Brand Buzz Is Not a Business Strategy: What Poppi Can Teach Us About Growth

Poppi has the kind of brand presence most companies would love to build. The packaging is instantly recognizable. The marketing is colorful, social-first, and made to stand out. The brand has appeared in a Super Bowl commercial, partnered with the Dallas Cowboys and Love Island USA, and built the kind of cultural relevance that makes a beverage feel like more than just another can on the shelf.

Then PepsiCo acquired Poppi for nearly $2 billion.

On the surface, that sounds like the ultimate branding success story. Build something people recognize, create serious momentum, and eventually get acquired by one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world.

But recent reporting around the acquisition tells a more complicated story. PepsiCo agreed to an additional performance-based payment of up to $300 million if Poppi reaches certain growth milestones by the third quarter of 2027. In December, PepsiCo estimated the value of that future payment at $278 million. By June, that estimate had fallen to $117 million. As of September 5, it was around $12 million.

That does not mean Poppi suddenly stopped growing or that the brand failed. PepsiCo has said Poppi continued to post double-digit sales-volume growth in the third quarter and gained share in the carbonated soft drink market. What it does suggest is that the brand may not be growing at the level PepsiCo originally expected when it made the acquisition.

And that distinction is exactly what makes this worth talking about.

What Happened With Poppi After the PepsiCo Acquisition?

Poppi is still growing, but the financial expectations surrounding that growth have changed significantly.

When PepsiCo bought the brand, part of the deal included the possibility of an additional $300 million payout if Poppi met undisclosed performance milestones. The sharp decline in PepsiCo’s estimated value of that payout suggests the company now sees those milestones as much less likely to be reached than it did several months ago.

There are operational factors involved too. PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta has said that moving Poppi from its previous distributor into PepsiCo’s distribution system affected performance during the first half of the year. He later said the issue had been resolved and that the brand was still growing.

That context matters because this is not simply a story about marketing working or not working. It is a story about what happens when brand momentum meets the realities of distribution, margins, operational execution, acquisition expectations, and scale.

A business can be growing and still fall short of the growth that was priced into the deal.

A Strong Brand Can Get You Very Far

None of this takes away from what Poppi has built.

Its branding helped turn a prebiotic soda into a recognizable consumer brand in an extremely crowded beverage category. The visual identity is distinctive, the packaging is built for the shelf and the scroll, and the marketing has consistently positioned the product as something culturally current rather than just another functional beverage.

That kind of brand equity has real business value. It can create awareness, encourage trial, build familiarity, attract partnerships, and make a company more attractive to investors or potential acquirers. Poppi did not become a nearly $2 billion acquisition target in spite of its brand. Its brand was clearly part of what made the company valuable.

But a strong brand can only carry the business so far.

Once the attention is there, the rest of the company has to support it.

Brand Awareness and Business Performance Are Not the Same Thing

One of the easiest mistakes to make in marketing is treating visibility as proof that the entire strategy is working.

A brand can dominate social media, earn major partnerships, generate press coverage, and create campaigns everyone remembers while still missing revenue, margin, retention, distribution, or growth targets.

Those things are connected, but they are not interchangeable.

A Super Bowl commercial can put millions of eyes on a brand. A partnership can introduce that brand to a new audience. Social content can create conversation and cultural relevance. Great packaging can make someone reach for the product for the first time.

But the business still needs people to buy again. Distribution needs to work. Margins need to hold up. Retail relationships need to perform. The product portfolio needs to make sense. Growth needs to happen at a level that supports the financial expectations surrounding the company.

Marketing creates opportunity. It cannot carry every other part of the business by itself.

That is especially important when evaluating branding work. A beautiful brand is not automatically a successful business strategy, just as a missed financial target does not automatically mean the branding failed.

The two have to be looked at together.

Scaling a Brand Changes the Assignment

Poppi is also a useful example of what happens when a fast-growing challenger brand becomes part of a much larger organization.

Before an acquisition, a company may be measured against its previous year, its category peers, or its own growth goals. After a multibillion-dollar acquisition, the expectations can change dramatically. A growth rate that once looked impressive may suddenly be measured against the assumptions used to justify the purchase price.

The infrastructure changes too. Distribution changes. Operations change. Retail relationships change. Financial reporting changes. New teams become involved. The brand may gain access to resources it never had before, but it also becomes part of a much larger system.

PepsiCo’s comments about Poppi’s distribution transition are a good reminder that growth does not happen in a vacuum. Even a strong brand can lose momentum when the operational side of the business is disrupted.

That does not mean the brand suddenly stopped resonating with consumers. It means scale introduced a new set of variables.

More Marketing Is Not Always the Whole Answer

PepsiCo has indicated that it plans to continue investing in Poppi, and the brand is already expanding beyond its core soda products. Poppi Lift moves into caffeinated beverages, while Poppi Chill is positioned around relaxation with ingredients such as magnesium and L-theanine.

Those extensions may create new growth opportunities, but they also raise a broader strategy question that applies far beyond the beverage industry: when performance misses expectations, is the answer simply more marketing?

Sometimes it is. A strong product may genuinely need more awareness, better distribution, or a larger audience.

But sometimes the challenge is somewhere else. The positioning may need refinement. The offer may not be converting. The audience may be wrong. The product mix may have expanded too quickly. Operations may be creating friction. Customer retention may not be strong enough. Or the growth target may have been unrealistic from the beginning.

That is why strategy has to come before execution.

If the real problem is distribution, another campaign will not fix it. If the real problem is repeat purchase, more impressions are not the whole answer. If the brand is attracting attention but the business is struggling to turn that attention into sustainable growth, the strategy needs to look beyond the marketing calendar.

A Brand Should Support the Business Behind It

At Hoyden, this is where we think branding gets more interesting.

We love a beautiful identity. We care about typography, photography, messaging, packaging, digital experience, and all the other details that make a brand feel distinct and memorable.

But the point of branding is not just to make a company look good.

A strong brand should make the business easier to understand. It should help people recognize why the company is different. It should build trust, create consistency, and make the right audience more likely to choose the business.

Most importantly, it should support where the business is trying to go.

That means branding cannot live separately from marketing, operations, customer experience, sales, product strategy, or growth goals. Those things influence one another.

The strongest brands are not just attractive. They are aligned.

What Poppi’s Story Actually Teaches Us

It would be easy to turn this into a story about Poppi failing after its acquisition. That would also be an oversimplification.

Poppi is still growing. PepsiCo says the brand is gaining market share. It continues to invest in the business, and new products are being introduced. There is still plenty of time before the performance period attached to the acquisition ends in 2027.

The more useful lesson is that brand success and business success are connected, but they are not the same measurement.

A company can have incredible awareness and still need stronger conversion. It can grow revenue while missing margin expectations. It can have a loyal audience while struggling with distribution. It can build a brand everyone recognizes while the underlying business works through the realities of scaling.

That is why we are cautious about evaluating marketing purely by how much attention it generates.

Attention matters. So does what happens next.

Brand Buzz Is Valuable. Strategy Gives It Somewhere to Go.

Poppi proves that a strong brand can create tremendous value. The company built something distinctive enough to earn attention, loyalty, cultural relevance, and ultimately a multibillion-dollar acquisition.

But that does not mean the work stops once people know your name.

Branding gets people to notice.

Marketing gives them reasons to engage.

The product has to deliver.

Operations have to support growth.

And the business strategy has to connect all of it.

Because being the brand everyone is talking about is powerful.

Being the business that knows what to do with that attention is even better.