Why Your Branding Needs to Take a Digital First Approach with Allison Ellsworth: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:28Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? of vinegar for a happy gut. In today's Value Bombs Fire Nation, you can be successful and have a family at the same time, be strategic and work with the influencers of the influencers, and being authentic is key, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Allison and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier.

1:01AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Allison, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Well, thanks for having me and what's up Fire Nation. So something that I truly believe is that you can be successful and have a family at the same time. Fire Nation, that is a belief that's being proven time and time again by our guests.

1:42So stop letting these rando excuses slow you down. And as I mentioned in the introduction, we're talking about why. Why your branding needs to take a digital first approach. And Alison's going to be dropping some value bombs here today, so get ready. But first, I want to start, Alison, with the reality that everybody listening, and I mean every single person, has watched at least one episode of Shark Tank, some many, many more. So we have to know, what was your Shark Tank experience like? First, I have to start off by saying it was fantastic. All the rumors that you hear about Shark Tank, they are not true.

2:21The whole experience was amazing and it changed my life. Let's get some details. What was it like? What did you do? What happened? Who talked to you? Who didn't talk to you? Break it down. We were a rare business when we went into deciding we were going to be on Shark Tank. So what a lot of people don't know is that Shark Tank actually will reach out to already successful businesses and ask them to be on the show. Little did I know that I thought everybody showed up to open casting calls. So when I started the company, it was me and my husband and we were having a ton of success. And I told him we need investment.

3:01We need to be seen. And I saw on Mark Cuban's Instagram, an open casting call for shark tank. And I said, Hey, what do we have to lose? Let's go. We stood in line for eight hours and we pitched our hearts out in a two minute elevator pitch and we kept going. And it took about six months of trials to finally get on the show. And what's crazy is that's so rare. It's like zero, zero, two percent of people make it from that process to on the show. And then only half of that get a deal. Wow. And did you guys get a deal? We did get a deal. Which shark did you get a deal with? So we got our deal with Rohan Oza and he is a guest shark.

3:44So he's not typically on the show, but he was the perfect shark for us. So he is a beverage shark. So he's behind some of the biggest brands out there. That was pretty good. timing, if I must say so myself. And it's kind of a random question before we move on. Where did the name Poppy come from in Fire Nation? That's P-O-P-P-I. Where'd that come from? Previous to Shark Tank, we actually were a different brand name. And so what's fabulous about Rohan is his nickname is actually the brand father. So once we got our deal on Shark Tank, We took a step back and we said, hey, we really need to gear and launch our product to the market and be successful.

4:29So in doing that, the name change came about. And we took about eight months to figure it out. And the word Poppy, it comes from a play on soda pop as well as Poppy. Our branding, if you see it, is super colorful. It pops off the shelf and makes everyone smile. It truly does. Yes. And can you share the name prior to Poppy? Yeah, of course. So our previous name was Mother Beverage. And the reason we named it that is because Poppy has an amazing ingredient, a functional ingredient called apple cider vinegar, and it has the mother of vinegar in it. So naturally, I was a mother myself, and then we named it after the mother of vinegar, but you cannot trademark the word mother.

5:15So that was our first roadblock. I drink apple cider vinegar every single day. So I love the fact that it's now in a sparkling can poppy popping off the shelf. Now, what exactly did being on Shark Tank do for your brand? I mean, you hear some horror stories, frankly, where people actually get the hug of death, where it's like they're not ready for the rush of clients and customers that are going to happen and they end up having all these disasters they can't fulfill and blah, blah, blah. What was your experience with that? Oh, that definitely still happened to us. After getting the deal, it took about six months to close it with Rohan because there is a lot of due diligence that goes into it.

5:54And so we literally got zero funding before our episode aired. So our website crashed. We were out of stock, the whole shebang. But it was OK because we made the decision at the company to take that time off, that months off after getting the deal to change the name. So we were okay with that because what was on TV was mother when we were going into Poppy. And so for us, it actually wasn't like the kiss of death. So let's talk digital. That is the promise after all of this episode. Why should brands take a digital first approach today? What's interesting about Poppy is we knew we wanted to be a digital first company.

6:38We just didn't know how quick and how soon. So we launched in March of 2020 with the new brand Poppy right during the pandemic. And at that time, everyone knows everyone was shifting to Amazon. There was no more retail as far as getting cut into the shelf and having the opportunity to go out and do demos and do events and 5Ks and festivals, right? so we were forced from day one to become digital first and I really think it was one of the best decisions that was ever made for our company well one thing that I do want to share and it's not just because I'm talking to you but I am actually on your website which is super cool you can check it out fire nation drink poppy.com you do have the coolest looking cans as well I mean you know you have like the LaCroix's of the world and they've all tried to do these really cool things But man, who did this branding?

7:36Is that all through the brand father? We worked really close with Rohan and his branding team. So me and my husband. And we spent time looking at whether or not we should do illustrated fruit to what everyone else is doing is that traditional lemon, right? It looks like a lemon. You know, it's a lemon. But if you look at our packaging, ours is more of like a work of art or it's illustrated and it's just cool. It's different. And we did that on purpose because you have to stand out nowadays. We wanted to be, I hate to say this word, but grammable because it's important. It's important. What do they say?

