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2024 is the year of the influencer.
Since the pandemic, many food and beverage companies have become e-commerce brands overnight, and influencers have begun to dominate the marketing landscape, with their constant presence on social media and an increased awareness of the power of their followers. With countless paid campaigns going viral every day on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, influencers are becoming an integral part of the industry.
“I think 2024 is going to be the year that we see a shift in how brands are represented on social media, especially for large enterprise brands,” Marie La France, VP of growth at global influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy, told Food Dive.
“People naturally want to digest information that comes from trusted sources, like word of mouth. And I think a lot of companies have really figured that out this year.”
Winners and Losers in Food and Drink Social Media Strategy
The social media and influencer boom began with the 2020 pandemic, said Stephen Vigilante, head of growth and partnerships at healthy soda brand Olipop.
“Everyone had to become an e-commerce brand overnight. No one had the luxury of doing sampling or events or activations, so everyone had to figure out a paid social influencer strategy across multiple channels,” he told Food Dive.
Poppi, a healthy soft drink company, has shown the industry how this can be done successfully through a grassroots marketing approach.
Allison Ellsworth's company started as a hit at farmers markets and is now Amazon's best-selling soft drink. reported that The company's organic social and influencer The marketing strategy resulted in 204 million impressions and 2.3 million engagements in 2023, enabling Poppi to attract 5 million new households per month in 2024, turning consumers into enthusiastic followers.
Ellsworth said the company invested in its TikTok presence a few years ago through strategies like gifting influencers with unexpected items like sweatpants and bathrobes, which he said helped keep the company ahead of its time.
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 are so many benefits to thinking outside the box in how you market your food brand. You don’t have to just do it. Here’s the recipe,” La France said.
Influencer Lauren Gedeon Shows Off Poppy Costumes to Her Followers
According to La France, these unexpected moments are what make a product successful.
Olympus wanted to create an unexpected moment by hiring a position that would create a buzz on social media.
“I’ve been in the food and beverage industry for over 10 years and I’ve never seen a cult fandom like ours,” Vigilante said.
“We actually thought, what if we hired superfans to join our team and travel the country and create content?” Vigilante said. That’s when the brand’s chief soda consultant position was born.
Instead of sending the product to influencers on sweatshirts, the company wanted to get consumers who already love Olipop on their payroll, he said. And it worked.
“This role effectively encapsulated our spirit of bringing people together. Through heartwarming stories and relatable moments shared over a can of soda, Olipop connected emotionally with the audience, reinforcing the idea that memorable experiences are more special when shared with friends,” said Vigilante.
“This approach positions Olipop not just as a beverage choice, but as a companion for creating cherished memories.”
The company has recruited more than 2,000 applicants for the position.We've had over 650 million impressions on social media and been featured in 200 articles in publications including Travel + Leisure, USA Today, Fox Business, and Time Out Magazine.
“The industry tends to move in one direction,” Vigilante said. “So we came up with something that was completely different, but not completely wrong, and that could lead to consumer insights.”
“In the past, companies like Coca-Cola would just stand around and hand out Vitamin Water, but that’s not the case anymore.”
But when it comes to using influencers to promote your products, not just your company ethos, there are times when your brand can go too far.
For example, Chobani recently sent cold brew coffee and creamer to an influencer called “Acquired Style,” known for her viral hairstyling techniques, after the content creator began posting her coffee creations daily.
The comments section of the posts revealed a common theme: Why would someone who earns more money in a month selling free stuff be sent off for just one TikTok post?
This leaves a bad impression on some consumers.
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On the other side of the debate, Waterboy, a hydration packet company offering products for “weekend recovery” and “workout hydration,” decided to send real customers on all-expenses-paid brand journeys instead of relying on influencers with an online presence.
“As someone who has had a Waterboy subscription since the beginning and is a Waterboy product owner, I love that they focus on real customers and not influencers!!” one comment read.
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The two companies took different approaches to this, but ultimately achieved the same goal: capturing consumers' attention.
“The key 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 theme,” says Adam Melonas, CEO and founder of Chew, a Boston-based food innovation lab for CPGs. Melonas also has experience guiding brand strategies for food startups.
“The devil is in the details of who, why, and where (brands) want to go,” he said. “The equation of a powerful, popular influencer and every brand is not the same thing. If you get it wrong, it can actually have the opposite effect.”
For example, Anheuser-Busch InBev's Bud Light gave transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a personalized Bud Light can featuring her face to celebrate the first anniversary of her gender transition.
