FREE TO READ: Building a Brand Versus Buying One. Last Week Made the Difference Clear.

On Friday 26 June, Heineken was named Creative Brand of the Year at the 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, winning 31 Lions – 2 Grand Prix, 8 Gold, 8 Silver, and 13 Bronze – across six portfolio brands, eleven campaigns, and eighteen categories. Bram Westenbrink, Heineken’s Chief Commercial Officer, described the journey in a post that circulated widely across the industry: “This journey started in 2020 during COVID where we rediscovered our voice as a brand. After 6 years of radical collaboration, consistency, and the HEINEKEN Magic, we became Creative Brand of the Year.” In the days that followed, Jay Sethi, Diageo’s CMO for Mexico, posted about a consumer who spent $15,000 in a single visit to a Casamigos World Cup pop-up at El Palacio de Hierro Polanco – and Diageo confirmed it was simultaneously repricing that same brand’s architecture because North American volume had not responded to its premium positioning.

Those two things happening within days of each other, reported by senior professionals at their own companies, is the clearest possible illustration of a question that has been running underneath the drinks industry’s 2026 results cycle without ever being asked directly: what is the actual difference between building a brand and buying one? Between the brands that have been investing in genuine consumer connection over years – and are now seeing the compound return on that investment – and the brands that have been buying occasions, sponsorships, and premium positioning without building the underlying consumer pull that makes those investments self-reinforcing?

The signals from the week of 29 June to 3 July 2026, read alongside the financial data published in the same period, make the argument clearly. This piece maps what those signals show.

What the signals actually said