The Top PR and Marketing Campaigns of Q3 2026

Key Takeaways

• The PR Insider rounds up standout campaigns from July, August and September 2026, spanning fashion, food, drinks, retail and the outdoors.

• Unexpected products included KFC’s chicken flavoured cereal, Walmart’s rotisserie chicken handbag and Duolingo’s phonetic fashion collection.

• Aldi became Baldi for Pitbull’s Hyde Park concert, while IKEA joined the conversation around Alexander Skarsgård’s film Wicker.

• Columbia paid hikers for feet pictures, The Laughing Cow dropped its smile and Liquid Death teamed up with Garage Beer to tackle AI’s water demands through an unusual music video.

A handbag shaped like a rotisserie chicken sold out in 90 minutes, thousands of Pitbull fans put on bald caps and Duolingo turned designer pronunciation into a fashion collection you could bid on with your language learning streak. July, August and September gave us plenty of campaigns to talk about, and that’s before we get to the hikers selling their feet pictures or the cereal designed to be eaten with gravy.

With Q3 wrapped up, we’ve picked some of our favourite PR campaigns from the past three months, bringing together a mix of unexpected collaborations, creative product launches and brands making the most of the conversations already happening around them.

Columbia Sportswear pays hikers for the battered feet behind real adventures

To launch its new Peakfreak hiking shoes, Columbia Sportswear asked hikers for the photographs usually left out of the summit album. Its F££T FUND offered selected entrants £135 for pictures of their bare feet taken outdoors during a hike, enough to buy a pair of Peakfreak III shoes, with winning submissions also appearing in a Hall of Feet social gallery. Created by adam&eve\TBWA, the campaign rolled out across EMEA with social teasers, creator messages asking for feet pics and an unboxing performed entirely with feet.

I know this part was past Q3, but they've taken this even further to East London, where they've taken over a salon and renamed it Feet Freak, where hikers can enjoy complimentary foot rubs and outdoor inspired pedicures. Guided walks around the city finish at the salon, bringing participants straight from their hike to the treatment chair and giving the feet at the centre of the campaign somewhere to put themselves up.

KFC and Surreal launch KFCereal, a chicken-flavoured breakfast cereal designed to be eaten with gravy

KFC launched its first-ever breakfast cereal on 22 September, a limited-edition collaboration with UK high-protein cereal brand Surreal. KFCereal is a hoop-shaped cereal seasoned with KFC's 11 herbs and spices and designed to be eaten with KFC gravy instead of milk, with 19g of plant protein and under 1g of sugar per 48g serving, according to the details of the KFC and Surreal licensing deal.

Timed for Freshers Week, it was sold for £6 a box including delivery, only through Surreal's UK website while stocks lasted, and Surreal ran an Instagram giveaway asking fans to comment "gravy" five times. "Our 11 herbs and spices have been doing a pretty good job on chicken, so we thought we'd see what they could do for breakfast," said Elspeth Allen, brand manager at KFC, at the launch of KFC's chicken-flavoured cereal. We dug into the idea in our post on KFC and Surreal's chicken-flavoured cereal.

Pokémon and NOT A HOTEL build a three metre Poké Ball you can sleep inside in Hokkaido

To mark Pokémon's 30th anniversary and the third birthday of its Pokémon Sleep app, The Pokémon Company teamed up with Japanese hospitality brand NOT A HOTEL to build a Poké Ball sleeping pod three metres across on a lakeshore in Tomakomai, Hokkaido. Inside, there is a round bed beneath a curved acrylic window and an iPad that changes the lighting to match your favourite Pokémon, while the bathroom next door has Snorlax-coloured tiles, as the Poké Ball pod reveal showed on 15 September.

Twenty winners were picked by lottery from Japan residents who applied through the Pokémon Sleep app and the brand's X account, and their free overnight stays, meals included, run from 8 to 18 October.

Duolingo turns mispronounced designer names into a phonetic fashion collection at New York Fashion Week

Duolingo arrived at New York Fashion Week with a capsule collection designed to help fashion fans pronounce the labels they love. Tailoring, sportswear and accessories carried phonetic spellings of Hermès, Jacquemus, Issey Miyake, Givenchy, Comme des Garçons and Loewe, with the pieces designed by Megan O’Cain, a contestant on the second season of Netflix’s Next in Fashion. The collection appeared at a two-day pop-up at Null Object in Manhattan on 9 and 10 September, where visitors bid their Duolingo streaks for a chance to take a piece home.