Mulvaney shared the collaboration on Instagram on April 1, 2023, and it sparked controversy. As a result, The company has hired two marketing executives.Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake on vacation. July 2023, Model, dethroning Bud Light It is the best-selling beer in America.
Influencer or content creator? devil It's in the details
According to Melonas, no matter how effective or appropriate your social media strategy is, it ultimately comes down to your product.
“If the “It's an inferior product with a big name. Initially, the experience rate is high because of the huge buzz, but repeat purchases are really annoying because the experience is driven by influencers.”
Melonas stressed that it's important to know the differences between influencers, creators, and celebrities when deciding how to best plan your social media strategy.
“Hypothetically, Bradley Cooper could sell a movie. But he would have a hard time selling snacks. Not because I don’t think he can relate to snack foods, but because he doesn’t have the specific reach or domain credibility in that particular space,” Melonas said.
“If you look at someone like Logan Paul, he has a megaphone to speak to tens of millions, hundreds of millions of engaged followers every day, and he's able to see things in a way that adds credibility to what they're saying, while also leveraging the credibility of their name, their image, their likeness.”
Paul, a YouTube star and professional wrestler, has launched Prime, a line of hydrating drinks. It surpassed $1.2 billion. Sales are expected to reach $1 billion in 2023.
Beyond Meat, the Plant-Based Pioneer of 2022 Named seaweed Kardashian has been appointed “chief taste officer.” Kardashian boasts more than 363 million followers on Instagram, but the media personality-turned-entrepreneur is better known for her skincare brand SKNN and shapewear company Skims, and not so much for her cooking or plant-based food offerings.
Taking a different approach is Meati Foods. Fermented mushroom mycelia similar company, Teaming up with sports moguls Aly Raisman and Chris Paul December 2023.
The Olympic gold medalist and NBA champion may not have as many Instagram followers as the Kardashians, but those followers are more likely to take her advice on nourishing foods to heart.
“There's a difference between trying to increase brand awareness and trying to increase sales,” Melonas said.
“If what you're looking for is recognition, you can stand in front of the loudest, loudest, most visible person you can find. But that's not going to turn up the volume. The volume is going to come from authenticity.”
Big rewards come with bigger risks
Over the past three or four years, the ROI on all types of digital ad spend has dropped dramatically. Brands are trying to offset that by focusing on product placement in all kinds of creative ways, he said.
Federal Trade Commission November 2023 Issued a warning letter To two industry trade groups, the American Beverage Association and the Canadian Sugar Institute, and 12 nutrition and dietetic influencers. The agency said influential people received money from the group. When promoting the safety of the sweetener aspartame, they did not properly disclose how much they were paid on their TikTok and Instagram posts.
These measures may make the industry more cautious about how it conducts similar campaigns in the future.
There is a fine line between being truthful to the public and trusting influencers to promote your product, and engaging in false advertising.
Poppi, a wellness brand that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales through influencer partnerships and mass marketing, is now being sued by a class action lawsuit for false advertising.
According to the complaint filed on May 29, Christine Cobbs, the plaintiff's representative, said the brand Although it claims to have “prebiotic” benefits, “It's basically sugar water.”
Additionally, the complaint stated that consumers would have to drink more than four glasses of Poppi soda per day to realize the potential health benefits of the prebiotic fiber.
Cobb claims he bought Poppy Soda, which was marketed as a “prebiotic soda” made “for a healthy gut.” Cobb says he believed Poppy’s description would have certain benefits, but it didn’t.
Since then, Poppi has removed the “gut health” slogan from all its marketing.
“It’s absolutely critical to stay up to date with the FTC’s guidelines and know what’s going on out there,” La France said.
But at the same time, overly scripted content can seem inauthentic and have a negative impact on audiences.
“The reason we see videos go viral is because they feel unique and authentic to the person who created them. That’s why I think it’s really important to trust the creators. These are people who have amassed a following for a reason,” La France said.
Brand ambassador programs are another example of how brands can feel authentic when marketing without having to overly review or supervise every piece of content.
“They don’t have to be celebrities,” La France said. “You can build the same kind of trust and engagement and understanding of the right information about the benefits of a product by working on a longer-term relationship with influencers of any size. That can happen with nano or micro influencers, and it’ll have a bigger impact on their lives.”
Experts say it’s essential for brands to find the right scale for their influencer marketing and social media strategies. It’s not going anywhere.
Especially when it comes to food, what you consume becomes a part of you, and consumers always follow the crowd when making purchasing decisions.
