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2024 is the year of the influencer.
Since the pandemic, many food and beverage companies became e-commerce brands overnight, and influencers began to dominate the marketing landscape with nonstop social media presence and an increasing awareness of the power of followers. With a plethora of paid campaigns on platforms like Instagram and TikTok going viral daily, influencers are becoming an integral part of the industry.
“I really think that 2024 is the year that we see a shift in the way brands show up on social media, particularly larger enterprise brands,” said Marie La France, vice president of growth at Billion Dollar Boy — a global influencer marketing agency — in an interview with Food Dive.
“Inherently people want to digest information coming from a trusted source, through things like word of mouth. And this is the year that I think a lot of companies have really realized that.”
Winners and losers of food and beverage social media strategies
Steven Vigilante, director of growth and partnerships at better-for-you soda brand Olipop, said the social media and influencer boom started with the pandemic in 2020.
“Everyone had to become an e-commerce brand overnight. No one could do sampling or events or activation, so everyone had to figure out paid social influencer strategies on different channels,” he said in an interview with Food Dive.
Poppi, another better-for-you soft drink company, has shown the industry how this can be done successfully through its grassroots marketing approach.
Allison Ellsworth’s company started as a farmers market hit and now it's the number one selling soft drink on Amazon. It's been reported that the company’s organic social and influencer marketing strategies have amounted to 204 million impressions and 2.3 million engagements in 2023. This has helped Poppi enter 5 million monthly new households in 2024 and turned their consumers into a cult following.
Ellsworth said she invested in the company’s TikTok presence years ago, through tactics like gifting influencers unexpected items like matching sweat sets and bathrobes, putting it way ahead of the curve.
Virality is powerful. And Poppi’s strategy of tying the brand name to people and things that have nothing to do with soda is working.
“There's a lot of benefit to thinking outside the box in the way you're marketing a food brand. It doesn't just have to be – here's recipes,” said La France.
It’s these unexpected moments, according to La France, that can lead to a product taking off.
Olipop sought to create that unexpected moment by hiring for a role that would lead to social media virality.
“I’ve been in the food and beverage space for over ten years, and I’ve never seen a cult fandom like we have,” said Vigilante.
“We thought what if we actually hired superfans to join the team and travel around the country with us making content,” said Vigilante. It was then that the brand’s senior soda consultant position was born.
Instead of just sending influencers some product in a sweatshirt, the company wanted to actually put consumers who already loved Olipop on its payroll, he said. And it worked.
“The role effectively showcased our ethos of bringing people together. Through heartwarming narratives and relatable moments shared over a can of soda, Olipop connected emotionally with its audience, reinforcing the idea that memorable experiences are made even more special with friends,” said Vigilante.
“This approach positioned Olipop as more than just a beverage choice, but a companion in creating cherished memories.”
The company got over 2,000 job applicants for the role, and over 650 million impressions on social media, along with 200 stories from publications including Travel + Leisure, USA Today, Fox Business, Time Out Magazine and more.
“The industry tends to all move in one direction,” said Vigilante. “So we thought what can we do that's completely different but also not totally off the walls, that can lead into consumer insights.”
“It used to be companies like Coca-Cola just standing around and handing out Vitamin Waters, but that doesn’t do it anymore”
When leveraging influencers to promote products and not just company ethos, however, there may be instances where brands go too far.
Chobani, for example, recently sent an influencer known as “Acquired Style” — known for viral hair styling techniques — a plethora of cold brew coffee and creamer products after the content creator began posting her daily coffee creations.
The comments section of the post revealed a common theme — why send someone who makes more income in one TikTok post than some consumers do in a month free products?
This leaves a bad taste in some consumer’s mouths.
On the other side of the debate, Waterboy — a hydration packet company offering products for both “Weekend Recovery” and “Workout Hydration” — decided to send its actual customers on an all-expenses paid-for brand trip, instead of influencers with an online presence.
“As a Waterboy subscription gal from the early days and Waterboy merch owner, I appreciate the focus on actual customers and not influencers!!” one comment read.
Though both companies went about it in different ways, they each achieved the same thing: getting consumers talking.
“The punch line here is that social strategy is often treated as a one-size-fits-all, and there’s a lot missing in the interpretation of the topic,” said Adam Melonas, CEO and founder of Chew, a Boston-based food innovation lab for CPGs. Melonas also has experience guiding brand strategy for food startups.
“The devil is very much in the details here of who, why, and where [a brand wants to go],” he said. “It’s not an equation of robust, popular influencer plus any brand equals success. If you go the wrong way, it can actually have the opposite effect.”
Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Bud Light, for example, sent transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a personalized Bud Light can emblazoned with a picture of her face to celebrate the first anniversary of her gender transition.
Mulvaney shared the collaboration on Instagram on April 1 in 2023 and controversy ensued. As a result, the company put two marketing executives, Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake, on leave. In July 2023, Modelo dethroned Bud Light as the best-selling beer in America.
Influencer or content creator? The devil is in the details
No matter how effective or on the mark a social media strategy is, it still all comes down to the product, according to Melonas.
”If it's an inferior product with a big name, you get this initial crazy buzz where you get a high rate of trial, but then repeat purchases really suck because the trial is driven by the influencer.”
When deciding how to best plan a social media strategy, Melonas stressed the importance of knowing the difference between an influencer, creator and a celebrity.
“Hypothetically, Bradley Cooper will sell a movie. But he would probably have a hard time selling snacks, and not because I don't think he could potentially resonate with snack food, but he also doesn't have the specific reach nor domain credibility in that particular space,” said Melonas.
“Whereas if you look at someone like Logan Paul, he’s got himself a megaphone that he can use on a daily basis to speak to tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of engaged followers, and be able to see those things in a way which brings credibility to the thing they're talking about, at the same time as leveraging the credibility of their kind of name, image and likeness.”
Paul, a YouTube star and professional wrestler, debuted Prime hydration beverage line which surpassed $1.2 billion in sales in 2023.
Plant-based pioneer Beyond Meat in 2022 named Kim Kardashian as its “chief taste officer.” Although Kardashian boasts over 363 million followers on Instagram, the media personality turned businesswoman is better known for her skincare brand SKNN and shapewear company Skims,not cooking or plant-based food.
Taking a different approach is Meati Foods, a fermented mushroom mycelium analog company, who partnered with sports moguls Aly Raisman and Chris Paul in December 2023.
Though the Olympic gold medalist and NBA Champion don’t have as many Instagram followers as Kardashian, their audience is much more likely to take their advice on the food they eat to nourish their bodies.
“There’s a difference between driving brand awareness and trying to move volume,” said Melonas.
“If it's awareness you're looking for then you can get in front of the loudest, noisiest, most viewed person that you can find. But, that’s not going to drive volume. The volume is going to come from that authenticity.”
With great reward, comes greater risk
Over the last three to four years, there has been a precipitous fall in ROI on any kind of digital ad spend. Brands are trying to counter that by focusing on product placement in any kind of creative way, he said.
In November 2023, The Federal Trade Commission issued warning letters to two industry trade groups, the American Beverage Association and The Canadian Sugar Institute, along with 12 nutrition and dietitian influencers. The agency said the influencers paid by the groups did not properly disclose their payments on TikTok and Instagram posts when they were promoting the safety of the sweetener aspartame.
This action could make the industry more cautious about how they undertake similar campaigns going forward.
There is a fine line between remaining authentic to your audience and trusting an influencer to promote products, and engaging in false advertising.
Poppi, the same better-for-you brand who gained its hundreds of millions in sales through influencer partnerships and grassroots marketing, is now facing a class action lawsuit over false advertising.
According to the complaint filed on May 29, lead plaintiff Kristin Cobbs alleged the brand claims to have “prebiotic” benefits despite it being “basically sugared water.”
The complaint also said that a consumer would need to drink more than four Poppi sodas in a day to realize any potential health benefits from its prebiotic fiber.
Cobb claims to have purchased Poppi sodas after seeing it marketed as a “Prebiotic Soda” made “For a Healthy Gut.” Cobb says she saw representations of Poppi that led her to believe it would have certain benefits, and it did not.
Poppi has since taken the slogan “gut healthy,” off of all of its marketing.
“It’s absolutely crucial to be up to date on FTC guidelines and know what’s happening there,” said La France.
At the same time, though, content that is overly scripted can feel inauthentic and therefore have a negative impact on an audience.
“The videos that we see go viral do so because they feel unique and authentic to whoever was creating them. So I think it's really important to trust creators. These are people that have built up a following for a reason,” said La France.
Brand ambassador programs are another example of how brands can create a sense of genuinity when marketing without having to overstep and oversee every piece of content.
“They don't have to be celebrities,” said La France. “You can get the same sort of trust and engagement and understanding of the correct information about your product benefits by working on creating more long term relationships with people of any influencer size. I mean, this could happen for nano or micro influencers, and it probably makes a bigger impact on their life if you do that.”
Experts say that it’s imperative for brands to find the size that works for them when it comes to influencer marketing and social media strategy. It’s not going anywhere.
With food specifically, what you consume becomes part of who you are, and consumers will always follow the flock when it comes to purchasing decisions.
