Influencer Advisory™What was Poppi's marketing strategy with creators?
Poppi's marketing strategy was creator first from year one, before paid ads or PR. It sent product wide, put its founder on TikTok and grew with small creators.
Founder · November 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Poppi grew by going creator first from year one. It worked with creators before it ran a single paid ad or hired a PR agency. (Poppi)
We invested heavy in creator marketing before we ever did a paid ad. We ever had a PR agency. We were just like creator first from literally year 1.
Poppi
The company rebranded to Poppi in 2020, swapping its glass bottles for colorful cans, and grew to $500 million in annual revenue by 2025. entrepreneur.com
How did Poppi get so many free posts early on?
Send a lot of product, early, to people who want to post.
- Poppi did a ton of seeding in the pandemic, when people were desperate to post things that were better for you. About 90% of the people who were sent Poppi put it on their Instagram.
Free product got the posts, but someone still had to tell the story.
Why is the Poppi founder in all the videos?
Put the founder's face and story up front.
- The founder is a creator too. Her face is in 80% of the brand's content. (Poppi)
- On TikTok she told her founder story, including going on Shark Tank nine months pregnant. The next day store shelves were cleared and Poppi did $100,000 on Amazon. (Poppi)
Poppi leaned into TikTok early and got 2 billion views in two years. (Poppi)
A founder can carry a lot, and creators can carry the rest.
Did Poppi need big names to grow?
Find creators while they are small and keep them close.
- Jake Shane was at 90,000 followers when the Poppi posts started. (Poppi)
- Put creators in the big ad: In 2025 Poppi ran its second Super Bowl ad in a row, with the creators Jake Shane and Alix Earle in it. Marketing Brew, February 2025
Growing with creators works best when the gifts stay human sized.
What went wrong with the Poppi vending machines?
Keep the gift at a size fans cheer for.
- Ahead of its second consecutive Super Bowl ad in 2025, Poppi sent full sized branded vending machines to 32 creators and fans in NFL team cities, plus a New Orleans bar.
- Poppi (2025): vending machines gifted to influencers. Consumers called it tone deaf. Poppi says the $25,000 price was inflated by 60%.
Worth avoiding, the bigger and pricier the gift looks, the louder people ask why those people got it.
After the backlash, Poppi confirmed it sent the influencer vending machines to a fire station in Los Angeles, a school in Phoenix, and community centers in Nashville and Dallas.
Every move that worked here came back to people who wanted to post.
How do I build this without Poppi's team?
This is a lot to run by hand, so we run the creator side for brands.
Creators keep posting all year, without a flat fee every time. New creators ask to get in, so cold outreach shrinks. Creators share hooks and ideas, so the content gets better. Videos you can run as ads. Small creators tell you what to fix in your product.
If you have some of the steps in place, we audit what's missing in each and how to take it further.