What Happened
TRIP, the London-founded calming sparkling drink brand, has launched its largest marketing campaign to date — a multi-talent TV commercial and global billboard push anchored by Kendall Jenner, who joins the brand as Global Ambassador and equity shareholder. Joe Jonas and Gen-Z creator Madeline Argy round out the talent roster, both holding equity stakes as well. The campaign, titled "Calm in the Chaos," is live nationally across the US and UK, with out-of-home placements running from Times Square and Hollywood Boulevard to central London.
For beverage buyers, retail buyers, and hospitality operators tracking the functional drinks shelf, the timing and structure of this campaign carry real intelligence value. TRIP is not running a typical influencer activation — the equity-shareholder model aligns talent incentives with brand performance, a structure that tends to produce longer-lived, more integrated media presence than a one-cycle endorsement deal.
Category Signal
The more operationally significant data point sits behind the celebrity news. According to SPINS data cited by TRIP, calming beverages are now the fastest-growing functional beverage category in the US — ahead of gut health, protein, and hydration. A Toluna consumer survey the brand references found US consumers now rank mental wellbeing as their second-highest health concern, trailing only weight management. TRIP is tracking toward $200 million in revenue for 2026 and holds distribution at Target and Whole Foods Market, with national availability across natural and conventional channels.
For operators building beverage programs — whether in hotel F&B, fast-casual, or retail-adjacent hospitality — calming and adaptogenic drinks are no longer a fringe SKU. Brands with this kind of retail velocity and media spend behind them create consumer pull that filters into on-premise demand. Operators who have not yet evaluated the non-alcoholic functional shelf alongside their alcohol-alternative sets are likely behind the cycle.
What This Means for Operators and Buyers
The campaign's media mix is worth noting for anyone planning brand launch or retail readiness strategy. TRIP is running paid TV in two major markets simultaneously with a bespoke TikTok and Instagram content layer — not repurposed broadcast footage but platform-native creative. That dual-track structure (broadcast reach plus social depth) reflects where functional beverage brands with sufficient scale are allocating spend in 2026. The TikTok Shop component is also notable: TRIP generated more than one billion global impressions across Instagram and TikTok in the past year and is cited as one of the top-performing beverage brands on TikTok Shop globally.
Olivia Ferdi, TRIP Co-Founder and CEO, framed the campaign around authenticity of talent relationship: all three faces of the campaign were existing customers before becoming investors. That framing — genuine product affinity preceding commercial relationship — is a procurement signal for operators evaluating supplier partnerships and co-marketing arrangements. Brands that can demonstrate organic consumer adoption at the top of the funnel are generally lower-risk distribution bets than those relying solely on paid awareness.
For operators and growth marketers running functional beverage programs, TRIP's campaign is a benchmark for how the category's leading brands are now spending. The calming drinks set is moving from specialty to mainstream, and the media investment reflects it.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
