Dunkin' Brings Pumpkin Spice to the VMAs as Brands Steal the Show
Dunkin' will run a two-part Pumpkin Spice sketch at the Snoop Dogg-hosted VMAs on Sept. 27, with Rachel Dratch's lost Spice Girl appearing — a deal Paramount says the brand pitched first.
Updated
The brief
- The 2026 MTV VMAs, hosted by Snoop Dogg, air Sunday, Sept. 27, later in the fall season than usual.
- Dunkin' will run a two-part Pumpkin Spice sketch at the show, featuring comedian Rachel Dratch's lost Spice Girl character.
- Matt Newcomb, SVP of marketing activation for Paramount Media Labs, said Dunkin' pitched the fall campaign to Paramount unprompted.
Dunkin' will stage a two-part sketch at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, extending its fall Pumpkin Spice campaign onto one of music's biggest broadcast stages — a move Paramount says the brand brought to the network, not the other way around.
"What screams more fall than Pumpkin Spice? That was not even a territory we were talking to Dunkin' about, and they brought their fall marketing campaign to us," said Matt Newcomb, SVP of marketing activation for Paramount Media Labs.
The sketch will carry over the messaging from Dunkin's broader fall campaign, including a recurring character from that work: comedian Rachel Dratch's lost Spice Girl, Pumpkin Spice, who will appear at the show.
The timing works in Dunkin's favor. This year's VMAs, hosted by Snoop Dogg, shift later into the fall season, airing Sunday, Sept. 27. That calendar move puts the broadcast squarely inside pumpkin spice season, giving the brand a natural bridge between its retail messaging and a live cultural moment.
Taylor Swift, Madonna and more artist appearances are set to have social media buzzing around the ceremony, per the source report. But the report's central argument cuts the other way: brands may deliver the spiciest moments of the entire night.
That framing matters for media planners. Award shows increasingly sell advertisers integration formats that behave like entertainment, not interruption. Paramount Media Labs, the network's unit for experimental brand activations, positioned the Dunkin' deal as evidence that marketers now arrive with campaign-ready creative concepts rather than waiting for network pitches.
The Pumpkin Spice character gives the integration continuity. Dratch's lost Spice Girl already exists as part of Dunkin's fall marketing, so the VMA sketch extends a running property rather than building a one-off gag. For viewers, the brand content arrives with a built-in premise and a recognizable comedic performer attached.
The Sept. 27 date also distinguishes this edition from prior VMAs, which have typically aired in late August or early September. A later fall slot changes the seasonal context for every advertiser in the show — apparel, beverages, QSR — and Dunkin' moved first to exploit it.
For Paramount, the deal signals how it wants to trade on live events: as a canvas for brand storytelling that lives alongside, and competes with, the artist lineup for social chatter. For Dunkin', the VMAs offer a mass-audience amplifier for a campaign already in market during its most important selling window.
If the Pumpkin Spice sketch generates the social pickup that artist moments typically own, expect more brands to bring their own campaign characters and seasonal platforms into live entertainment broadcasts — pitching networks the concepts, rather than the reverse.
Based on Adweek
Filed under dunkin, vmas, brand-integrations, live-events, pumpkin-spice
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News editor covering industry trends and analytics at Marketing Herald.
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