Keurig has debuted a new brand platform, “Great Coffee Without the Grind,” that looks to provide a fresh creative and strategic direction for the brand, per details shared with Marketing Dive. The campaign includes 15- and 30-second spots that will run on Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock and Tubi.
The platform positions Keurig as an antidote to coffee culture that has become “too complicated, too precious, too much,” per press details, providing a great cup of coffee at the touch of a button. Creative puns on the “grinds” of coffee brewing, contrasting long store lines, fraught drive-thru experiences and overwrought at-home routines with a straight-forward offering that allows consumers to make coffee at home – with or without pants.
“We are not a brand that needs to take ourselves overly seriously,” said Becky Opdyke, senior vice president of coffee marketing at Keurig Dr Pepper, of the creative tone. “Great coffee doesn't have to be serious. Great coffee is about that moment that you have with your cup, and what it often provides is that moment of joy or comfort even in your day. That doesn't have to come with a stodgy, super high-level crafty appeal to it.”
The creative is also grounded in consumer realities in the post-pandemic landscape, where work-from-home employees often wear dressier top halves well-suited for video calls. At the same time, the return to office — especially on popular midweek days — has made drive-thru and in-store lines even longer.
“The realities are more challenging to manage, and there's a lot of humor in them as well,” Opdyke said. “How do we make sure that it isn't about a grind that's so hard that we're pushing the negativity? How do we find the joy in the outcome and the fact that it is human nature to find humor in everyday scenarios?”
The power of one
“Great Coffee Without the Grind” was developed by KDPOne, a bespoke Publicis Groupe unit that was created in the spring and is led by Digitas, Le Truc and Connect at Publicis Media, with support by Spark Foundry and MSL. Publicis has had business with KDP for more than a decade, but the new set up sped up the creative process.
“We only briefed this in May, and here we are in November, live with a new strategic positioning,” Opdyke said when speaking with Marketing Dive last month. “We made this transition because we wanted to make sure that we could unlock all that a Publicis, one-type relationship could do with us, which includes technology through Epsilon and access to amazing creatives that worked on this campaign.”
Crafting the campaign through the KDPOne unit will help Keurig roll out more than 13,000 pieces of precisely targeted content across media channels — a challenge that has been met with new technology like artificial intelligence. The transition has promise but is not without its own challenges.
“The most complex personal marketing journey I have ever been on has been this year of learning all of the new ways of meeting our consumers’ needs halfway, using technology, AI and the assets that exist,” Opdyke said. “The creativity of the human mind paired with the technology that allows us to find so many more ways to tell a relevant story… the proof is going to be in the pudding.”
Breaking up
The platform comes at a crucial time for Keurig. The brand recently released its first branded coffee line, Keurig Coffee Collective, and is preparing to launch its Keurig Alta machines over the course of 2026.
“We want to set the brand up to take that journey over the next year by making sure that we land our quality credentials strongly in the market and remind people of why Keurig was the revolution that it was and continues to be in single-serve coffee,” Opdyke said.
More significantly, 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 split into independent coffee and beverage units. The separation could bolster KDP’s coffee business, which saw U.S. net sales tick up 1.5% in Q3 2025.
“We’re coming from a very strong foundation with 47 million households and very good intel that we’ve got tens of millions of high-value households that have yet to convert into the Keurig system,” said Olivier Lemire, president of U.S. coffee at KDP, on a call discussing the earnings with analysts. “With strong marketing campaigns coming up hitting in Q4… we’re very confident that we’ll be able to return to growth from a volume standpoint.”