The idea was backed by YouGov research that revealed a gap between confidence and pronunciation, with 62% of Americans feeling confident saying Hermès but only 15% choosing the correct pronunciation. We explored the collection and its unusual bidding system in our post on Duolingo’s designer names campaign.

IKEA turns Alexander Skarsgård's Wicker film into a "husband material" rattan bench post

When the trailer for Wicker, the film in which Alexander Skarsgård plays a husband woven from wicker, sent the internet into a spin in August, IKEA Australia posted its TOLKNING handmade rattan bench with the line "Made from husband material." and the caption "If you know, you know." IKEA US followed with its own wicker chair post, and Sephora and Scrub Daddy piled into IKEA's comments. It was a simple, fast reaction to a trailer everyone was already sharing, and the film's studio, Black Bear Pictures, reshared the post itself. 

Aldi UK becomes Baldi at BST Hyde Park to help Pitbull break a world record

Aldi UK briefly became Baldi on 10 July, setting up a pop-up stand outside Pitbull's BST Hyde Park concert with a giant Baldi logo, a Firebald banner and free bald caps, aviator sunglasses, temporary tattoos and ready-to-drink cocktail cans. The idea, handled by Taylor Herring, was to support Pitbull's attempt at a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people wearing bald caps, and chief commercial officer Julie Ashfield said in Aldi's Baldi announcement that "we knew we had to get involved and show our support with Baldi." The record was acheived, with 22,141 fans wearing bald caps at Pitbull's Hyde Park show in front of a sold-out crowd of 69,999, and Aldi supplied 300 caps to fans outside the park..

The Laughing Cow stops laughing for the first time in more than 100 years

On 22 September, The Laughing Cow appeared on select Creamy Original packs with a serious face for the first time since 1921, rebranded The Not Laughing Cow with a hand-scrawled "NOT" and the message "We need to talk". A QR code led to TheNotLaughingCow.com, and the frowning packs appeared in more than 4,700 stores across the continental US, with shoppers noticing the change before the mascot had said a word.

Teaser films showed the cow alone in a diner and on a park swing before the reveal on 30th September, when Jimmy Kimmel Live explained that she had stopped laughing over trivial "wedge issues". Fans are now invited to post their own wedge issues under #SpreadTheLaugh to make her smile again. "We knew The Laughing Cow was loved, but we didn't realize just how much until she stopped laughing," said Peter McGuinness, CEO of Bel North America, in the Laughing Cow reveal announcement. We followed the mystery in our post on The Laughing Cow stopping laughing.

Liquid Death and Garage Beer ask Americans to send their pee to AI data centres

Liquid Death and Garage Beer found an unusual answer to the water demands of AI data centres, asking drinkers to send in their urine instead. Launched on 18th August, their 90-second music video opens with former Eagles centre and Garage Beer co-owner Jason Kelce filling a jar, before Liquid Death’s mascot Murder Man joins a full cast to sing about putting pee to work cooling the servers. Directed by Liquid Death’s Andy Pearson and Will Carsola, the film ran across both brands’ social channels and connected TV with paid support. The accompanying $18 Data Center Coolant Collector jar sold out, and the brands extended the joke with pee donation stations at Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest in September, while the film was named Ad of the Week by Campaign US. I

Walmart's $5.97 rotisserie Chicken Purse sells out in 90 minutes

Walmart celebrated National Chicken Month by turning its most famous deli item into a handbag, yes, you read that right. The limited-edition Chicken Purse, an oversized clutch in Traditional and Lemon Pepper versions, cost $5.97, the same everyday price as the chicken, and went on sale on 1 September through Walmart's Spark Shop with matching rotisserie, hot sauce and seasoning charms.

It sold out incredibly fast, with the first batch of Chicken Purses selling out in just 90 minutes, resale listings appeared on eBay at around $40 to $80, which eventually led to Walmart restocking them on 8th September. "The Chicken Purse turns that love into something customers can carry with them," said Kim Tunick, Walmart's group director of brand experiences and partnerships.

We loved so many campaigns this quarter that it was very hard to keep it to a few in a roundup! If you want to see campaigns like these on a weekly basis, make sure to sign up for The PR Insider.