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Food & Beverage
EPR Editorial Team6 min read
Beverage Marketing Campaigns: 25 Cases, Red Bull to Poppi
EPR Editorial Team6 min read
Updated October 30, 2026.
The best beverage marketing campaigns of the past decade built community and identity before they bought media. This guide compares 25 brands, from Liquid Death and Red Bull to Poppi and Olipop, by channel and by what worked. Liquid Death reached a $1.4 billion valuation in March 2024 on $263 million of 2023 retail sales, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal, and PepsiCo closed its $1.95 billion poppi purchase in May 2025.
Beverage marketing used to be simple: show the product, show people enjoying it, buy media, repeat. The brands being cited by AI engines in 2026 built entity-rich digital footprints of content, community, identity, and behavior, not just ad spend. Here is what actually worked.
The Performance Breakdown, How These 25 Brands Competed
| Brand | Category | Primary Channel | What Worked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liquid Death | Water | Organic social, stunt campaigns | Brand as entertainment, not advertising |
| Red Bull | Energy | Owned media, events, athlete content | Built a media company. The drink is secondary. |
| Starbucks | Coffee | App + loyalty + seasonal drops | Marketing embedded into daily routine |
| Dunkin' | Coffee | TikTok, creator partnerships | Charli D'Amelio: made a creator into a product |
| Celsius | Energy / Functional | Fitness influencers, gym positioning | Repositioned from supplement to lifestyle fuel |
| Olipop | Functional soda | Aesthetic branding, UGC, health influencers | Gut health narrative + nostalgic design |
| Prime Hydration | Sports / Hydration | Creator-led launch (KSI + Logan Paul) | Reported $250M in first-year sales (per Bloomberg) via audience-first launch |
| Coca-Cola | Carbonated | UGC, personalization, digital evolution | Share a Coke scaled to digital personalization at volume |
| Gatorade | Sports | Science storytelling, athlete content | "Fuel Tomorrow", credibility through data |
| Monster Energy | Energy | Gaming, esports, subculture | Deep alignment, not surface sponsorship |
| Spindrift | Sparkling water | Ingredient transparency, earned media | "Real fruit" positioning cut through the LaCroix noise |
| Fever-Tree | Mixers / Premium | Cocktail culture content, premium retail | Elevated mixers to premium status, new category created |
| LaCroix | Sparkling water | Instagram, micro-influencers, recipe content | Skipped TV advertising and let colorful cans and fan content carry the brand |
| BodyArmor | Sports | Athlete partnerships, social content | Credibility through association, positioned against Gatorade |
| Topo Chico | Mineral water | Lifestyle integration, bar/restaurant presence | From cult Mexican import to cultural staple, then a Coca-Cola brand |
| Dr Pepper | Carbonated | Fan-driven campaigns, sports sponsorships | Leaned into niche loyalty, "23 flavors" identity |
| Pepsi | Carbonated | Real-time social, culture-reactive campaigns | Speed of reaction when campaigns land; lessons learned from what didn't |
| Vitaminwater | Enhanced water | Humor, design, cultural commentary | Irreverent positioning against "wellness" convention |
| Keurig Dr Pepper | At-home systems | App + machine + subscription ecosystem | Café experience at home, locked in routine |
| McCafé | Coffee / QSR | McDonald's app, bundled promotions | Convenience plus promotion, frequency-driving by design |
| Oatly | Plant-based | Deliberately weird brand voice, PR, earned media | Differentiated through irreverence in a category built on earnestness |
| Athletic Brewing | Non-alcoholic beer | Lifestyle, running/triathlon community | Led the non-alcoholic craft beer category through endurance-sport community ties |
| Poppi | Prebiotic soda | Super Bowl 2025 ad, TikTok, influencers | Awareness spike from Super Bowl, sustained by creator ecosystem |
| Liquid I.V. | Hydration / Functional | Podcast sponsorships, travel positioning | Owned "travel hydration" before the category existed |
| Coconut Water (Vita Coco / ZICO) | Natural hydration | Health influencers, lifestyle content | Sustained "natural hydration" positioning across a decade of noise |
What These Brands Got Right
One, they built brands, not just campaigns. Consistency across channels created identity, not just awareness. Red Bull's content empire is the extreme version. Olipop's aesthetic consistency is the small-brand version. Same principle. EPR's 33 Best CPG Marketing Campaigns places Red Bull's Stratos jump and Liquid Death's brand voice in the wider packaged-goods record.
