Friday 21 August 2026: PR & Marketing Round-Up | When Brands Become the Experience
Welcome back to this week's PR & Marketing News Round-Up from Visible PR.
This week, brands are taking things that people already know and love, and offering a new way to experience them. Fried chicken becomes a wine tasting, a card game heads to the festival field, Pokémon arrives in doughnut form and a much-loved family makes its return to our screens. Meanwhile, Harry Styles fans can start the concert experience before they've even left the airport.
From nostalgia and fandom to unexpected collaborations and immersive activations, this week's campaigns show how brands can create attention by making audiences part of the experience.
Let's dive into this week's standout stories...
KFC turns chicken and wine into an unexpected pairing
KFC is taking its unlikely relationship with wine offline with the launch of ‘Coq au Vin’, a limited-edition wine bar opening in London's Shoreditch over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Created in partnership with French wine brand La Vieille Ferme, the pop-up will pair KFC favourites including Popcorn Chicken, Hot Wings and Original Recipe Tenders with a selection of wines, including its famously named ‘Chicken Wine’. Tickets offer visitors a 90-minute tasting experience, complete with KFC dips, turning a familiar fast-food brand into an unexpected food and drink destination.
Why it matters for PR & Marketing: KFC has taken a playful consumer association and turned it into a physical experience with an instant PR hook. The pairing is unexpected enough to generate curiosity, but familiar enough for people to immediately understand the joke. It's a good example of how a strong brand truth can be stretched into something new without losing what makes the brand recognisable.
UNO takes the game beyond the table
UNO has made its UK festival debut at Boardmasters 2026, bringing its first dedicated festival activation to the Cornish coast. The UNO Beach House combined gameplay, music, personalisation and retail, giving festivalgoers the chance to play across the UNO portfolio, create their own Wild Cards and shop the range through a partnership with Smyths Toys Superstores. As the day turned into evening, the space evolved from a place to play into a DJ-led party destination.
Why it matters for PR & Marketing: With trading card games like Pokémon and Lorcana taking the world by storm, UNO has taken a product traditionally associated with sitting around a table and placed it within a social environment where people are already looking to have fun. The activation expands the meaning of the brand beyond the game itself, creating multiple opportunities for participation, content and connection. It shows how experiential marketing can make a familiar product feel relevant in an entirely new setting.
Krispy Kreme catches 'em all with Pokémon
Krispy Kreme has teamed up with Pokémon to celebrate the franchise's 30th anniversary with a limited-edition collection of character-inspired doughnuts. The range includes creations based on Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Charmander and the iconic Poké Ball, with two mystery doughnuts still to be revealed. Special packaging, collector's boxes and a Pokémon-themed cup add another layer of collectability to the collaboration, giving fans plenty of reasons to hunt down the limited-time range.
Why it matters for PR & Marketing: This is licensing that goes well beyond putting a character on a product. Krispy Kreme has translated the Pokémon world into flavours, designs, packaging and collectables, giving fans multiple ways to engage with the collaboration. The mystery element also introduces discovery and scarcity, turning a food promotion into something that feels closer to a collectible experience.
Dolmio brings back its iconic puppet family
Dolmio is celebrating its 40th anniversary by bringing back its legendary puppet family for its biggest marketing campaign in more than a decade. Papa, Mama, Sophia, Carlo, Nina and Nico return for the new "When's Your Dolmio Day?" campaign, reconnecting with families who grew up with the characters while introducing them to a new generation. The multi-million-pound campaign spans TV, video-on-demand, social, influencer activity, out-of-home and PR, alongside a 3D steaming Bolognese billboard in Shepherd's Bush.
Why it matters for PR & Marketing: Dolmio demonstrates the value of distinctive brand assets and the emotional equity they can build over time. Rather than abandoning its past in favour of something new, the brand is using nostalgia as a route into a modern conversation about family life and mealtimes. It's a reminder that brands don't always need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant. Sometimes, bringing back what made them memorable in the first place is the most powerful move.
Uber & Delta help Harry Styles fans start the concert before they leave the airport
After his record-breaking run at Wembley this summer, Harry Styles continues his world tour, delivering a staggering 30-night residency at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden. So, to give fans a rather memorable journey to his shows, Uber and Delta are teaming up for the "Disco Together" shuttles, that will transport fans from JFK and LaGuardia airports to MSG in 14-seat vehicles transformed with Harry Styles-inspired interiors and exteriors, complete with his music on board. Running throughout the residency, the $25 shuttle turns a practical airport transfer into part of the concert experience itself.
Why it matters for PR & Marketing: This is a great example of brands understanding fandom, and that the experience starts long before the main event. Uber and Delta have taken an everyday journey and turned it into an extension of the Harry Styles world, creating something fans can snap for socials, share and remember before they even arrive at the venue. It also shows the power of collaboration when brands can add genuine value to an existing cultural moment rather than simply attaching their logos to it.
Final Thoughts
This week's campaigns show that brands can create much bigger stories when they think beyond the product itself. KFC has turned a food pairing into a destination, UNO has taken a card game to the festival field, Krispy Kreme has transformed a doughnut into a collectible, Dolmio has revived a distinctive piece of brand history and Uber and Delta have made the journey to a concert part of the experience.
The common thread is simple, brands that give people more to experience, in turn gives them more to talk about. In a crowded marketing landscape, that's increasingly what turns a campaign from something audiences see into something they remember.
Time for your brand to initiate impactful PR campaigns that stand out? Visible can help! Let’s talk: hello@visiblepr.co.uk