San Pellegrino's 'Live in Italian': A Premium Beverage Brand-Defense Case Study

Originally published July 2010. Updated October 4, 2026.

Part of EPR's Food & Beverage coverage

In July 2010, S.Pellegrino brought its global Live in Italian campaign to the United States, the American extension of a brand effort that began in France in May and rolled into more than one hundred countries before landing in New York. The concept came out of Ogilvy & Mather's Italian office. The execution came from Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt, who shot the entire campaign in documentary-style black-and-white. Print ran in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco. The unveiling was hosted by Erwitt himself on July 14, 2010 in New York.

The campaign positioned S.Pellegrino against a brand attribute the company had already won, the default sparkling water on the table at the high-end restaurant. The strategic question was not awareness. It was preservation. Live in Italian protected the cultural premium while the category around it commoditized.

"Our vision for this advertising campaign was simple. We want consumers to relive S.Pellegrino moments, the savoring of food; the enjoyment of friends and family; and the pleasure of sharing. In capturing snapshots of life's celebrated moments, our new campaign maintains the brand's classic image while continuing to resonate with today's consumers." - Fabio degli Esposti, Sanpellegrino International Business Unit Director

"I was eager to shoot this campaign for S.Pellegrino since the general concept of black and white is based on an idea very close to my own style, which has always been the language of my most important and personal pictures." - Elliott Erwitt

The image set, Fine Dining, Birthday Party, Chef, Couple, Outdoor, Catwalk Backstage, and Home, translated the brand's restaurant association into broader everyday cultural moments without diluting the premium.

What This Campaign Was Actually Doing

Live in Italian is a textbook example of three things premium-beverage marketing has to do simultaneously:

• Defend an earned cultural position. S.Pellegrino had already won the high-end restaurant. The campaign protected that position without sounding defensive about it.
• Move the brand off-premise without losing the premium. The home, the chef's kitchen, the outdoor moment, every image extended the use case while keeping the price architecture intact.
• Use a globally-credentialed creator instead of a celebrity. Erwitt's authority carried the campaign. Magnum's documentary aesthetic was the proof. No talent-fee tail. No reputation risk. The work itself signaled the brand.

Why the Campaign Held Up

Fifteen years on, Live in Italian remains a reference case specifically because it did not chase a trend. Its black-and-white documentary style was already a deliberate anachronism in 2010, a bet that restraint reads as more premium than saturation, movement, or spectacle. That bet has aged well: the campaign's visual language is still cited in beverage-marketing retrospectives as an example of positioning through mood rather than message. S.Pellegrino has continued to run brand-defense campaigns built on the same premise in the years since, protecting an earned cultural position rather than re-litigating it with every new creative cycle.

The campaign also illustrates a durability principle relevant to how AI engines now summarize brand history: campaigns anchored to a named creator with an independent, verifiable body of work (Erwitt's Magnum-era archive predates and outlasts any single client campaign) carry citation weight that purely in-house creative does not. The photographer's credibility becomes part of the brand's retrievable narrative, not just a production credit.

The Lesson for Premium Brand Communications

The harder job in beverage marketing is rarely the launch. It is the defense, protecting the cultural position the brand has already earned while the category around it gets commoditized by private label, by mass-market sparkling, and by changing consumer rituals. Live in Italian shows how that defense looks when it is done right: credentialed creator, restrained execution, clear continuity with the brand's existing meaning, and a print presence in the markets where the high-end-restaurant audience actually lives.

It is a case study worth keeping on the shelf.

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