What's Happened in Marketing in July 2026? Major News, Trends & Campaigns

Summer's in full swing, the World Cup dust has settled, and marketers are back from Cannes with plenty to prove. This month's stories span AI advertising's slow creep into new territory, brands leaning into craft and authenticity over flash, and a reminder that Hollywood tie-ins still sell beer (even the alcohol-free kind).

In the background, the platforms marketers rely on keep tightening the rules on what counts as genuine content, and the AI trust conversation is only getting louder.

1. The Odyssey and BERO team up for a collectable six-pack

Not every partnership needs a global platform shift behind it, sometimes a well-timed film tie-in is enough. Tom Holland's non-alcoholic beer brand BERO released a limited-edition six-pack tied to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, in which Holland stars alongside Matt Damon and Zendaya.

The pack features BERO's Noon Wheat in custom packaging, with three exclusive can designs drawing on the film's imagery - the Trojan Horse, the Hydra, and the ship that carries Odysseus home. 

It's the kind of tie-in that works because it's authentic to the brand's founder rather than bolted on: Holland has spoken openly about how BERO supports his own sobriety, and the collaboration sits alongside similar movie-themed drops timed to his other summer release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

It's a small but effective example of a wider trend: collectable, limited-run packaging that turns a product into fandom merchandise, with just enough scarcity and visual craft to make it feel like more than a straightforward promotional tie-in.

2. ChatGPT ads expand to five new markets

OpenAI's advertising pilot has officially gone global. Having launched in the US in February and rolled out to Canada, Australia and New Zealand shortly after, ChatGPT ads are now live or in the process of expanding into the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, OpenAI's biggest push beyond English-speaking markets to date.

The format stays consistent wherever it lands: contextually matched, clearly labelled sponsored links appear beneath ChatGPT's answers, and only on the Free and Go tiers. Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise subscribers won't see any ads at all, a distinction OpenAI has been keen to repeat every time it announces new market expansion.

The numbers explain the urgency. The US pilot reportedly hit $100 million in annualised revenue within two months of launch and has since expanded to hundreds of advertisers. With ChatGPT's free tier reaching hundreds of millions of users worldwide, spreading that same ad infrastructure into new markets is a fast way to scale revenue - while also nudging free users toward paid, ad-free plans.

For marketers operating internationally, the takeaway is straightforward: the AI interface your team already uses for research and drafting is quietly becoming another paid media channel, with its own targeting logic, regional quirks and early-mover advantages for brands willing to test budget now.

3. Belvoir goes all in on "taste obsessed"

Not every big campaign needs an AI angle. Belvoir Farm has launched its biggest-ever push to date: "We're Taste Obsessed," created with independent agency Joint and backed by more than £1 million in media spend across TV, out-of-home, radio, podcast and social.

The premium soft drinks brand is doubling down on what actually differentiates it in an increasingly crowded adult soft drinks market: natural ingredients, no artificial flavours, colours or sweeteners, and a genuine craft story, right down to featuring its own estate employees on screen. 

The tone is knowingly funny rather than worthy: one out-of-home execution reads like a confession pinned above a therapist's couch, admitting to a "cordial fixation."

The strategy is backed by real numbers. Taste remains the number one purchase driver in soft drinks, with 85% of UK consumers citing it as their primary reason for choosing a drink, according to Attest 2026 research. Meanwhile, close to a third of UK consumers have switched to products they perceive as "natural" or "clean," per YouGov data cited by the brand. Belvoir's own value sales grew 17% last year, and marketing director Alison Reilly says this year's campaign is about building on that momentum "bigger and better" than the version that ran in 2025.

It's a solid reminder that a clear, consistently told product truth, no gimmicks required, can still carry a campaign a long way.

4. Anthropic asks 120,000 people the hard questions about AI

The AI trust battle took an unexpected turn this summer. Having won the Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix for its Super Bowl campaign mocking OpenAI's move into advertising ("Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude"), Anthropic followed up with something very different: a 90-second film called "There's Hope in Hard Questions."

https://youtu.be/jVbGX7zJHi8?si=-3WlshTNIxt2rrI8

Rather than jokes, this one leans into real public anxiety. The film moves between unsettling imagery, protest, surveillance, disaster, and warmer scenes of family and community, while voiceover poses questions gathered from the public: "Can AI be trusted?", "Who's going to hit the brakes if we need to?", and, more hopefully, "Could AI help me be a better teacher, better mom?"

Anthropic says the questions came from more than 120,000 people surveyed across 159 countries and 70 languages, including a US roadshow, focus groups and anonymised Claude usage data. The company has also launched an ongoing initiative inviting people to submit further questions, promising to publicly report on what action it takes in response.

Reception has been mixed, to put it mildly. OpenAI's Sam Altman quipped on X that he'd assumed it was satire, and several commentators called the tone "tone-deaf" given the graveyard and surveillance imagery used to open the film. 

But whatever you make of the execution, the underlying strategy is a notable shift: instead of mocking a competitor, Anthropic is trying to own the conversation about AI trust directly, on the public's own terms. Expect more brands in the AI space to follow this playbook of leading with the anxiety rather than the promise.

5. Heinz and Heineken finally make it official

After more than 150 years of turning up at the same barbecues, watch parties and restaurant tables, Heinz and Heineken have formalised the relationship with a World Cup-timed collaboration: a limited-edition six-pack containing five Heineken beers and one bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup.

Running under the line "The match we've all been waiting for," the campaign leans entirely on packaging as the creative. The carrier's colour palette blends Heineken's green with Heinz's red and white, and the whole concept requires almost no explanation - a single swapped bottle tells the story faster than any tagline could.

It's a clever piece of low-risk, high-talkability marketing. By tying the collaboration to football culture and shared occasions rather than official sponsorship, both brands avoided the steep costs of formal World Cup partnership fees while still riding the tournament's cultural wave. 

Reaction has been largely positive, though some consumers questioned the reduced beer count and whether the ketchup bottle justifies any price premium, proof that even a beautifully simple idea invites scrutiny once it hits shelves.

The broader lesson for marketers: you don't need a nine-figure sponsorship to earn a share of the World Cup conversation. Formalising a habit people already have can be enough.

6. YouTube tightens the net on "AI slop"

Behind the scenes, YouTube has continued cracking down on what it's calling "inauthentic content" - mass-produced, templated videos with little to no human creative input. The platform has already terminated channels with a combined tens of millions of subscribers and billions of lifetime views under the policy, and has clarified that enforcement now covers three buckets: generic and repetitive content, "off-putting" or emotionally manipulative material, and AI-generated personas.

Crucially, YouTube insists this isn't a ban on AI tools themselves. Creators using AI to assist storytelling remain eligible for monetisation; the target is content with no discernible human editorial judgement behind it. 

But the line has proven blurry in practice; some legitimate faceless creators, who film no footage of themselves but write, research and produce every video by hand, have reported being caught in the same enforcement sweep as bot-farm operations.

For brands and creators working with YouTube as a channel, the direction of travel is clear: visible human input, commentary and editorial perspective are becoming the currency that protects a channel's monetisation, regardless of how much AI sits in the production pipeline behind the scenes.

Our thoughts

Between AI platforms expanding their ad footprints, AI companies fighting for public trust, and legacy brands doubling down on craft and simplicity, one theme keeps surfacing this month: substance is winning out over spectacle, even in categories built on spectacle. Worth keeping in mind as autumn campaign planning ramps up.