From the Pantry to Game Day: How Kraft Heinz Keeps Iconic Brands at the Center of Culture

Century-old brands don’t stay relevant by accident. They require constant reinvention—in how they show up culturally, who they partner with, and how they meet consumers wherever attention lives. 

For Kraft Heinz, that means showing up at NFL tailgates and TikTok feeds simultaneously, reading generational shifts in real time, and building an internal culture that thinks more like a startup than a legacy giant. 

In this episode of The Speed of Culture podcast, Todd Kaplan, chief marketing officer at Kraft Heinz North America, joins Matt Britton to talk about keeping 70 iconic brands at the center of culture, from the game-day experience to the algorithm-driven future of discovery.

The conversation covers the generational divide in media consumption, Kraft Heinz’s new five-year partnership with the NFL, what it takes to build an entrepreneurial mindset inside a Fortune 500 company, and how AI is playing a supporting—not starring—role in the brand’s future.

With a career that spans nearly two decades at PepsiCo—including running the Super Bowl Halftime Show—Todd is widely recognized as one of the most influential marketers in the industry, known for his ability to contemporize heritage brands through cultural integration.

At Kraft Heinz, he is responsible for driving growth across more than 50 categories by leveraging consumer insights, securing large-scale partnerships like the company’s new global deal with the NFL, and building an internal culture of agility and entrepreneurship. His approach combines analytical rigor with a challenger mindset that treats a Fortune 500 company like a platform for innovation.

Key Takeaways:

[01:23] Reimagining Legacy at Scale — Todd highlights the unique dynamic of managing brands that are already present in nearly every kitchen in North America. He explains how his team identifies specific growth levers for each product, whether that means repositioning cream cheese as a versatile cooking ingredient or introducing protein-enriched options to meet modern wellness trends. These efforts ensure that even century-old brands remain essential to the daily lives of contemporary consumers.

[07:59] AI and the Future of Discoverability — The conversation touches on how Kraft Heinz uses proprietary in-house tools to speed up creative development, versioning, and personalization. Todd frames AI as an efficiency layer—one that frees the marketing team to focus on strategy and creative thinking—rather than a replacement for human judgment. He also notes that brands must remain visible in AI-driven discovery environments, but keeps the focus on agility over automation.

[19:30] Navigating Economic Pressures with a Full Funnel Strategy — Todd addresses the challenges of rising costs and the growth of private label brands during periods of economic pressure. He advocates for a balanced marketing approach that utilizes lower funnel ecommerce tactics to drive immediate conversion while continuing to invest in upper funnel brand building. This strategy prevents the brand from running out of steam by focusing solely on short-term quarterly gains.

[21:15] The Generational Media Divide — Todd shares a revealing story about a Lakers game recap with his father and son — three generations, three completely different experiences of the same event. His dad watched the whole game; Todd caught the highlights on SportsCenter; his son saw a couple of dunks on TikTok. The point: the same information lands very differently depending on how people consume it, and modern marketers have to empathize with each vantage point. It’s one of the most accessible and concrete illustrations of how fragmented media attention has become.

[23:47] Cultural Relevance Through the NFL Partnership — Todd details the reasoning behind the new five-year global partnership with the NFL across more than 20 Kraft Heinz brands, describing live sports as one of the last places where brands can reach consumers at genuine scale with high engagement. The deal spans broadcast, online, in-store, and custom packaging — and it starts where Kraft Heinz feels most at home: the game-day experience, from tailgates to viewing parties.

[29:13] The Entrepreneurial Marketer — Reflecting on his career path, Todd shares his core leadership philosophy: you make the role, the role doesn’t make you. He pushes back on the tendency to treat job descriptions as boxes to fill, encouraging marketers to bring an enterprising, consumer-led view to whatever role they’re in. The most consistent thread across every job, he says, is you — and building a broad base of experience early is what sets leaders apart later.