• 🥥 100 Coconuts' Category Strategy
• 🫗 GLP-1 Impact Looms Long-Term
• 👑 Amazon The New King Of Retail?
• 🔀 Monday Moves

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This year’s pre-game show began well before Lady Gaga’s performance and no doubt the Big Game hype will bleed beyond this week as marketers work to squeeze the most out of their $8 million per 30-second ad spends. 

That is especially true in beverage where poppi has taken a “full-funnel” approach to keeping awareness at an all time high.

The prebiotic soda brand warmed up its marketing arm well-before kick off this year, doling about about $800,000 on custom digital vending machines (about $25,000 each, per Olipop) for 32 high-profile influencers including social media personality and poppi investor Alix Earle, comedian Jake Shane and “Love Island” star Rob Rausch. 

• Corresponding, sponsored posts flooded Instagram and TikTok last week showing the bright pink machines being delivered or clips of creators grabbing a can from the fully-stocked vending stations.
• A single post from lifestyle influencer @kaelimaee has over 2.3 million likes as of this morning.

But the reaction videos also followed as poppi’s customer base aired its outrage that the brand would keep giving perks to celebrities and skip over those supporting the drink brand with their wallets day-to-day. Many of the videos questioned whether this was an “out of touch” campaign, or a brilliant marketing strategy. A few dozen of the reaction videos have notched viewcounts well into the hundreds-of-thousands range so we’d say it's likely the latter. 

Ahead of its Super Bowl commercial debut in 2024, Poppi generated organic hype and awareness, marking the first time a better-for-you soda had elbowed its way into a prime time spot typically held on to by big players like Coca Cola and Pepsi. 

(It should be noted that poppi’s 2025 Super Bowl ad campaign was created by VIRTUE Worldwide, the marketing firm behind Coca Cola’s AI and AR-backed Coke Creations activation) 

This year it worked to recreate that anticipation, taking a bigger risk – both financially and with the potential to alienate its fans – but the ROI seems to be running in the right direction. 

According to Ali VanOverbeke, marketing director for waste-free beverage vending machine company Kadeya, each machine would have needed to generate 3.12 million impressions for the stunt to break even (assuming an $8 CRM). Some of the influencer videos have already surpassed the 16M mark and that was all less than 24 hours after the brand’s actual $8 million Superbowl ad hit the airwaves. (That spot brought the campaign full circle as it took aim at the big soda players themselves).

This year, poppi has survived lawsuits and negative headlines taking aim at its health benefits, suggesting this small bout of outrage will likely fizzle fast. The New York Times claims that this year’s Super Bowl ads overall relied more on celebrity faces than creative concepts, so maybe poppi was one play ahead all along. 

Go Deeper: Super Bowl vs. GLP-1s.

Dollar sales in the coconut water category have been steadily growing for months but it takes a multi-pronged approach to build sequential gains against category leader Vita Coco. 

🤝 100 Coconuts spent the last year building out a model characterized by partnerships with entities like Disney and Major League Soccer team Inter Miami.

⛴️ The New York City-based brand closed the last quarter of 2024 with a Disney deal and co-branded Moana 2 cans alongside news that the product will be offered on the entertainment company’s cruise lines.

🛒 100 Coconuts is focused on natural grocery where it sees an upside over investing in convenience where a robust DSD network is required to be successful.

🤝 The company is reworking its tequila-infused RTD cocktail variety to follow the partnership model by seeking deals with spirits brands to support a move into bev-alc.

Learn more about 100 Coconuts approach to the coconut water category on BevNET.

Pour one out for the GLP-1 users; no really, pour one out because they won’t need it. 

Patients using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are cutting their beverage consumption, impacting everything from hyper-sweetened sodas to zero-sugar energy drinks, per a recent collaborative study between Numerator and Cornell University.

📉 Unsurprisingly, GLP-1 users are fleeing from soft drinks the fastest, with average annualized impact falling 7% in the six months after starting the medication. 

• Caffeine is also in the cross-hairs, with coffee and energy drinks each falling 4%, followed by juice also at 4%. Even water took a hit, dropping by half a point. 
• All are contributing to a 5.5% decline in average annual grocery spending during the initial six-month period. 
• It’s bad news for booze, too: A study of 14,000 Weight Watchers published by the American Medical Association found that 45.3% of GLP-1 patients who previously had at least one drink per week had reduced their alcohol consumption after beginning a GLP-1 regimen. 

🪟 But as one window closes, another opens. Sales of functional drinks, protein shakes and meal replacement beverages are on the rise, as GLP-1 users look to supplement their diets and compensate for loss of lean muscle mass.

Who is the king of commerce? Online retail giant Amazon might have taken the mantle after posting Q4 sales of $187.8 billion.

• That figure is expected to be higher than mass retailer Walmart’s revenue, marking the first time Amazon has surpassed the mass retailer. 
• However, the ecommerce behemoth has long been far ahead in terms of profits due to its diversified cloud storage, streaming and ad services.

In other grocery news: Southeastern Grocers (SEG) has reacquired the Winn-Dixie and Harveys banners from ALDI. The deal appears to roll back a move the German-owned private supermarket company made in March 2024 when it bought the roughly 400 stores from SEG. 

• Winn-Dixie and Harveys’ new owners are current SEG CEO and president Anthony Hucker and C&S Wholesale Grocers.

Catch Up: ALDI To Acquire Winn Dixie, Harveys Stores

Here’s a taste of the people and products moving around the industry to start off your week.

🫚 Ginger beer brand Reed’s has several leadership changes going into effect today. Douglas McCurdy (former CFO and COO for tech startup REZI) is now CFO. The brand’s previous CFO Joann Tinnelly has moved to the new position of Chief Accounting Officer. 

• Former Boylan Bottling Co. VP of Supply Chain Salvatore Vassallo has joined as VP of Operations.

🛒 Online grocery delivery service Weee! has appointed Jeff Wilke as a company advisor. Wilke comes to the company with decades of experience, having previously served as CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer. 

🦍 Gorilla Energy has named former Red Bull VP of Marketing Oliver Holzmann as its new CMO.

🚛 The Ryl Tea Company has partnered with top NYC DSD house Big Geyser, which CEO Blodin Ukella said is “just the first of many BIG announcements” coming this year.

👍 Functional soda maker Perfy is partnering with beverage distributor The Odom Corporation to grow its presence in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska, starting with 110 Plaid Pantry locations.