Sipping on the future: How Tang tries to defy time
For decades, Tang has dominated the powdered beverage category in the Philippines. Leadership, however, does not guarantee immunity from change.
Markets evolve. Consumers evolve. Categories fragment. I sat down with Mondelēz International Philippines managing director Aleli Arcilla, recently conferred an honorary Mansmith Sales Masters Award, to discuss Tang’s strategic reset for 2026.
Question: Let me begin with an existential question. If powdered beverages disappeared tomorrow, what would Tang’s right to exist be?
Answer: In a country where nutrition always takes a back seat to fulfillment and cost of food, Tang’s right to exist will be rooted in the refreshment it provides that comes with vitamins and minerals. All packaged together in an affordable and refreshing glass. Tang offers Vitamins C, D and Zinc—nutrients that support good health and which most families do not have access to.
Secondly, its right to exist stems from its ability to make ordinary Filipino moments more enjoyable, like sharing time with family and friends over a glass of icy cold beverage.
Q: Tang is not merely defending the share. It is defending a role in family life. Yet Filipino mothers have evolved. What uncomfortable truth about today’s mom did you confront in 2025?
A: In 2025, we learned that the moms of today are becoming more discerning. Age-old marketing lessons would tell us, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This new generation of moms is telling us, “If it ain’t broke, I still want to see what’s out there that’s best for my family.”
Perhaps chalk it up to social media or how Millennial moms were raised not to conform but to challenge. But moms in this day and age always want to benefit from the best of what the market has to offer. And Tang needed to assert its position again, to remind moms why it is No.1.
Q: You are repositioning Tang as “mom’s ally for refreshingly real moments”. Is this a campaign refresh or a strategic pivot affecting product, portfolio and investment priorities?
A: We have always been moms’ ally in making family togetherness more enjoyable and refreshing. The strategic pivot we are doing now is to show the “realness” of life—that Tang is refreshingly real. Picture-perfect families in TV ads and other communication materials no longer reflect the reality for a lot of Filipino families.
Tang’s message to Moms now is that life is messy, we know! We understand you and we are here to support whatever messy version of life you have right now. Whether it is the chaos of raising young kids or facing different development challenges with your children or being in a blended family. Tang is here for your reality, to help make your unique family moments more refreshing.
Q: In an era of sugar debates, ingredient scrutiny, viral misinformation and regulatory vigilance, how does Tang protect trust?
A: Trust starts with how our product is made. We are aware of the importance of developing our products to meet the needs of consumers, the government and health stakeholders. We have extensive teams working to continuously improve Tang, including: reviewing the ingredients we use; lowering the amount of sugar it contains; and developing how it supports nutrition through fortification. We stand by our product and aim to strengthen the trust that consumers have in it by making sure it delivers what consumers deserve.
Q: You are also expanding the targeting of Gen Z. How do you stretch one legacy brand across two psychologically different cohorts without diluting its meaning?
A: This is an interesting time for Tang. In the same way we learned something new about moms in 2025, we are learning what else or who else our brand can provide meaning for. We are seeing Gen Zs as independent thinkers from their families, who want to experience realness on their own terms. We are amazed to see that our decades-old brand has new relevance in bringing refreshment to Gen Zs, but perhaps not in the traditional way that moms serve our drink at mealtime. We see them consuming Tang in new and creative ways—mixing it with other beverages and in social settings with their friends.
Our extensive lineup of flavors serves as a canvas for Gen Zs to play around with flavors and experience our brand. The meaning remains the same—refreshment. But how our brand provides realness differs on the setting that Gen Zs consume it now.
Q: Is Tang fundamentally facing a storytelling challenge or a product innovation challenge or must the business model evolve?
A: It is not only one thing. The sustainability of a business does not depend only on changing one thing and hoping everything gets better. Not in this world as we know it, where chaos, change, uncertainty are the norm rather than predictability.
What we learned in 2025 was to evolve the brand—to look at all touch points and see where we have been falling behind and where we can continue to strengthen. That covers storytelling, innovation and the business model too. We believe in our brand and want to make sure generations after us can continue to enjoy it.
Q: When legacy leaders slow down, the issue is rarely advertising; it is often relevance. In 2026, is Tang defending nostalgia or engineering necessity?
A: Perhaps both. It would be a disservice to the brand not to leverage its strong historical foundations in Filipinos’ lives. But it would be a similarly missed opportunity not to change the brand to ensure its sustainability for future generations. So yes, we are addressing both. Recognizing Tang’s amazing legacy while engineering the brand to be future-proof.
