The hangover marketers need to shake
For years, a single 30-second commercial could shape most of what people thought about a brand. Fanta’s global VP of marketing, Ibrahim Khan, says that era has left the industry with what he calls “the hangover of the TV era.” In a conversation on Adweek’s The Speed of Culture podcast, he argued that the product, retail experience, live events and consumer conversation now belong to one connected brand system.
Fanta’s scale makes the point concrete. The brand has $18 billion in global retail value. That size demands consistency, but Khan says consistency is not the same as running the identical execution everywhere.
Fixed brand truth, flexible expression
Khan’s starting point is that the fundamental reason a consumer chooses a product rarely changes dramatically from one market to the next. What shifts is how people meet the brand: language, channels, daily routines, cultural habits and drinking occasions.
- Protect the fundamentals. Decide which parts of the brand are non-negotiable.
- Free the expression. Give local markets room to adapt the rest.
- Drop the assumption. The instinct to simplify is not automatically universal—what feels overwhelming in one market may match local expectations.
Khan points to beverage consumption with food as an example. That occasion is less developed in parts of Asia than in Western markets, so Fanta leans more heavily into leisure occasions there. An in-store environment that initially felt overwhelming to him turned out to reflect what consumers in that market expected.
Halloween as a platform, not a stunt
Fanta has spent years building around Halloween, but its ambition has moved beyond year-to-year collaborations. Haunted Universe is designed as an expandable world of characters, stories, lore, partnerships and experiences that can develop over many years. Before entering the space, Fanta researched horror archetypes across cultures and fandoms.
The cultural choice is deliberate. As Khan puts it, “not every festivity needs a brand, and not every brand needs a festivity.” Halloween works for Fanta because indulgence, fun and soft-drink consumption already sit naturally inside the occasion.
What marketers can borrow
Khan also draws a line between AI’s capability and authorship. Technology can help scale bigger creative worlds, much as new animation tools changed entertainment, but marketing still contains art, taste, ethics and judgment that are inherently human. For Fanta’s Halloween work, AI supports an effort shaped by people; it does not replace creative thinking.
For marketing leaders, the practical implication is to think of brand work as a system: product, retail, experience and conversation are all brand assets. If the consumer is the loudest channel, the job starts with giving people something worth talking about.
The larger warning is for brands still waiting for one big ad to do the job. Consumers now hold the microphone. If they are not talking about what a brand is doing, the old tools cannot manufacture the same relevance they once could.
Source: Adweek
