Fanta's Global VP: Consumers Hold the Microphone Now

Fanta, a global beverage brand with $18 billion in retail value, is rebuilding its marketing around one premise: consumers now hold the microphone. Ibrahim Khan, global VP of marketing at Fanta, laid out that argument on The Speed of Culture, hosted by Matt Britton.

Khan's career spans nearly two decades across Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta, with experience in Pakistan, Thailand, Southeast Asia and global markets. His operating principle is blunt: marketing still has to drive the business.

What stays fixed in a global brand?

The fundamental reason people choose a product rarely changes from market to market, Khan argues. What changes is how people experience it: language, channels, daily routines, cultural habits and consumption occasions. Consistency for a global marketer does not mean executing the same way everywhere. It means knowing which parts of the brand are non-negotiable, and giving local markets room to express them differently.

Assumptions are the enemy, Khan warns. Beverage consumption with food is a less developed occasion in parts of Asia than in Western markets, so Fanta leans more heavily into leisure occasions there. Visual conventions differ too. An in-store environment that initially felt overwhelming to Khan turned out to match what consumers in that market expected. The marketer's instinct to simplify is not automatically universal.

Why is Halloween Fanta's platform?

Khan is disciplined about cultural participation. His rule: "not every festivity needs a brand, and not every brand needs a festivity." Fanta leans into Halloween because indulgence, fun and soft-drink consumption already belong naturally within the occasion. Chasing passion points where the product has no authentic role, he says, makes the work feel forced instead of relevant.

The brand has spent years building around Halloween, but the ambition has moved beyond year-to-year collaborations. Fanta's Haunted Universe is designed as an expandable world of characters, stories, lore, partnerships and experiences that can develop over many years. The company researched horror archetypes across cultures and fandoms before entering the space, treating entertainment IP (intellectual property such as characters and story worlds) as something to build deliberately rather than a seasonal advertising stunt.

Where does AI fit in?

Khan sees technology as an enabler of bigger creative worlds, much as advances in animation and graphics changed entertainment before it. He draws a firm line between capability and authorship. Marketing contains art, taste, ethics and judgment that remain inherently human. For Fanta's Halloween work, AI supports an effort shaped by a large group of people rather than replacing the people doing the creative thinking.

What is the TV hangover?

Twenty or thirty years ago, Khan says, marketers could shape most brand perception around a 30-second TV commercial. That success, in his view, made the industry lazy. The product itself needs to become a marketing channel, and marketers need to think across the full offer rather than obsessing over communication alone. If consumers are not talking about what the brand is doing, the old tools cannot manufacture the relevance they once could.

The implication for brand teams is direct: treat the product, retail experience, live experience and consumer conversation as one connected system, and invest in platforms built to compound over years.