The Partnership
Pure Leaf Iced Tea, the Pepsi Lipton joint-venture brand sitting inside PepsiCo's roughly $94 billion revenue portfolio, has signed a sponsorship deal with Amanda Anisimova, the American tennis player who re-entered the WTA Top 10 following a deliberate competitive hiatus in 2023. The agreement, announced August 26, anchors Pure Leaf's broader "tea breaks" brand platform to the U.S. summer hard-court season — one of the highest-reach windows in the domestic tennis calendar.
The campaign's centrepiece is a staged media moment Pure Leaf calls the "Break Conference": what Anisimova was told was a routine press obligation turned into a private, camera-free hour with family and the brand's iced tea. Footage of the session will roll out across Pure Leaf's social channels and is designed to dovetail with a video arc tracing Anisimova's return to the tour — content that positions the brand directly inside an athlete-comeback narrative with demonstrable cultural traction.
Seven Drops, One Month
The commercial activation runs August 30 through September 14 and takes the form of seven timed giveaway drops on Pure Leaf's Instagram account. Each drop opens at 3:00 p.m. ET and closes at 11:59 p.m. ET on its designated date, requiring only a comment to enter — no purchase necessary. Prize tiers escalate from a year's supply of Pure Leaf Iced Tea with a custom cooler, through a premium at-home mocktail kit with tennis glassware, apparel, an Anisimova-signed racquet, a custom leather racquet bag, an upcycled-tennis-net hammock signed by Anisimova, and a home sauna package. The giveaway mechanic is a well-documented tool for compressing follower engagement into discrete, trackable windows — each drop generates a fresh comment thread without paid media spend per entry.
Zach Harris, Vice President and General Manager of the Pepsi Lipton Tea Partnership North America, framed the strategy in competitive terms: "The sport shows that moments to pause, regroup and refocus aren't time away from performance; they're often what make performance possible."
New York Activation and Out-of-Home
On September 2, Pure Leaf will operate a Tea Break Cart near Bryant Park — West 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues — from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. ET, distributing complimentary iced tea, signature mocktails, and branded merchandise. The location is a deliberate intercept point for tennis-bound foot traffic moving through Midtown Manhattan. Supporting the ground activation, out-of-home placements including MTA 7 Train subway wraps and transit hub installations are running across New York City during the campaign window.
The push illustrates a continuing trend among ready-to-drink tea brands toward sports-adjacent lifestyle positioning. The RTD tea category has posted consistent volume growth in U.S. measured channels, with premium and naturally caffeinated segments outpacing mainstream cola SKUs — a dynamic that gives brands like Pure Leaf strategic incentive to align with high-visibility athletic figures rather than traditional soda spokespeople. For operators and retail buyers tracking beverage category trends, the Anisimova partnership signals that PepsiCo is accelerating investment in the brand's premium positioning ahead of what is typically the strongest seasonal sell-through quarter for chilled teas.
The campaign also reflects broader food and beverage marketing industry momentum toward athlete authenticity narratives — particularly stories involving mental health breaks, competitive reinvention, and deliberate recovery — as brand equity vehicles that resonate with consumers aged 25 to 44, the core purchaser of premium RTD beverages at both retail and foodservice.
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.
