Olipop steals the spotlight in the beverage category, giving the shoulder to traditional advertising in an unconventional way.
Traditional advertising like TV commercials and giant billboards, used to be known as one of the ingredients for a successful marketing strategy until Olipop came around and disrupted the scale of what it means to succeed in oversaturated markets.
Founded in 2017, Goodwin and Lester brought Olipop to the world and showcased their new collection of probiotic seltzers. Flavors like Cola, Root Beer, and Cherry Vanilla mimicked those of popular soda brands. Soda giants like Pepsi and Coca-Cola boast legacy and familiarity within the hearts of most Americans — but Olipop wanted to take a jab at them, insinuating they can do it, too — but in a different way.
There’s already such a large demand for soda – around 63% of Americans 18 and older consume soft drinks at least once a day. Olipop’s probiotic seltzers entered the market as healthier alternatives to what most people are drinking nationally and considered a “guilty pleasure.”
Marketing their drink alternative to soda, however, required in-depth consideration of who the ideal customers are, where they spend their time, and what habits they have. Traditional advertising methods like paid ads worked at a slow pace until the pandemic hit. Reaching their consumers offline stopped at a halt, raising the question of how they could raise brand awareness online.
Consumer habits dramatically shifted during the pandemic, and social media grew into a hive mind for the younger generations like Gen Z. That’s where TikTok came into play.
TikTok > Paid Ads
Olipop dropped paid ads as the focal marketing tactic in 2021 and decided to live on the platform where all attention was going to – TikTok. Olipop became a TikTok sensation 6 years later and generated double the amount of numbers they did in 2022. There wasn’t a moment where you haven’t scrolled past someone holding or drinking an Oliop can – and that was the point!
Their success was due to their decision to ignore what other brands were doing and follow what consumers—especially younger consumers—wanted instead. Performance marketing first efforts were normalized amongst e-commerce brands, and Olipop decided to set a new standard where being different is the new ordinary.
How was Olipop able to break the norms and formulate something completely out of the box?
RECOGNIZING VALUE OVER TRANSACTION
While billboards and commercials worked for the big players, Olipop soon recognized that their methods didn’t apply the same way.
Their target audience, Gen Z, wasn’t just getting their information from ads anymore. During the pandemic, vertical scrolling became the new wave of information consumption, and brands needed to jump on the bandwagon quickly. Money continued to go down the drain as the company invested in different outlets to create content and pushed paid ads one after another. The result–a drained budget and a mere few extra followers.
Olipop needed to reroute its marketing efforts from what was familiar and take risks to coincide with consumers’ evolving needs.
Authenticity and entertainment became the name of the game — and that’s what Olipop’s target audience wanted to see. Repetitive ads that blatantly sold you something became mundane over time, and viewers were quick to swipe away if any video or post looked remotely like an ad.
Selling products wasn’t the most important thing about owning a business: it was about building relationships and starting conversations. Olipop needed their videos to talk to their customers, not to talk at them.
In fear of losing more than what their budget could call for, Olipop took the risk and decided to be the outlier of all traditional marketing strategies and formulated their own.
5 KEY POINTS OF OLIPOP’S MARKETING STRATEGY
Olipop won the hearts of many and became sensational all due to their 5-step recipe of formulating the perfect method to their marketing strategy.
1. Market Switching
What sounds the most appealing, a prebiotic seltzer or a healthy soda drink?
Olipop understood that not everyone wants to consume a medical-grade drink nor are they familiar with prebiotics. This niche label for their drink limited their brand’s visibility, causing them to miss out on big numbers.
Doing a full 360, they decided to switch the market and relabel themselves as “a new kind of soda”. Olipop chose to target avid soda drinkers by slapping the word across their website and leaning into the nostalgic love consumers have for the most popular drinks that are notorious for their negative impact on long-term health. Soda is loved by many and seen as a comfort drink served straight from the can or over ice, so it makes sense that why Olipop decided to take the name for themselves too.
Plus, they even campaigned with college students to release a new flavor exclusively for them. Olipop’s Ridge Rush was a clear take on another competitor, Mountain Dew, with a mountain landscape painted on their can. They tapped into yet another familiar flavor that further placed their company into the category of sugary drinks but without the excess sugar.
