One narrow flavor claim, a returned name and a year of sampling turned an old soda into 2026's fastest-growing brand.
How Coca-Cola's Mr. Pibb Became the Fastest-Growing Brand of 2026
Coca-Cola relaunched Mr. Pibb a year ago, returning the soda to its original name after marketing it as Pibb Xtra for more than two decades. It reached a handful of markets last fall, went national in February and got a basketball-culture push in March featuring NBA legend Scottie Pippen. Coca-Cola says volume grew more than 20% in the second quarter, and the brand added 4 million households since the start of the year. Morning Consult named it 2026's fastest-growing brand, with purchase consideration up more than 11 percentage points.
The strategy rests on one flavor lane. Farhan Ali, senior director of sparkling flavors at Coca-Cola North America, said the team saw "a massive opportunity within spicy cherry, which was growing very fast." Distribution, campaigns across touchpoints and sampling, which ran all year in the lead launch markets, did the rest. The biggest gains came from Gen X and millennials, and the smallest growth rate came from Gen Z. A blackberry and black currant flavor, Mr. Pibb Black-Current, is due in spring 2027, and a delivery-company partnership aimed at late-night and snacking occasions is set for the second half of this year.
Coke did not build a new brand. It took back an old name, picked one flavor claim and handed out samples for a year. Notice who responded: Gen X and millennials grew most, Gen Z least. If your relaunch plan starts with a youth pitch, check whether nostalgia plus trial would do the job for less.
Mr. Pibb is a clean example of owning a category entry point. A narrow need state, here spicy cherry, gives a brand a reason to be picked before it has scale. Sampling and distribution then turn that reason into trial. Awareness without a specific claim rarely converts.
Creator spend keeps climbing while the people paying for it still cannot compare one creator to another.
Why Brands Struggle With Influencer Measurement, and What to Do About It
A survey from the Association of National Advertisers, in its report on reducing waste in influencer marketing, found about two-thirds of marketers call measurement the hardest part of the discipline. Vetting, negotiating, contracting and finding creators were each named by 40% to 45% of respondents. Leah Marshall, the ANA's vice president of digital and influencer marketing, said measurement "makes apples-to-apples comparisons very difficult" and that no one is "owning the entire creator ecosystem within the organization."
The spend is large and still growing. The IAB says creator marketing spend reached $37 billion last year and is on track for $44 billion in 2026. Kantar's 2026 Media Reactions report says 66% of brands plan to invest in micro-creators and 61% in nano-creators, against 41% for macro-creators and 42% for mega-influencers. The ANA report recommends a 30/70 paid-to-native split for awareness campaigns and 70/30 for conversion, and Marshall warned that paid amplification "shouldn't be a default setting." The ANA's Aquila measurement service has not yet started on creator marketing.
Two-thirds of marketers cannot compare creators and the budget still goes up. That is a spend problem with a spreadsheet on top. Name one owner for the creator ecosystem, set the paid-to-native split before the brief goes out, and stop treating amplification as a default.
The ANA's 30/70 and 70/30 splits are a useful frame. Awareness campaigns lean on native reach and trust. Conversion campaigns lean on paid amplification of proven content. Deciding the split first makes later results comparable across creators.
Peacock's AI-guided Bravo experience shows what a brand sponsorship looks like when the host is a model.
Wendy's Signs On as First Sponsor for Peacock's AI-Powered Bravo Experience
NBCUniversal's Peacock launched Your Bravoverse, an AI-powered fan experience inside the Peacock mobile app. It gives subscribers a personalized feed of Bravo content from popular franchises, guided by an AI-generated avatar of "Watch What Happens Live" host Andy Cohen that was trained to match his style. Wendy's is the launch sponsor, building on a long-term Bravo partnership that covers talent tie-ups, the BravoCon fan convention and custom content. Peacock first announced the experience in March.
The ad opportunity is custom integration, and per release details the Cohen avatar could reference a brand. Peacock says AI handled every step of creation, with NBCU editors validating output for quality and accuracy. The company says Bravo viewers watch 24 hours of Bravo content per month on average, and a company blog post cites more than 600 billion possible viewing variants. The IAB expects U.S. connected TV ad spend to rise 11% this year to $29.3 billion, and Toluna research found nearly 80% of Gen Z would stream more if a service added short-form video.
The sponsorship product here is a host that can say your brand name. That is powerful and it needs rules. Before you buy an integration, ask who approves the avatar's lines about you, how fast you can pull them, and what the model is allowed to improvise.
At 600 billion possible variants, no human reviews every output. NBCU's editors validate output, which means brand safety moves from checking assets to auditing a system. Expect sponsors to ask for sampling rights, logs and approval thresholds the way they once asked for ad proofs.
Peacock's parent is the name to watch from today's AI and streaming story.
Comcast (CMCSA): The Parent Behind Peacock's AI Bravo Bet
Comcast's NBCUniversal runs Peacock, the service that launched the AI-guided Your Bravoverse experience with Wendy's as launch sponsor. CMCSA closed at $21.77 on Oct. 15, up 3.42% from $21.05 the day before, on volume of about 32.4 million shares. The sources we fetched do not tie that move to the Peacock news, so we treat it as a data point, not a cause.
The stats below mix two timeframes. The close is the Oct. 15 figure. The 52-week range, P/E, dividend yield, market cap and analyst view come from a live Oct. 22 snapshot on StockAnalysis, when the stock was trading near $22.94. That snapshot shows a Hold consensus from 27 analysts and an average target of $28.63.
Ad-supported AI fan products are a bet on engagement time and sponsor demand. Watch whether Peacock lines up more sponsors for Your Bravoverse and whether the avatar format spreads to other NBCU franchises. This is a watch item, not a recommendation.
⚠️ Not investment advice. Verify independently before any decision.
The standing list, straight from Kelly.
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FX / HuluThe Pitt
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