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Keurig has introduced “Great Coffee Without the Grind,” a new brand platform that looks to provide a fresh, creative and strategic direction for the brand, according to details shared with Marketing Dive. The campaign includes 15- and 30-second ads running on Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and Tubi.
The platform positions Keurig as an antidote to coffee culture that’s “too complicated, too precious, too much,” per press details, delivering a great cup of coffee at the touch of a button. It introduces the complexities of everyday life at home through creative puns on the “grind” of coffee brewing, contrasting long store lines, distressing drive-thru experiences, and simple products that allow consumers to make coffee at home regardless of whether they are wearing pants or not.
“We’re not a brand that needs to be taken too seriously,” Becky Opdyke, Keurig Dr Pepper’s senior vice president of coffee marketing, said of the creative tone. “Great coffee doesn’t have to be serious. Great coffee is about the moment with the cup, and what it often provides is a moment of joy or comfort during the day. It doesn’t have to be trite and accompanied by over-the-top sly charm.”
The creative is grounded in the consumer reality of a post-pandemic environment where employees working from home often wear cooler torsos suitable for video calls. At the same time, the return to offices has led to longer drive-thru and in-store lines, especially during popular weekday hours.
“Reality is harder to manage and has a lot of humor in it,” Opdyke said. “How do we make sure we’re not pushing the negativity because it’s so hard? How can we find that it’s human nature to find joy in outcomes and humor in everyday scenarios?”
one force
“Great coffee without the grind” was developed by KDPOne, a bespoke Publicis Groupe unit created in the spring, led by Publicis Media’s Digitas, Le Truc and Connect, with support from MSL. Publicis has been dealing with KDP for over a decade, but the new setup has accelerated the creative process.
“We briefed on this in May and announced the new strategic positioning in November,” Opdyke told Marketing Dive last month. “We made this transition because we wanted to be able to unlock everything that Publicis, a single type of relationship, could do with us, including access to the technology through Epsilon and the amazing creatives who worked on this campaign.”
Creating campaigns through the KDPOne unit will help Keurig launch more than 13,000 pieces of precisely targeted content across media channels. This is a challenge addressed by new technologies such as artificial intelligence. The transition has promise, but it is not without its own challenges.
“This year has been the most complex personal marketing journey I’ve ever been on, where I learned all the new ways to use technology, AI, and existing assets to meet the needs of consumers midstream,” Opdyke said. “The creativity of the human mind combined with technology to find so many more ways to tell relevant stories… the proof will be in the pudding.”
Breaking up
This platform comes at an important time for Keurig. The brand recently launched its first branded coffee line, Keurig Coffee Collective, and is preparing to launch its Keurig Alta machine in 2026.
“We want to set the brand up for that journey in the coming year by making our quality credentials strong in the market and reminding people why Keurig has been and continues to be a revolution in single-serve coffee,” said Opdyke.
More importantly, parent Keurig Dr Pepper’s $18 billion acquisition of JDE Peet’s is expected to close in the first half of 2026, after which the company plans to spin off into an independent coffee and beverage division. The spin-off could strengthen KDP’s coffee business, which increased U.S. net sales by 1.5% in the third quarter of 2025.
“We have a very strong base of 47 million households, and we have very good information that there are tens of millions of higher-priced households that have not yet converted to Keurig systems,” Olivier Lemire, KDP’s president of U.S. coffee, said on a earnings call with analysts. “With the launch of a strong marketing campaign in the fourth quarter… we are confident that we will be able to return to growth in terms of volume.”
