Behind the buzz about Publicis, TikTok and AI sits a harder question about sales, affordability and measurable growth
PepsiCo’s marketing transformation contains nearly every idea currently attracting attention in the advertising industry.
A new global media partner. A social-first “co-sourcing” model. Creator-led product launches. TikTok Shop. Super Bowl advertising. Gemini-powered media placement. A broader enterprise AI partnership with Google Cloud.
The list is impressive.
The harder question is whether any of it addresses PepsiCo’s actual North American growth problem.
That requires separating three things that are often blended together in marketing coverage: verified financial performance, company-reported campaign results and plausible strategic logic.
PepsiCo reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $24.18 billion, up 6.4 percent from a year earlier. Organic revenue grew 2.4 percent.
Those companywide figures look healthy. North America is more complicated.
PepsiCo Foods North America generated $6.37 billion in revenue, down 2 percent. PepsiCo Beverages North America generated $7.24 billion, up 7 percent on a reported basis. However, acquisitions net of divestitures contributed six percentage points to the beverage division’s growth, leaving organic revenue growth at 1 percent. Beverage organic volume declined 4 percent.
Management has also described a more financially constrained U.S. shopper. CEO Ramon Laguarta said higher gasoline prices were affecting conversion in convenience stores and other impulse-driven channels.
This is the commercial backdrop against which the marketing overhaul should be judged.
The problem is not that consumers have never heard of Pepsi, Lay’s or Doritos. PepsiCo owns some of the best-known brands in the world.
The challenge is getting consumers to choose them often enough, at prices that support growth, in a market where household budgets, health preferences and shopping behavior are changing.
PepsiCo selected Publicis Groupe as exclusive lead global media partner in early September. The “One PepsiCo” model is expected to connect media strategy, planning, activation, connected identity, data and technology across more than 200 markets.
Industry reports estimate the assignment at roughly $1.7 billion. That number is external, not a PepsiCo disclosure. PepsiCo’s annual report shows the wider scale of the company’s marketing operation, with $5.4 billion in advertising and other marketing activities in 2025, including $3.4 billion in advertising expense.
What can we conclude from the Publicis decision?
It is evidence that PepsiCo wants more integrated media governance. It may improve consistency, data use and operational efficiency. It may reduce fragmentation across markets and functions.
What can we not conclude?
There is no evidence yet that putting global media under Publicis will restore North American growth. The appointment is too new, and marketing performance depends on far more than agency structure.
The commercial thesis still needs to be proven.
PepsiCo’s U.S. beverage business offers more immediate operating evidence.
Under a closer “co-sourcing” arrangement with VaynerMedia, PepsiCo says content output tripled and some workflows accelerated from roughly a month to two or three days. CMO Mark Kirkham also reported engagement increases between 50 percent and 70 percent depending on the brand and cited strong year-over-year growth at Mug Root Beer.
These are useful signals, but they are company executive claims reported from an industry conference. They are not an independently controlled test showing that the operating model caused the sales result.
Several alternative explanations could contribute to brand growth: distribution, pricing, promotion, competitive activity, product availability or broader category trends.
The strongest conclusion is narrower. PepsiCo has demonstrated that it can shorten content production cycles substantially by changing how internal and agency teams work together.
That is operationally meaningful. It is not yet proof that faster social output fixes a portfolio-wide growth challenge.
PepsiCo’s Flavor Swap program provides a clearer experiment in how marketing can move closer to a transaction.
Limited-edition snack combinations were paired with Madison Beer, iShowSpeed and Dude Perfect and released first through TikTok Shop before national retail. PepsiCo described it as the first time a limited-edition PepsiCo Foods product was launched through TikTok Shop before broader store availability.
Marketing Dive called it PepsiCo’s first creator-led product launch.
The word “creator-led” needs care. PepsiCo says flavor combinations were informed by consumer and packaging testing. Available evidence does not establish that the creators independently developed the products.
The more defensible point is that creators were integrated into product introduction and commerce rather than used only as endorsers after the product was complete.
That can shorten the distance between attention and purchase. It can also make performance easier to test because the platform can participate directly in the transaction.
Still, one limited-edition launch does not establish that creator commerce can materially improve the economics of PepsiCo’s core North American portfolio.
The experiment is relevant. The result remains to be measured.
One fact should keep the rest of the story grounded.
PepsiCo Foods U.S. cut suggested retail prices on numerous products by up to nearly 15 percent in February.
That matters because a financially pressured consumer cannot be targeted into having more disposable income.
PepsiCo is increasing marketing expense in North America during the second half. CFO Steve Schmitt said the company would continue to “play offense.” Yet the company is pairing that investment with affordability measures, smaller portions and other portfolio changes.
This makes it difficult to isolate future growth and say it came from better marketing alone.
If volumes improve after a combination of lower prices, new products, heavier advertising and improved distribution, attribution will be complicated.
That is not a flaw in the strategy. It is a reason to be skeptical of simple narratives about what “worked.”
PepsiCo’s AI program is another area where careful reading matters.
The company announced a multi-year Google Cloud collaboration in April that includes the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and extends across analytics, supply chain and go-to-market functions.
In Europe, PepsiCo media executive Josep Hernández wrote that AI-powered Video reach campaigns represented more than 60 percent of the organization’s YouTube Ads activity and had contributed to a roughly 25 percent year-over-year reduction in YouTube CPM.
A U.K. Doritos test used Gemini-powered technology to identify emotional peaks in videos and time ads around those moments. PepsiCo reported an 11.6 percent increase in Brand Lift without increasing CPM or cost per user reached.
These are PepsiCo-reported results published on a Google marketing platform. They are not independent evaluations.
They also measure media efficiency and brand response, not North American sales recovery.
The distinction matters. AI can be excellent at reducing waste or improving media timing without changing whether a consumer wants the product, can afford it or considers it appropriate for their diet.
PepsiCo also remains a major mass advertiser.
At Super Bowl LX, the company ran four commercials across Pepsi Zero Sugar, Lay’s and Poppi. Pepsi’s ad used a polar bear associated with Coca-Cola and a blind taste test. Lay’s and Pepsi ranked near the top of USA Today’s Ad Meter.
That is not evidence of a company abandoning traditional media for TikTok and AI.
It is evidence of a company trying to connect large-scale reach with social and digital amplification.
The better description of PepsiCo’s strategy is therefore not “digital first” in the simplistic sense. It is increasingly integrated: television, creators, social commerce, retail, data and AI are being made to work in a more connected system.
A convincing evaluation of PepsiCo’s marketing reset should look for more than content volume and engagement.
North American organic revenue growth should improve without depending entirely on acquisitions. Volume trends should strengthen. Affordability initiatives should generate sustainable demand rather than one-time trade-down behavior. Marketing efficiency should improve without weakening brand distinctiveness. New social-commerce programs should show repeat purchase or incremental reach, not only launch attention.
The company should also be able to demonstrate that its faster marketing system can work across multiple brands and categories rather than only in isolated successes.
Third-quarter results, scheduled for October 8, will provide another data point, not a verdict.
PepsiCo’s strategy is coherent.
A company facing pressured consumers is lowering some prices. A company operating in fast social environments is shortening content cycles. A company selling through platforms is integrating creators and commerce. A company managing billions of dollars in media is consolidating data and technology. A company trying to make faster decisions is investing in AI.
Those pieces fit together.
What is not yet established is whether they are enough to restore sustained North American growth.
That is the distinction worth preserving while the marketing industry celebrates the overhaul. PepsiCo has built a credible theory of change. The next stage is not another headline about AI, creators or agencies.
It is evidence.
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