For its Coachella partnership with TikTok star Alix Earle, Poppi not only rented out a luxurious house for Earle and her entourage—it also designed custom neon green sweatsuits for Earle and her group of friends emblazoned with the name Poppi invented for the partnership, “Coachearlea.” 

Earle’s social posts showing off what she dubbed “Casa Poppi” generated more than 4.5 million engagements for the gut health soda brand and collectively reached over 275 million people, according to Poppi’s internal data. But Poppi anticipates the impact of the lime green sweatsuits it gifted to Earle, her sister and famous friends such as makeup artist Patrick Ta could be even more far-reaching.  

“Merch lives forever,” said Sophia Sesto, director of brand awareness and culture at Poppi. 

Over the past two years, Poppi’s vibrant sweatsuits have evolved into a core element of its influencer marketing strategy, Sesto said. After creating its first sweatsuit in early 2022, a bright blue set with neon green accents, Poppi quickly recognized the role the sweatsuits could play in weaving the brand into the lives of content creators beyond just its beverages, she said. 

“That was our first time getting a taste of, ‘Wow, this is how we really integrate into a lifestyle brand, and talking about Poppi or showing Poppi isn’t just for when you’re cracking open a can,’” Sesto said. “We’re a creator-first brand—and creators need to wear something when they’re making content, right?”

Poppi has gifted hundreds of its colorful sweatsuits to creators across TikTok and Instagram in hopes of getting the brand in front of a wider audience—without the clunkiness of a typical product seeding strategy, where an influencer would need to figure out how to squeeze a can of soda into their usual social content, Sesto said. 

Earlier this month, Poppi sent its new pink sweatsuit to dozens of influencers, many of whom modeled the suit in videos thanking Poppi for the gift. Since then, a number of those creators have worn the sweatsuit in multiple additional videos entirely unrelated to Poppi or its soda, from clothing reviews to videos of a creator documenting her pregnancy.

Earle, too, donned her lime green Poppi sweatpants several days after her Coachella brand trip in the video version of her podcast “Hot Mess with Alix Earle.” Poppi’s contract with Earle didn’t require her to promote or highlight the brand at all in her podcast, so the brand effectively received a (free) added appearance in front of Earle’s podcast audience by gifting her the sweatsuit, Sesto said. 

“The impressions and reach of the sweatsuits alone are bananas, to the point where it’s like, ‘Okay, we have this merch going out right now, but merch from two years ago is still bringing awareness to us,’” she said. “You can’t 100% measure what it does in terms of a sale, but I'm already seeing so many videos in our TikTok tags, viral or not, with people talking about the ‘Alix Earle effect’ and going to the store and buying Poppi … It really is just [about] looking for brand awareness.”

Roughly nine out of 10 marketers surveyed by influencer marketing platform Traackr in 2023 agreed product seeding boosts brand awareness, and just over 75% of them said product seeding campaigns drive at least some sales. DTC beauty brand Glossier, like Poppi, has put some of its product seeding efforts toward branded merch—particularly its pastel sweatshirts—rather than only gifting influencers beauty products. Emma Chamberlain’s coffee brand, Chamberlain Coffee, has also sent influencers packages with branded merch such as sweatshirts and tote bags.

But brands also need to take a careful approach to product seeding, as nearly two-thirds of those survey respondents said fewer than half of the influencers they sent products to made videos about those products. Social media audiences are also growing increasingly critical of excessive product gifting—earlier this year, TikTok creator Darcy McQueeny came under fire for videos unboxing massive stacks of PR packages.

Study: Influencer gifting creates waste and inefficiency for brands

While a gift box full of Poppi’s holiday soda flavor is at the base of one of McQueeny’s towering piles of boxes, many of the influencers who receive Poppi’s sweatsuits include them in at least some of their social content, Sesto said, whether Poppi-related or not. 

The ubiquity of Poppi’s sweatsuits on social media has also made the sets increasingly popular among everyday consumers, who often comment on the brand’s posts about new sweatsuit releases asking how they can get their hands on them. After Poppi saw that demand after seeding its initial blue sweatsuit among influencers, it began reserving a large number of sweatsuits for social media giveaways among Poppi’s “loyal community members” with each subsequent drop, Sesto said. 

Last week, “I saw someone from Coachearlea wearing a green sweatsuit; our pink sweatsuits are going viral at the moment, so I saw someone rocking their pink sweatsuit; and I saw someone rocking the OG blue sweatsuit, all in one day on social,” she said. “They’re becoming more of a fashion statement than shamelessly branded merch. And people have started just living the brand and rocking it and loving it.”