{"id":555292,"date":"2026-03-23T12:46:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T12:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/555292\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T12:46:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T12:46:23","slug":"with-new-look-and-sound-streetwise-sprite-is-back-on-the-court-03-23-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/555292\/","title":{"rendered":"With New Look And Sound, Streetwise Sprite Is Back On The Court 03\/23\/2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/media.mediapost.com\/dam\/cropped\/2026\/03\/20\/screenshot-2026-03-20-at-40912-pm_vgBGmtx.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Sprite is back on the court \u2014<br \/>\nliterally. After an 11-year absence, the Coca-Cola-owned brand has reclaimed its spot as the NBA&#8217;s Official Soft Drink, and it&#8217;s arriving with a sweeping new marketing platform, a refreshed visual<br \/>\nidentity, and a new signature sound designed to reassert its authority in pop culture.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign, themed &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BPuP9NzDqZQ&amp;t=4s\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">It&#8217;s That<br \/>\nFresh<\/a>,&#8221; launches across 180 markets after kicking off in London. It draws on Sprite&#8217;s long heritage of cool, threading together music, spicy food, fashion and street culture \u2014 with<br \/>\nbasketball at the center of all of it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s That Fresh\u2019 is a bold expression of Sprite as well as a mindset that celebrates challenging the status quo and championing originality,&#8221;<br \/>\nsaid Oana Vlad, vice president of the Sprite brand, in the announcement. The goal, she adds, is \u201ca fresh perspective through partnerships with culture-makers around the world and new, memorable<br \/>\nexperiences for fan communities in music, sports, and food.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>advertisement<\/p>\n<p>advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Vlad says that today&#8217;s young audiences don&#8217;t need to be told what&#8217;s cool. &#8220;They&#8217;re defining it for themselves&#8221; \u2014 which is why<br \/>\nthe campaign aims to meet them where they already are, &#8220;spotlighting the freshest takes across culture and the people who aren&#8217;t afraid to play by their own rules.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Music has long been central<br \/>\nto Sprite&#8217;s identity. The brand&#8217;s hip-hop roots stretch back to 1986 and its &#8220;Now More Than Ever&#8221; campaign, running through the iconic &#8220;Obey Your Thirst&#8221; partnerships of the 1990s and extending<br \/>\nglobally \u2014 K-pop in South Korea, funk and urban beats in Brazil, pop in China \u2014 with a consistent focus on rising artists.<\/p>\n<p>That sonic thread continues with the new campaign.<br \/>\nGrammy-winning producer and artist Mustard collaborated on a new sonic identity that will run across all Sprite audio and video content. To amplify it further, UK rapper LeoStayTrill created original<br \/>\nmusic using a custom, limited-edition Sprite instrument \u2014 a branded Ableton Move preloaded with samples and product sounds that form the new Sprite Sound.<\/p>\n<p>Visually, the brand has also<br \/>\nbeen refreshed. The Lymon symbol returns, the wordmark has been updated, and while Sprite and Sprite Zero Sugar share the same hero asset, Zero Sugar maintains clear differentiation through black<br \/>\ncolor cues across all packaging. On some cans, the logo appears vertically.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond music, the campaign encompasses street culture through a partnership with Crenshaw Skate Club, the Los<br \/>\nAngeles\u2013born skate collective, and continues the &#8220;Hurts Real Good With Sprite&#8221; platform targeting Gen Z&#8217;s appetite for spicy food. Social and creator-led content, live experiences and special<br \/>\noffers will roll out with brands including Takis, Tabasco and McDonald&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>The NBA news is big. Sprite first partnered with the League in 1986 and for nearly three decades played an outsized<br \/>\nrole in basketball culture. The new multiyear partnership \u2014 which displaced PepsiCo&#8217;s Starry \u2014 signals a full recommitment to the sport.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Basketball is central to the DNA of<br \/>\nSprite,&#8221; said Manolo Arroyo, Coca-Cola&#8217;s executive vice president and global CMO, in the announcement. &#8220;Basketball is not just a game; it&#8217;s a global cultural engine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Anchoring the basketball<br \/>\npush is Anthony Edwards, whose deal with Sprite has been extended. The 2026 NBA All-Star Game MVP has become one of the sport&#8217;s most magnetic personalities \u2014 a natural fit for a brand that wants<br \/>\nto win with the next generation of cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sprite is back on the court \u2014 literally. After an 11-year absence, the Coca-Cola-owned brand has reclaimed its&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[215287,49,48,459,82,215286],"class_list":["post-555292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-the-new-campaign-revives-an-nba-partnership-after-11-years-while-tapping-its-deep-roots-in-music-and-street-culture-03-23-2026","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-themed-its-that-fresh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}