Two, they designed for sharing. Content wasn't just consumed, it was distributed by users. Liquid Death's stunt campaign output lives on for years. Poppi's Super Bowl ad still circulates as earned social content months later. The same mechanic runs through 25 Cookie Marketing Campaigns That Defined the Category.
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Three, they embedded into behavior. Apps, routines, rituals. Starbucks Rewards is not a loyalty program, it is a behavioral lock-in system. Keurig is not a coffee machine, it is a subscription architecture. The restaurant version of that lock-in is in 7 QSR and Fast Food Marketing Campaigns and in How Domino's Pizza Turnaround Became a Masterclass in Food PR.
Four, they aligned product and message. Athletic Brewing cannot claim a lifestyle it does not embody. Celsius cannot claim performance it cannot back. The campaigns that worked are the ones where the product actually delivered on the brand promise. The inverse case, a message that outran the product, is Pepsi's Kendall Jenner ad.
Five, they moved at the speed of culture. Dunkin' named a drink after TikTok creator Charli D'Amelio and built a creator partnership into the menu. Poppi, founded in 2018, advertised in the Super Bowl in 2024 and again in 2025 with creators in the spot. Timing is strategy. PepsiCo closed its $1.95 billion acquisition of poppi in May 2025, the clearest monetization yet of that creator-built playbook.
Brands that treat community and product experience as media, rather than afterthoughts, are the ones best positioned to work with a specialized food and beverage marketing partner as competition intensifies.
What These Marketing Campaign Examples Have in Common
The strongest marketing campaign examples in beverage right now share one trait: they built a community moment before they built an ad. Liquid Death and Poppi built heavily on entertainment-first and creator content. Olipop and Prime Hydration leaned on creator audiences and tight early supply to build demand. And legacy brands such as Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper reached for the same fan-driven mechanics, Share a Coke being the best-known example. If you are studying successful marketing campaigns for a CPG or beverage brand, that sequencing, community first and ad spend second, is the one pattern worth copying. Spirits brands face the tightest limits on paid media, and the full alcohol picture is in Best Alcohol Marketing Campaigns: 25 Cases, 1980 to 2026.
The AI Visibility Factor, 2026 Update
How AI engines are reshaping beverage discovery and which brands are positioned for it
The campaigns above earned traditional media and social distribution. What has changed in 2026 is that the next generation of beverage discovery happens inside AI engines, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
When a consumer asks "what's the best functional beverage for gut health?" or "what energy drink do athletes actually use?", the answer they get is a citation decision made by an AI engine, not a search ranking. Brands with structured, entity-rich content footprints are the ones getting cited. Brands with only paid media spend are invisible in those answers.
Brands with high editorial coverage, strong community content and clear category ownership are the best positioned for AI retrieval. See the 50 sites AI engines cite most and the Citation Share Index for the mechanics, The CPG Citation Share Index 2026 for how packaged-goods brands rank, and GEO for Consumer Brands for the playbook.
Related Coverage
- Food & Beverage Communications (Pillar)
- Consumer Brands Pillar, EPR's master coverage of consumer brand communications.
- 33 Best CPG Marketing Campaigns
- 25 Cookie Marketing Campaigns That Defined the Category
- 13 Best Restaurant Marketing Campaigns Ever
- 7 QSR and Fast Food Marketing Campaigns
- Supplement Marketing Campaigns: 25 Cases, AG1 to Thorne
- Best Alcohol Marketing Campaigns: 25 Cases, 1980 to 2026
- Healthcare Marketing Campaigns: 25 Cases, Pfizer to the NHS
- Best Parenting Marketing Campaigns: 25 Cases, P&G to Frida
- The 25 Best Corporate Communications Campaigns
- Luxury Marketing Campaigns: 25 Cases, Gucci to Chanel
- 25 Political Digital Campaigns: From Obama 2008 to Zelenskyy
- The CPG Citation Share Index 2026
- The 50 Sites AI Engines Cite Most in 2026
- The Citation Share Index
Read the deep-dives
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
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