The Poppi brand is one of the most compelling stories in American business. What began as a homemade gut-health solution for founder Allison Ellsworth from her Dallas kitchen has evolved into a category-defining beverage phenomenon. Her story sits at the center of a multibillion-dollar acquisition by PepsiCo and a rapidly expanding global functional drinks market projected to reach nearly $340 billion by 2030.
Poppi hasn’t merely disrupted the soda aisle, it has reimagined what a modern beverage brand can look and sound like when marketed right.
Since late 2024, in the “Better for you” soft drinks category, where Poppi is primarily playing, the brand’s awareness has increased by an eye-watering 19 percentage-points, with consideration, usage, and preference climbing in parallel. This is no easy feat; uplifts in funnel metrics across the board is rarely seen in brands across any category. Poppi is now one of America’s most recognised functional soda brands, and its momentum shows no signs of slowing.
This case study, in partnership with Tracksuit, explores how Poppi built unprecedented momentum through a combination of founder-led storytelling, TikTok dominance, a distinctive brand identity, and an ethos that incorporates wellness with fun. It also discusses the opportunities presented to Poppi post-acquisition while continuing to shape the brand’s narrative.
The data used in this case study is from the US “Better for you” soft drinks Category from November 2024 – October 2025.
Poppi’s Origin Story
Founded in 2016, Allison and Stephen Ellsworth created a fruit-juice, sparkling-water, and apple-cider-vinegar drink in their Texas kitchen to improve their gut health. They began selling it at farmers’ markets before appearing on Shark Tank in 2018 and securing an investment from guest shark, Rohan Oza.
From 2018 to 2020 Rohan, Allison and Stephen rebranded from “Mother Beverage” to Poppi, positioning the brand as a fun, low-sugar, prebiotic soda. Poppi went viral on social media, expanding quickly into major retailers, and grew to over $100M in sales in 2023. In 2025, PepsiCo acquired Poppi for around $1.95 billion.
It remains one of the fastest-growing soda beverage companies across the US.
A Brand Identity Built for Culture
Poppi’s visual identity; bright cans, flavoured names, bubbly typography and lively colours is strategic. It blends nostalgia with health cues, appealing to both classic soda lovers and wellness consumers.
When we zoom out in the broader Soft Drinks category to examine Poppi alongside longtime category leader Coca-Cola, the differentiation could not be more pronounced. While Coca-Cola owns heritage codes like “classic”, “timeless”, “excellent” and “favourite”, reflecting its universal brand built over decades, Poppi is uniquely perceived as “healthy”, “trendy”, and “innovative”.
This is the differentiation that Poppi will continue to win on as a category challenger that is a direct response to modern and evolving consumer preferences.
In the “Better for you” soda category, where the leading brand consideration driver is still “Tastes great,” Poppi’s performance is quantifiable. In the last 3 months, compared to the same period last year, its taste perception score has lifted 7 percentage points. By tracking shifts in key conversion drivers like taste, soda brands can quickly understand whether product launches, flavour innovations or creative executions are resonating, and adjust future work accordingly.
Poppi’s Marketing Strategy
TikTok and Founder-Led Storytelling
Allison Ellsworth became Poppi’s most powerful marketing channel. Her founder-led storytelling, unfiltered and honest TikTok presence created instant trust and emotional resonance with consumers.
Long before legacy soda brands treated TikTok as a serious business channel, Poppi built a natural, storytelling engine. With now over 800,000 followers and 12.2M likes, their real-time content replaced rigid campaign calendars, and behind-the-scenes moments outperformed the glossy ad spots traditional marketers relied on.
The strategy worked, as in the early days one of Allison’s TikTok videos sharing the origin story of Poppi drove a 200% increase in sales the very next day (over $100K in sales), proving the brand’s thesis that authenticity is the new currency of consumer marketing.
Campus College Tours
Poppi recognised early that Gen Z was defining the future of beverage culture. Tracksuit data shows that while Gen Z (18 – 24 yrs) only make up 14% of the “Better for you” category now, the category skews towards buyers 25 – 34 yrs, who make up 22% – or almost a quarter – of the category. This means growing with Gen Z is the key to future, sustained demand as they age up. To meet them where they live, study, and socialise, the brand launched college campus tours centred around sampling, social content, and cultural presence.
These events weren’t traditional product demos, they were experiences designed to allow Gen Z consumers into ‘Poppi’s World’.
Poppi showed up with bold branding, free tastings, student ambassador partnerships, and highly shareable moments engineered for TikTok and Instagram.
By embedding itself into campus culture, Poppi turned students into loyalists and unlocked a powerful word-of-mouth strategy that extended far beyond the college tours.
Super Bowl
After mastering social media and digital storytelling, Poppi stepped onto one of the biggest stages in advertising. For the second year in a row, the brand secured a Super Bowl commercial slot, a space typically dominated by beer giants and legacy soda brands.
Their 2024 ad, ‘The Future of Soda’, not only held its own but it became the most-watched commercial of the entire game, reaching 29.1 million households.
For their 2025 super bowl ad, Poppi leaned into using creators and influencers in their spot, including ‘it girl’ and investor of the brand Alix Earle, Therapuss comedian Jake Shane, and video creator Robert Rausch.
Post-Acquisition: Poppi’s Most Untapped Opportunities
With PepsiCo acquiring Poppi, the brand enters a pivotal chapter: scaling without losing its brand story. Allison and Stephen Ellsworth have begun evolving into public-facing personalities, extending the brand’s authenticity through personal content, media appearances, and thought leadership. This strategy keeps Poppi emotionally grounded even as it integrates into a global beverage portfolio.
But the biggest opportunity ahead is demographic expansion. Despite a near-equal gender split among category buyers, Poppi under-indexes on awareness with men; only 38% of the people aware of Poppi are male whereas the gender split should be closer to 50/50 to represent the category at large. This indicates a real growth opportunity for the brand to reach and appeal to more men.
Early partnerships with artists and creators such as Post Malone, Jake Shane and Rob Rausch signal interest in broadening its cultural footprint, but the gap remains significant.
However, with PepsiCo’s infrastructure, Poppi now has the ability to build trust at scale through distribution, reliability, flavour consistency, and category leadership, while maintaining the irreverence and intimacy that made it famous.
Lessons For Founders and Marketers
Poppi’s success is not a story of luck or timing. It is the result of a meticulously built marketing engine driven by authenticity, cultural fluency, and a willingness to rewrite the rules of CPG growth. It demonstrates a healthy balance of founder-driven storytelling with the correct category positioning, TikTok virality with retail power, and a focus on wellness whilst offering a healthier soda experience.
Over the past decade, Poppi recognised a major shift and pain point in consumer preferences, people still loved soda, but they increasingly craved healthier options. By identifying this paint point, just as it was about to surge, Poppi secured a powerful first-move advantage in the category.
When marketers uncover emerging pain points before anyone else, they gain a significant competitive edge. This is also the value of having Tracksuit as an always-on source of consumer insight to help marketers understand their category, their consumers’ needs, and how they’re positioned within the competitive landscape.
In doing so, Poppi became not just a beverage, but a brand universe, one that signals how the next era of consumer brands will be built.
As Poppi steps into its next chapter under PepsiCo, the question is no longer whether it can scale, but how far its cultural relevance can push the better-for-you soda category, and whether it can become this generation’s Coca-Cola without losing the authenticity that got it here.
Data discussed in this article has been provided by Tracksuit, the affordable, always-on brand tracker built for marketers and agencies. Tracksuit has put together a quick video on how you can use the dashboard to track your brand performance over time and prove the impact of your marketing strategy.
