Olipop’s influencer marketing and social media plays are paying off

It was a year of firsts for Olipop, the TikTok-famous prebiotic soda brand that is challenging beverage giants Pepsi and Coke. Milestones include the brand’s first TV ad, which debuted in May and starred Grammy-nominated singer and Olipop investor Camila Cabello, as well as its first out-of-home campaign, which blanketed Chicago with murals and billboards in October. Olipop also built out its influencer network to capitalize on its TikTok success, co-branding new products with companies including craft beer brand Talea. See our 2023 Marketers of the Year here Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, check us out on Spotify and hear us on Stitcher. This is our RSS feed. Tell a friend! The stepped-up marketing has helped fuel sales momentum for the brand, which markets itself as a healthier alternative to traditional soda brands. Its sodas, which Olipop says include ingredients that aid digestive health, have 2 to 5 grams of sugar per 12-ounce can, compared with 39 sugar grams in a Coke and 41 grams in a Pepsi. Watch: Pepsi and Shaq reunite in mini cans campaign Olipop Co-Founder David Lester confirmed in a recent interview that, as of the first week of December, the brand is still on track to do $200 million in revenue this year—up from $70 million in 2022. “This year has been a huge year for us, probably our biggest in our short five-year history,” Lester said. The momentum has caught the eye of retailers, which are stocking more of the sodas. This year, the company gained national distribution in Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Kroger and others, according to Lester. The Cabello ad in particular was a “huge milestone” for the company, Lester said. The campaign, called “Real Love Makes Us,” showed warm scenes of Cabello’s real-life friends and family at home, laughing around a dinner table and singing karaoke. A 30-second spot aired on Hulu and Peacock, as well as in paid social media ads. It was Olipop’s “biggest spend to date by an order of magnitude,” he said at the time, without confirming dollar amounts. View this post on Instagram A post shared by camila (@camila_cabello) Olipop worked with the brand strategists at Squint Consulting on “Real Love Makes Us.” But Lester attributes much of Olipop’s recent marketing success to its in-house ad agency, which he said the brand has been working on building out for the past few years. It recently hired talent from a wide range of large agencies, according to Lester. More news from 2023: In-house agencies grow in popularity The in-house shop is led by Chad Wilson, Olipop’s head of marketing, who was previously at R/GA. “Our goal was to bring in some of the top talent from creative agencies who were excited to work with a mission-driven brand that executes at a high level,” Lester said in an email. “Through bringing people in-house, we were able to really immerse everyone into our mission and goals while also providing them a lot of creative freedom.” Olipop’s momentum makes it an acquisition target, according to John Craven, CEO of the beverage industry publication BevNet. He said that Pepsi and Coke “haven’t made any massive deals in a while,” speculating that Olipop and its competitor Poppi could be “prime targets” for a larger company. “It seems like one of these brands has to get acquired, if not both. It’s just a question of who goes first,” Craven said. Asked about the speculation, Lester said, “There’s nothing to confirm here,” adding that “our main goal is to focus on the mission at hand to scale our products and blow sales through the roof.” Olipop is considered a pioneer in the healthy soda category, which now includes not only Poppi, but also Culture Pop and Sanzo. “I would give them a ton of credit for what they’ve created,” Craven said, adding that Olipop has spawned “tons of copycats, and people who are trying to go after this new market segment that they’ve created.” This year, he said, Olipop has proven itself as a brand that’s serious and is “going to grow into something big.” See our 2023 Marketers of the Year here

Olipop’s influencer marketing and social media plays are paying off

Featured Stories