2. TikTok Takeover
In 2021, Olipop decided to pull the trigger and cut off all paid ads to fully invest in building their brand on TikTok. Instead of spending money on ads that didn’t sell as much as they wanted to, they looked to creators already on the platform to generate organic content for them.
This method worked almost immediately causing Olipop to ignore the rest of their existing socials besides dedicating their Instagram posts to aesthetic visuals.
Switching their visibility over to TikTok, they fostered a worldwide community of Olipop fans and content continued to flow from there.
To their benefit, there was a rise in gut health awareness that got their drinks front row seats. #Guthealth massed over 700 million views on TikTok which coincided with the purpose of their drinks – to improve gut health. In addition to replacing soda, Olipop coincidentally responded to another consumer demand that aligned with their timeline.
3. Authenticity Over Ads
If ditching paid ads were that easy, every brand would be doing it. Instead of dipping their toes in the water, Olipop took a full dive and did just that.
Social media users, especially GenZ, are quick to recognize when something is an ad or even a tad bit like a sales pitch. Avoiding that format altogether, Olipop gave their trust to TikTok’s online creators to create the most authentic videos possible.
TikToker Sara Crane, aka the “Olipop Girl,” was the chosen one and ended up as the face of Olipop’s brand. Over time with consistency, she became not only their creator but a recognizable face among Olipop fans. Familiarity builds relationships making it more likely for their audience to click “add to cart” for their favorite Olipop flavor.
Creators like Sara Crane knew their audience best which meant they knew how to create the right videos to keep viewers engaged. Whether it’s keeping up with trends or developing different video formats that circulated around Olipop drinks, they all contributed to #OlipopPartner, which generated hundreds of videos.
4. Product Placement
Understanding how to speak to social media users about your products meant being lowkey and that was the best method to put into practice.
Selling products isn’t all that it takes to be a business, and Olipop was able to translate that into product placement. Influencers and creators within the TikTok community filmed lifestyle videos surrounding the popular drink, making it seem like the product wasn’t intentionally out of place but meant to be there.
Simple videos like eating meals with an Olipop drink or drinking Olipop after a yoga class created a sense of FOMO amongst viewers, who soon craved Olipop after watching one video. The more organic content there was, the more their brand was recognizable and known.
#OlipopPartner founded the relationship between consumer to seller by being authentic and relatable. Compared to other brands, Olipop was a breath of fresh air when it came to being bombarded with ads that looked like ads.
5. Expand the brand
Olipop offers a variety of flavors to choose from, all branded as a healthier alternative to soda. Flavors like Ridge Rush and Vintage Cola mimic those of Mountain Dew and Coca-Cola. The prebiotic drink is healthy, but they expanded on the idea of it being just a healthy soda.
Olipop’s “it girl” Sara features in a recipe series where she makes popular drink imitations out of different Olipop flavors. The iconic Aperol Spritz cocktail with Orange Squeeze, a cherry slushy out of Cherry Cola, and her “sleepy girl” mocktails are only a few examples of Olipop’s full potential as a drink.
These drink combinations showcase the possibilities of Olipop being more than just a healthy soda–even though that’s the label. They were able to diversify their offerings beyond the consumers who just drink soda. If you drink too much alcohol or consume too many sweets, they provide the healthier alternative to that too. Being health conscious is the main goal and they hit the nail on the head by giving their consumers more options than one of how to be mindful of what they put in their body.
Visual learning is prominent on TikTok and these recipe videos tie back into the practice of organic content. Olipop fans post about their favorite recipes, like mocktails using different drink flavors, and the cycle continues. One video goes viral and everyone’s dying to have a taste of a prebiotic seltzer.
Olipop Marketing Strategy: Key Takeaways
- Recognize who your customers are and what they’re looking for, even if you’re not the first to come to mind. What’s your niche and how can you label yourself to get people running to you?
- Don’t force something inside a box if it’s not meant to fit. Hit refresh and think beyond what’s normal for others. Remember, being different is the new ordinary.
- Authenticity builds relationships and relatability. Aim for connections and talk to customers instead of talking at them.
- You don’t always need to be the loudest person in the room to be the center of attention. Subtly goes a long way.
- Whatever your overall brand message is, make it as literal as possible in every way possible.
If you need to create a winning social media strategy like Olipop, our social media growth experts can help, feel free to reach out to us.
