad: the 2017 spot Pepsi pulled within a day.
• Tropicana's 2009 packaging redesign: a 20% unit sales drop and a reversal in under two months.
• Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch: what the boycott cost and whether the brand has recovered.
• Target's boycott and recovery
• Converse's ad backlash and response
• Jaguar's Copy Nothing rebrand
• McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit: litigation PR and public perception.
• McDonald's CEO and the Big Arch bite
• Wendy's chili finger hoax
• Stella and Chewy's and the raw pet food listeria cycle
• Tylenol crisis history: the 1982 poisonings, the 2010 recall and the 2025 autism dispute.

For more crisis coverage, see the crisis communications section and the crisis PR case studies from 2017 to 2026.

Consumer brand turnaround stories

Turnaround stories explain how a brand recovered share, trust or relevance, and what it changed to do so.

• Domino's pizza turnaround: a food PR masterclass.
• LEGO's turnaround: how a return to the brick rebuilt the business.
• Dunkin' PR strategy: the rename, the creator drink and the store growth plan.
• Burger King's marketing turnaround: the Reclaim the Flame plan, the Carrols deal and the brand profile.
• Kroger's reset under Greg Foran: lower prices, loyalty data and the Giant Eagle deal.
• Has Bud Light recovered?
• Target's road back from the boycott

Brand-building and campaign stories

These stories explain how brands built a category position or a campaign people still cite.

• Oreo's brand story: how a 1912 cookie became a media brand.
• Oreo's Dunk in the Dark and the Daily Twist.
• High Noon: how a vodka seltzer took over America.
• Absolut: how a vodka brand redefined global alcohol marketing.
• Dove's Real Beauty campaign
• The Farmer's Dog: fresh pet food direct to consumer.
• Old Spice campaign case study
• Reese's Pieces: PR and digital marketing.
• Coca-Cola's Share a Coke: personalization at retail scale.
• Heinz vs. Everyone: a category leader using humor to hold its lead.
• Starry: why PepsiCo replaced Sierra Mist for Gen Z.
• Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever: how the CPG giants won at digital marketing.

Consumer brand profiles

Brand profiles summarize a brand's PR and marketing strategy, its agencies and its moves.

• Liquid Death
• Olipop
• Poppi
• Chipotle
• McDonald's
• 7UP
• Cheerios
• Dunkin'
• Starbucks, and Starbucks versus Coffee Bean and Caribou
• Burger King
• Coca-Cola: the World Cup campaign and the Zero Sugar redesign.
• P&G: 1% organic growth and the fiscal 2027 plan.
• Unilever's marketing strategy: Power Brands and 4.8% underlying growth in the first half of 2026, and Unilever's PR strategy after the ice cream demerger.
• Walmart: advertising up 38% and e-commerce up 23%.
• Celsius Holdings: Alani Nu up, Celsius brand down.
• Adidas: the World Cup boost and the profit miss.
• Tatcha: the Unilever-owned prestige beauty brand.

Consumer brand research and corporate stories

These pages look at consumer brands through research data and at how a large parent company handles its brands.

• Red Bull won the cooler, Celsius won the chatbot: 5W research ranking the top 25 functional-beverage brands by AI citation share.
• 5W's CPG Citation Index: Unilever brands nearly invisible in AI, with Dove as the exception.
• Unilever and the digital PR paradox: purpose-driven branding under online scrutiny.

Consumer PR guides, rankings and campaign lists

• Consumer Brands and Retail, the CPG PR hub.
• What is consumer PR?
• Top CPG PR agencies in 2026
• Food and beverage communications
• 25 best CPG marketing campaigns
• Best restaurant marketing campaigns
• 25 best alcohol digital marketing campaigns
• 25 beverage brands that got digital marketing right
• 25 cookie marketing and PR campaign ideas
• KAWS Bearbrick history: how toys became blue-chip art.

More case study sections

EPR groups case studies by field. These collections cover the rest of the site.

• Best marketing campaigns by industry, with links to every full case list.
• Best PR campaigns by sector, from technology and sports to travel and TV.
• Crisis PR case studies, 2017 to 2026: what worked and what failed.
• Beauty marketing campaigns that worked: five case studies from L'Oréal to e.l.f.
• Footwear marketing campaigns: ten case studies from 1988 to 2026.
• Automotive digital marketing case studies: seven campaigns with sourced results.
• Hospital marketing campaigns: 25 campaigns from 2004 to 2025.
• Snapchat marketing campaigns: 25 campaigns and their reported results.
• Guerrilla marketing case studies: Ryanair, Red Bull, Liquid Death and Burger King.
• Celebrity PR case studies: 50-plus cases by sector.
• B2B SaaS category creation case studies: Drift, Gong, Datadog and Snowflake.
• Resort PR and marketing case studies: Aman, Four Seasons, Six Senses and more.
• Reputation case studies: BMW, Google, LEGO, Disney and Apple.
• Uber's turnaround: a corporate case study from CEO change to $10 billion in free cash flow.