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Allison Ellsworth admits she\u2019s not the typical founder story. She was, by her own telling, \u201ca solid C student,\u201d a partier, someone who got arrested during spring break and later found herself driving across the country working in oil and gas research. Even now, after selling Poppi for $2 billion, she doesn\u2019t try to polish herself into the platonic image of a consumer founder.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI do TikToks in Crocs and socks with my hair in a ponytail,\u201d she told Fortune. \u201cI\u2019m just a normal person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pepsi, the soda and snack giant which bought her company, has taken notice. Since she sold her soda company, \u201cthey\u2019ve been really big on \u2018let Poppi be Poppi,\u2019\u201d Ellsworth said, adding that \u201cI think they\u2019re actually trying to learn from us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old built Poppi into one of the fastest-growing beverage brands in the country by leaning into a kind of marketing that was nimble, quick to respond and often very unserious. In fact, it got into a typical Tiktok-esque scandal by giving out vending machines of Poppi to influencers. But behind that was a deliberate strategy, Ellsworth recalled, one that Pepsi is now trying to understand and copy.<\/p>\n
One of the clearest examples is pretty simple: Poppi will just send free cans to anyone who asks\u2014no campaign, no targeting strategy, just an invitation. Now, she gets around 500 wedding invites a month alone. \u201cGraduations, birthdays, all these things. We\u2019re just shipping it out,\u201d Ellsworth said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It sounds inefficient, but she argued it\u2019s like Red Bull\u2019s field marketing, where attractive young women gave out free cans of the energy drink during work events. The only the difference is that the demand is inbound. \u201cNo one needs to be out there with a backpack anymore. People are coming to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
That philosophy of being less controlling and more reacting extends to how she broadly thinks about the way marketing works. Ellsworth is often framed as a TikTok-native founder, and it\u2019s true that Poppi\u2019s rise was closely tied to social media and her bright colored packaging. She was the face of the brand early on, posting constantly and building familiarity with customers who felt like they knew her.<\/p>\n
But she\u2019s skeptical of the idea that TikTok alone can build a company at scale. Linear TV can influence a classic, older group with money to spend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What that means in practice is abandoning the usual safe, interchangeable ads that dominate commercial breaks. When Poppi started running TV spots, Ellsworth said the goal was to stand out as much as possible, doing the opposite of what\u2019s expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For example, she insisted that her bright pink-and-purple cans show up in commercials during NFL games, despite her drink being clearly marketed towards mostly college women. But Poppi broke the monotony of typical football ads of\u00a0\u201cdudes sitting around eating nachos or drinking beer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then a bright pink can comes on the screen,\u201d Ellsworth said. \u201cIt just breaks through because it\u2019s so different.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same thinking carried into larger bets. Her recent Super Bowl ad featured Charli XCX and Rachel Sennott just droning the word \u201cvibes\u201d to each other, which garnered a big reaction, albeit mixed. But Ellsworth decided on the ad quickly and without the kind of prolonged testing that larger companies rely on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were just like, it\u2019s a vibe,\u201d Ellsworth said, adding that Pepsi initially\u00a0was cautious but ended up trusting Poppi.<\/p>\n
The ad ended up tripling brand awareness, according to Ellsworth. More importantly, it reinforced her belief that innovation, and not attention, is the real constraint in modern marketing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you think TV is dead, you\u2019re probably \u201cjust doing it the wrong way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That view runs counter to how many startups are currently thinking about growth. In her conversations with founders, Ellsworth said she hears the same frustrations repeated: that funding is harder to get, that the market is saturated, that the odds are worse than they used to be.<\/p>\n
Her response is a little harsh: \u201cIt\u2019s probably because your business isn\u2019t good.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
More often, she sees founders trying to replicate what has already worked rather than creating something new. For decades, nobody dared to innovate on the soda category. Now, after Poppi\u2019s success, \u201cthere\u2019s like 100-plus prebiotic sodas.\u201d Most, she believes, are too late. \u201cYou kind of missed the wave.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lesson, in her view, is not to copy a playbook but to build one. \u201cBe the trendsetter. Don\u2019t follow the trends.\u201d<\/p>\n
#TikTok #sensation #sold #startup #billion #Pepsi #letting #Poppi #Poppi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Allison Ellsworth admits she\u2019s not the typical founder story. She was, by her own telling,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[1588,552,3833,8159,2667,1591,6845,5636,8158,3535,4598,2127,798],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}