Poppi’s call to make a Super Bowl ad was something of an audible—but a play that could have lasting effects on the soft drink industry.

The upstart beverage brand, which aired its first linear TV commercials only last month, was approached this week by CBS to take last-minute ad inventory for the Feb. 11 game on the network. Sensing the opportunity to send its fledgling awareness campaign into overdrive, the brand agreed to take 60 seconds, nailing down the deal this week, Andy Judd, Poppi’s chief marketing officer, told Ad Age.

The surprise ad buy illustrates the gains made by emerging functional sodas, led by Poppi and Olipop, that have built huge audiences online behind influencer marketing and claims that they are healthier than existing soda brands. Poppi is now taking that message to the biggest advertising stage, where it will share the broadcast with traditional soda giant PepsiCo, which is running two beverage ads.

PepsiCo’s Starry, launched a year ago to replace Sierra Mist, recruited rap star Ice Spice in an ad taking on Coca-Cola’s Sprite. PepsiCo’s Mtn Dew is using actors Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman to plug its Baja Blast variety, supporting the first extended release of the cult-favorite flavor.

PepsiCo’s decision not to run an ad for its flagship Pepsi-Cola, along with one-time Super Bowl regular Coca-Cola Co. having not appeared in the game in several years, means the old-school cola wars are sidelined. 

Also read: Why so many sweet brands are in the Super Bowl

John Craven, founder and CEO of the trade brand BevNet, said Poppi’s arrival on the Super Bowl stage helps to legitimize the brand and the category it helped to create.

“It says this mid-calorie segment that Poppi and Olipop has been carving out, along with some smaller brands, is legit and has traction,” Craven said. Just being able to afford the pricey opportunity also speaks to the brand’s success said Craven. Super Bowl ads come with a price tag of around $6.5 million for 30 seconds.

Emotionally connected

Poppi, which has generated considerable momentum online and has expanded availability to grocery stores nationwide, had considered a Super Bowl ad in the months leading up to the game, said Allison Ellsworth, who co-founded the soda with her husband Stephen in 2016 but relaunched it in 2020 under the Poppi name.

“We’ve been talking about Super Bowl for a while. Like, is this the right year? Or 2025? And we were going back and forth—we even brought it up at the last board meeting,” Ellsworth said in an interview. “It’s been like this thing where it’s like, is the brand ready? Are we ready?”

Poppi had fresh creative from agency Virtue Worldwide—a spot called “The Future of Soda is Now” that is an extended version of an ad that ran during the Grammy Awards on CBS on Feb. 4. The ad wasn’t intended to be a Super Bowl ad, but its emotional introduction to the brand was Super Bowl worthy, said Ellsworth.

“We set out to do a Poppi commercial,” and not a Super Bowl commercial, she said. “But when we made this piece, we brought in Virtue to step it up a level. We’ve never done a commercial or done linear TV. So we wanted the creative to … be a bit more emotionally connected with the history and the story. That was the brief going into this.”

Poppi’s ad does not include celebrities. There is a moment, however, where Ellsworth is shown on a TikTok screen to represent where Poppi came from, while the diverse young cast shows the brand’s ethos, said Judd.

While Poppi has made big awareness gains since launching its campaign in January, “I would say we are still in the emerging phase of the [awareness] curve,” Judd said.

The brand’s social-first approach has made it well known to Gen Z and millennial audiences, but “this is an opportunity to really expand households that jump us up to the next level, but get us on a more moderate level to the total U.S. population overall.”

Competitor Olipop is not running an ad in the game, barring a last-minute surprise, but is still trying to get in on the Super Bowl buzz via social media. It is promoting a “Tailgate Rug” that it says is a “spill-free” spot to hold a can of Olipop. The brand is offering a chance to win the rug in time for game day on Instagram.

People love fizz

Poppi’s commercial positions the brand as an evolutionary disruptor in the soda business, starting where traditional players end—with healthier ingredients, less sugar and prebiotics—while celebrating the tastes, smells and feel of sodas of the past.

“One of the things we learned from Poppi is that bubbles and soft drinks are still very popular with consumers,” said Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. “People love fizz, they love things like soda to drink.”

To Stanford, Poppi and Olipop have demonstrated there is growth in “better for you” sodas—but he’s not yet convinced that traditional soda drinkers will necessarily break their habits to switch, given Poppi’s price premium. The brand retails for about $2 a can, said Stanford, while Coke and Pepsi can cost as little as 50 cents or 80 cents a can.

“It would be easy to overstate the extent to which will be able to take share from the big soft drink players, but there’s a growth market in these soft drinks billed as healthier,” Stanford said. “Young consumers identify with the ingredient label and the lifestyle of some of these brands. There’s growth to be had there.”

Traditional soft drink companies might be more concerned about being cast as unhealthy, despite both Coke and Pepsi shifting their ad support behind zero-sugar formulas.

“The extent to which people are comparing your product to something that is supposedly less healthy—that’s something you should be paying attention to and making sure you’re not taken for granted,” Stanford said.

Mining the soda drinkers for those responsive to a health message or the brand’s lifestyle message makes sense for Poppi, he added.

“At a certain point, you want to put yourself up against the biggest players,” Stanford “It’s a good strategy if you can convince more people who are in that mindset about ingredient panels and the lifestyle of hip beverages. If you can get them to consider your brand and know it exists, you’ve got a better chance of recruiting them into repeat. And at the end of the day, it’s about repeat.”

Craven said he felt the ultimate play for brands like Olipop and Poppi is to grow right into the arms of the traditional brands they are pestering.

“I think there’s a race going on between Poppi and Olipop to be the first brand with a $1 billion exit,” Craven said. “It’s a race to the finish to see who will be acquired.”