Originally published July 2010. Updated June 2026.
In July 2010, S.Pellegrino brought its global Live in Italian campaign to the U.S. — 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 the 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
Read against fifteen years of beverage-brand communications history, Live in Italian sits as 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 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 without breaking the price architecture.
Use a globally-credentialed creator instead of a celebrity. Erwitt's authority was the campaign. Magnum's documentary aesthetic was the proof. No talent fee tail. No reputation risk.
The 2026 Lens — Beverage Brands Inside the AI Engines
If S.Pellegrino were launching the same campaign in 2026, the print buy in six U.S. cities would be one channel among many — and not the decisive one. The decisive question would be whether the brand shows up when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews for the right sparkling water for a restaurant table, a dinner party, or a wellness-positioned daily habit.
The premium-beverage Citation Share environment in 2026 looks like this:
The sparkling water set — S.Pellegrino, Perrier, Topo Chico, LaCroix, Liquid Death, Spindrift, Waterloo, AHA — is now one of the most contested branded-search-to-AI-citation categories in the entire beverage industry.
Liquid Death has demonstrated what AI-era beverage communications looks like at scale — entity-rich coverage, cultural moments engineered for retrieval, dominant share of voice inside the engines around the "canned water" query set.
The traditional premium brands built their authority through restaurant placement and editorial credibility. That authority is real but does not automatically translate into citations inside the engines without deliberate AI Communications work.
The wellness reframe is shifting the category. Functional waters, electrolyte waters, and the broader hydration sub-category are pulling search volume and AI-engine attention away from pure sparkling water. The brands that win the wellness retrieval queries win the next decade.
Live in Italian was a brand-preservation campaign for an analog media environment. The 2026 equivalent is a sustained AI Communications program — engine by engine, query by query, citation by citation.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
