[natural sound: Poppi Super Bowl LIX 2025 Commercial fades in and out]
Call it soda, call it pop, call it whatever you want. Over the past couple years, it’s gotten quite of a rebrand. Largely driven by a brand called Poppi, started by Allison Ellsworth in 2015. It’s got less sugar than your average can of soda, less than 25 calories per can and claims to be a prebiotic. But recently Poppi has landed in some hot water on TIkTok.
Sam Ogborn: “ I, you know, it’s so funny. I actually drink poppy and I have it on subscribe and save for the raspberry rose flavor. I love it.”
That’s Sam Ogborn. She used to work for brands like Walgreens and Red Bull in their marketing department. Now, she helps female founded companies with their marketing and is an adjunct professor at Miami University teaching social media and content marketing.
The controversy started with vending machines and a Super Bowl ad.
Sam Ogborn: “ Poppi wanted to do something for the Super Bowl that packed a punch and reached a ton of people. And so they had a 60 second Super Bowl ad, which was 16 million because it was 8 million for a 30 second spot.”
Her numbers are correct according to CBS.
Sam Ogborn: “And then on top of that, they invested in sending out these custom vending machines to these high-profile influencers. Unfortunately, There was a lot of backlash online because people that drink the product every day, their normal consumers are starting to feel left out by this.”
Many companies become major parts of our lives. We give them our money, time and attention. Look at people’s attachment to brands, like Glossier, a company that pioneered the no-makeup makeup look. Or Djerf Avenue, founded by social media it-girl Matilda Djerf, the poster girl for the effortless clean girl aesthetic. Both have had their respective scandals and left people disappointed. Companies, like Poppi, become representative of different lifestyles. Poppi brands itself as a soda you don’t have to feel guilty about. Poppi is the soda for the pilates princess or the girl that’s super into her gut health.
But are people really emotionally attached to a soda brand? Ogborn argues that they are.
Sam Ogborn: “They kind of grew up with consumers, like in the living room of consumers, they bring this collective energy to them from a normal everyday consumer who wants to support a small brand.”
To her, the backlash makes sense.
Sam Ogborn: “ This playbook that a lot of these brands follow of starting from scratch on social, building themselves up, then having a social media team run their social accounts and then do these big influencer activations.
According to a competitor of the brand, Olipop, the vending machines cost 25 thousand dollars each. Poppi has disputed this.
Sam Ogborn: “It’s tiring at this point. A lot of consumers are just over it, because they’re like, what about us?”
But not everyone agrees.
Aubrey Istnick studied marketing at the University of Arkansas. She graduated in 2022. Now, her job consists of building influencer campaigns.
Aubrey Istnick: “One of my biggest clients is like fortune 500 companies. Um, I don’t want to give too much away. Cause I don’t know what I signed with my NDA.”
She posted a video on TikTok giving her take on the drama.
[natural sound: Aubrey Istnick via TikTok: “ This might be a hot take, but I’m literally so sick of people using the term out of touch when talking about the poppy vending machines. It’s not out of touch. It’s genius marketing and they’re getting extreme ROI out of touch.”]
While she stands by her video, despite the hate comments she received for it, she also empathizes with people’s connection to the brand.
Aubrey Istnick: “ I’ve been a fan of poppy since they were on shark tank. Like, I immediately went and bought a case. I think I was like a junior in college during that time.”
Even if it didn’t turn out the way Poppi wanted it to, Istnick says they might still be onto something.
Aubrey Istnick: “It’s kind of like how everybody says like any publicity is good publicity. Them saying ‘hey, even if we get like a bad rep for how much money we spend or we get a bad rep for this crazy campaign, it will still be in the news for being like overly crazy.’”
And while Ogborn and Istnick might not totally see eye to eye, both agree that Poppi needs to take a step back.
Istnick thinks they need to get back to their roots.
Aubrey Istnick: “Community focused campaigns, at least just to gain the public’s trust back would be my best opinion or my best suggestion to them moving forward.”
Ogborn warns that for some consumers, switching behavior has already occurred. Which is when a competitor can get a customer to choose their brand over the other, even if only once.
Sam Ogborn: “That’s a win in my book.”
Poppi isn’t a public company, so we don’t know how their daily sales have been affected by this drama, if at all. But one thing is for certain.
Sam Ogborn: “ When the switching behavior happens it’s never a good sign because now you have more consumers moving over to a competitor and you need to find a way to get them back because you’re missing out on sales little by little.”
In a moment of chaos, Coca-Cola announced their own version of a prebiotic soda earlier this week, Simply Pop. As the industry becomes more and more saturated, who knows how the Poppi drama will end.
Sam Ogborn: “ I would really reassess what my influencer planning and social media planning looks like for the remainder of the year and if I were her, as a founder, I personally would ask myself, ‘is my social team being compensated enough in the past?’ These roles are notoriously underpaid and this whole fiasco just cost them a ton of money.”
After the owner posted a video acknowledging the issue, Poppi has begun posting regular content again. It is safe to say that they want this behind them. And Istnick thinks that it’s possible.
Aubrey Istnick: I don’t think it was a bad campaign. I think it was just a mess.”
For WNUR, I’m Naya Reyes .
[natural sound: Poppi Super Bowl LIX 2025 Commercial fades in and out]
