Latest news with #Nestlé-owned
Forbes
11-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
When Marketing Plans Meet Reality: Coffee Mate's "The White Lotus" Moment
Nestle's Coffee-mate and HBO's The White Lotus collaborated on special flavors. The season finale ... More had a major surprise in store for the brand. In the fast-paced world of marketing, even carefully planned campaigns can take unexpected turns. Coffee Mate's recent collaboration with HBO's The White Lotus shows how brands must be prepared to pivot when reality doesn't match the marketing plan. [Spoiler Alert - details of the final episode of The White Lotus Season 3 follow.] Coffee Mate had partnered with HBO to release two limited-edition creamers themed around the show's third season set in Thailand: Thai iced coffee and piña colada flavors. What the Nestlé-owned brand didn't know was that in the season finale, poisoned piña coladas would become a central plot point. A character nearly kills his family using the drink spiked with seeds from a poisonous tree. Coffee Mate marketers responded perfectly to the unexpected plot twist on Instagram So what happens when your branded piña colada creamer suddenly shares the spotlight with a murder plot involving poisoning the same tropical drink? 'Poison' is an association food brands usually try to avoid. When the episode aired, Coffee Mate's marketing team responded swiftly on Instagram with a simple yet perfect message: "Well this is awkward." That single post resonated with consumers and other brands alike precisely because it acknowledged the unexpected connection in an authentic way. This rapid response was possible because of Coffee Mate's approach to marketing. As Daniel Jhung, president of Nestlé USA's coffee and beverage division explained to the Wall Street Journal, they operate with "a virtual war room" during key events. They observe reactions in real time and respond quickly without requiring multiple approval layers. Anyone who's worked in marketing knows the frustration of waiting for approvals while a timely opportunity slips away. The Coffee Mate team's ability to react wouldn't have been possible without proper empowerment. As Jhung noted, "If they've got to go through five layers of approval, you're not going to be able to do these things in real time." Some marketers still operate with rigid approval structures, which can kill momentum and relevance. For Coffee Mate, these entertainment collaborations are more than just flavor extensions. They are intended to make the brand "be part of the zeitgeist and pop culture, and resonate with young consumers," according to Jhung. By aligning with buzzy properties like The White Lotus, the brand positions itself within conversations that traditional advertising can't penetrate. Of course, there are risks when plot lines are closely guarded secrets. Marketers face a delicate balance: When do you amplify a moment, and when do you let it naturally fade away? Coffee Mate is taking an organic approach to this unexpected attention. Jhung notes, "If the conversation naturally dies, then it'll die. But sometimes it brings new life because someone says something clever, or another brand says something else, and you can continue the dialogue." The Coffee Mate Instagram account responded to many comments on their original post but didn't add new piña colada or White Lotus content. This case offers a few valuable takeaways for marketing leaders: Whether this unexpected connection helped or hurt Coffee Mate's piña colada creamer sales remains to be seen, but the brand has already won by demonstrating marketing agility at its finest. The ability to pivot gracefully might just be the most valuable marketing skill we can develop.
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘This is awkward': Coffee mate released piña colada creamer before White Lotus finale
Coffee creamer brand Coffee mate developed two limited-edition flavored creamers – piña colada and Thai iced coffee – in collaboration with the HBO hit television show The White Lotus. But, after the show's season finale aired on Sunday night, the Nestlé-owned company was taken aback when a batch of poisoned piña coladas nearly caused the deaths of four of the show's main characters. 'Well this is awkward' the creamer brand wrote in an Instagram post on Monday, accompanied by a picture of the piña colada-flavored creamer. In the final episode of the show's third season, set in Thailand, disgraced businessman Timothy Ratliff devises a plan to blend seeds from a poisonous tree into the frozen beverage, intending to kill himself, his wife, his elder son and his daughter. He ultimately changes his mind and spares his unsuspecting family. Unfortunately, nobody cleaned out the blender after he made the lethal cocktail. The next day, Ratliff's son Lachlan uses the blender – which still contains leftovers of the poisonous mixture – to prepare a protein shake, which nearly results in his death. Daniel Jhung, president of the Nestlé USA coffee and beverage division, told the Wall Street Journal this week that the marketing team behind Coffee mate was notably unaware of the plot involving piña coladas before the episode aired. 'We didn't know that piña colada was such a featured part of the last episode,' Jhung said. 'I will say that in hindsight, we were showing the different flavors, and the fact that The White Lotus team was like, 'Oh, you know, piña colada is a really good idea, you should go in that direction' – it now kind of makes sense.' The company launched the limited edition The White Lotus-themed flavored creamers in partnership with Warner Bros ahead of the show's third season, which premiered on 16 February. Jhung said that Sunday night's episode took the Coffee mate team by surprise, and that the team quickly devised a social media plan to react, sharing the 'awkward' post on Instagram. 'The 'awkward' post got picked up quite a bit by consumers, by other brands, because it was so perfect with the show's ending,' Jhung said. Jhung told the Journal that it's still too early to determine whether the episode impacted sales of the flavored creamers since they won't receive consumption data for another week. 'We'll probably see next week how it did this week,' he said, adding that 'the show going on week by week is helping drive buzz for the flavors. So they're both doing really well in market through the first quarter.' Jhung said that he suspects that next week, when the sales data comes in, that the piña colada flavor 'will see a bit of a lift as people try it, just for the novelty aspect'. The essence of limited-time offers, Jhung added, is about 'mysterious flavors, intriguing flavors that are not typical in the coffee set, and so it kind of fits well with the show, which is about mystery and intrigue'. On TikTok, some fans of the show have made videos reacting to the finale and the flavored coffee creamer collaboration. One TikTok user shared a video of the piña colada creamer in their fridge, with the caption 'I got this back in February being like wow what a random flavor for the Thailand season', adding 'NOT MIKE WHITE MAKING OUR COFFEE AN EASTER EGG' . 'PSA EVERYONE WASH YOUR BLENDERS BEFORE RE-USING PLZ' the user added.
