Introduction
Last week, we talked about how marketing strategy influences customer reviews.
We analyzed Liquid Death’s marketing and social media campaigns and, by using our reputation management software, we discovered the connections between those campaigns and the customer reviews that the promoted products received on online retail platforms, like Amazon, Walmart and Target.
This article will focus on another beverage company and its nonconformist marketing strategy: poppi.
After discussing the key points in poppi’s marketing journey, we’ll use FeedCheck to observe how their campaigns influenced their online product reviews.
How marketing strategy influences customer reviews: summary
It’s detrimental for a brand to develop and maintain an effective marketing strategy if they want to bring awareness to their offerings and determine potential customers to consider buying from them.
An important result that not many people think about when it comes to marketing analysis is how the promotional strategies influence the online customer reviews that a brand receives in the time frame of their ongoing campaigns.
Your marketing strategy impacts both the quantity and quality of customer reviews by shaping public perceptions of your brand’s image, features, and benefits.
How Poppi used influencer marketing to get more customer reviews
Poppi is a beverage company founded in 2015. Their goal is to manufacture and sell a healthier alternative to classic sodas, which is why the main ingredient in their drinks is apple cider vinegar.
As the self-care culture kept on rising in the last few years, it’s safe to say that Poppi always had many competitors. But that only pushed them to find new ways to differentiate themselves.
In 2024, they found the strategy that made their brand go global, that being collaborations with the right celebrities in the right circumstances.
This article will mostly focus on the big two marketing campaigns that Poppi went viral for: the Super Bowl ad and the collaboration with the American influencer Alix Earle at Coachella.
After analyzing the campaigns, you’ll discover the impact that they had on the customer reviews that Poppi received on online platforms like Amazon, Target and Walmart.
Poppi’s Super Bowl ad: The future of soda is now
In February 2024, Poppi made their big debut on one of the most watched events in the US.
Their 1 minute promotional video took the audience by surprinse, not only because Poppi is a relatively new and (at the time) smaller brand, but because of their visuals and storytelling as well. So no one was surprised that it was the most watched ad during the Super Bowl.
The Poppi promo spot went for a retro aesthetic, enhanced by the music choice: in the background, you can hear the song “Only you” by Yaz, which was released in 1982.
The ad contains short clips of cartoons, iconic moments in the US history (like the launch of a rocket) and snippets of home movies, that make the campaign seem more personal and relatable to the audience.
The second half of the ad talks mostly about the health benefits of Poppi. While the visuals remain in the retro segment, they clearly acknowledge present times, as they showcase people enjoying various flavors of the promoted beverage.
After the ad aired, Poppi’s social media accounts registered a huge engagement boost, as they got a 250%+ increase in both engagement and impressions on Instagram and a 70% increase in followers on TikTok.
But it wasn’t only their social media pages that skyrocketed. After the Super Bowl ad, Poppi registered a significant increase in online customer reviews as well.
As seen from the screenshot above, we used FeedCheck, our reputation management software, to analyze online customer reviews received by Poppi on Amazon, Target and Walmart.
FeedCheck is a review monitoring tool that gathers all reviews in one place. If you’re interested in review tracking and online reputation management for your business, you should contact us.
A significant raise in the number of customer reviews started in January 2024, a month before the Super Bowl. In the first month of the year, they went viral for opening a pop-up shop where the DJ was none other than Paris Hilton, one of the most known celebrities from the 2000s. Between the guests there were many influencers that appeal to the Gen Z audience, such as Chris Olsen, Jodie Woods, Emily Mariko, and Hannah Godwin.
Right before that, Poppi partnered with 8 Other Reasons and IGK Hair for a New Year’s Eve party bundle. Both of these brands are well known in the United States and have huge social media followings, which automatically made Poppi go up a notch as well.
Poppi, Coachella and the lemon-lime launch
However, it’s clear that the best month for Poppi when it comes to customer reviews was April 2024. And this is not a coincidence.
In April 2024, Poppi went to the Coachella music festival and pulled one of the most talked about campaigns of the year.
They partnered with Alix Earle, an American influencer with 4M followers on Instagram and over 6M followers on Tik Tok. Contrary to what brands usually do, Poppi decided to only partner with Alix instead of going after numerous brand ambassadors.
They sponsored the influencer and her friends and gave them full freedom to experience the music festival how they wanted, as long as they recorded the whole journey.
Of course, in every clip posted, Alix Earle could be seen sipping from a lemon-lime flavor Poppi drink, wearing Poppi merch or hanging out in the Poppi house. In one of her posts, the influencer even said that “Poppi was literally everywhere at Coachella this year – it felt like the official drink of the festival”.
Collaborating with an influencer with such a large and loyal fan base concluded in a skyrocketing increase in online customer reviews for Poppi.
As seen on FeedCheck, Poppi received the most customer reviews during the weeks 15 and 16 of this year, which translates to 8-21 of April. Considering that Coachella started on April 8 and ended on April 21, we can say that this growth in online reviews is not a coincidence.
This influencer campaign is one of the best examples of how delivering what your audience wants will turn to sales and a boosted brand reputation.
Analyzing Poppi’s customer reviews on FeedCheck
By using the Trending topics feature on our reputation management software, we can see that the most frequently used words in customer reviews for Poppi are “flavor”, “soda” and “taste”.
If you want to learn more details about how a certain term is used in customer feedback, you can analyze them through various filters and tools on FeedCheck.
For example, our review monitoring software analyzes customer sentiment based on the premise of the reviews where a certain word can be found.
Let’s take the 3 words that we discovered with the Trending topics feature.
We can see that all 3 words are on the positive side of the measurement scale, which means that they were mostly used in positive reviews. However, they do not reach the maximum value, which means that those words appeared in negative reviews as well.
To get more information on specific contexts where a certain word is found, you can use the Topic explorer feature on the FeedCheck platform. For example, that’s a snippet of how the word “flavor” is used in customer reviews.
This tool helps you summarize the content of the customer feedback, so you can get detailed insights into what your clients actually think about your product.
Conclusions
Using influencer marketing to gather more online reviews can be a game changer for your business. By partnering with influencers who align with your brand values and have a loyal, engaged audience, you can amplify your reach and credibility.
As you integrate influencer marketing into your strategy, continuously monitor and adapt your approach based on feedback and results.
To do that more effectively, use a reputation management tool, like FeedCheck. Contact us or get a personalized demo today.