8:15The gram eats first, the gram drinks first, Instagram gets served before everybody else. Yeah. And then on the rise of that, right, is TikTok. And everyone's talking about TikTok and we've had great success. I'm sure we can get into that. But it's just being able to be seen and recognizable. and if you can't even see the word poppy, people recognize our fruit graphics just as much as they do our logo. Well, if I had to choose, my favorite can is the watermelon. That just, to me, pops. I love the design there. I think the strawberry takes a close second. That would be my second favorite, but Fire Nation, drinkpoppy.com.

8:54Check out these cans. They are beautiful. And I don't think you know this, Allison, but Fire Nation does know that I love transparency. I mean, we here at Entrepreneurs on Fire have been publishing our monthly income reports for 94 months in a row. We just share everything, how much money we make, how much money we spend, how much everything costs, like what we're doing, our successes, our failures. So what can you tell us about Poppy's success numbers wise? When it comes, we have two healthy businesses. So we have like our Amazon business and then we have our retail business. And kind of going back to Shark Tank, when we launched in March of 2020, we had an update on Shark Tank hit in April when everybody was at home on a Friday night mid-pandemic.

9:41We literally broke Amazon. We broke the internet. We shot up to Amazon's top 10 hottest new products. And we like to say we really did break the algorithm. them. So we have a super healthy business on Amazon versus prior year. I think we're up 400 % versus prior year. And we are only a year and a half old. So for example, if you're searching in grocery on Amazon and you type in soda, Poppy is up there above the fold at like six, right? So for us, we made the strategic decision as a company to go all in Amazon versus just direct consumer on our own website. So we invest heavily in programmatic and DSP and static ads through the Amazon platform.

10:32So very different than I think a lot of other competitors are size. Now at this stage in the game where you guys are, are you even trying to turn a profit? Are you just saying, you know what, we're just going to go out, try to get markets cap. We're going to try to just get as many customers as possible, get, you know, just as big a market share as possible. And, you know, we'll leave profits, you know, to some other day. You know, we see a lot of obviously massive companies do that. I mean, most of the biggest companies we know aren't making money right now and they haven't for years, but they're hoping someday to kind of turn that corner.

11:05Now, where are you Poppy with that? We are not trying to make a profit. So I think that's just marketing one on one on one in the first few years of business is to raise awareness, get as many samples out to as many consumers as possible. And we will worry about that in a year or two when we're, you know, looking at getting some bigger distribution partners and continuing to grow the business. But I think our main focus is to continue to spend, to get awareness. But I will tell you the pandemic has not been easy in that aspect because of, you know, sourcing and cogs. And so margins and all of that fun stuff is not been easy, I think for us as well as everybody else kind of in the world, honestly.

11:53Now, was the deal that you made with the shark ever made public? It was a simple deal. Like as far as it was on national TV, 400 ,000 for 20 % of the company right out the gate. But we really were basically pre revenue at that time. I think up to date, We had done like 500 ,000. And so it was at the time a really, really great deal. And we gained a great strategic partner. Awesome. And have you done any raises since? We have. Yes. So we've done a few raises since we literally just closed a$13 million raise this last week. And it was more of a strategic influencer celebrity raise just to help with the awareness, as well as continue to invest in manufacturing.

12:39Well, congratulations. And that's Fire Nation we'll be talking about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now. It seems like everyone is working with smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky-high expectations, and that can make growing a business feel pretty painful. Thankfully, HubSpot can help. HubSpot just announced dozens of major product updates that'll make impossible growth feel impossibly easy, like Breeze, a suite of new AI-powered tools that deliver personalized insights to level up your work, plus AI agents designed to automate your work for you.

13:16Sounds pretty great, right? And Breeze Intelligence, which gives you the richest, most comprehensive picture of your prospects and customers, allowing you to serve them at a whole new level. Add to all this, re-imagined marketing and content hubs with new ways to create breakthrough content, updated features to generate better leads, and support to help up-level your marketing and revenue forecast. And you've got HubSpot's all-on-one customer platform. Get ready for growth without the growing pains. Visit hubspot.com slash spotlight to see all the updates. So Allison, we're back. And as we mentioned right before the break, influencers, you recently did an influencer raise, $13 million.

13:55And let's just be honest, influencer marketing is huge right now, but it's tricky. There's a lot of ways to do it bad and there's a lot of ways to do it really well. How should brands determine which influencers they align with? So here at Poppy, it's maybe the number one thing that we do is influencer marketing. So of course you have your marketing mix and you want to make sure and hit all the different buckets. But for us, it was one of the things we did right out the gate. And I think that we do it really, really well. So something that you kind of want to look at is you want to have a variety of influencers from lifestyle to beauty, to fashion, to Tik TOK, to, to even Facebook nowadays.

14:37Right. And so then on top of it, you have different level counts of, you have micro influencers, you have macro influencers, you have, um, people that are say target.com influencers, and you have people that live outside the country, but all of their followers maybe are the U S Right. So you want to look at all of those different things. And then within that, you want to have variety. So you might have a lifestyle influencer that's a mom who lives in Florida and you want it to support that area. So we get really granular and strategic, but then on top of it, you want to work with influencers of the influencers.

15:15You don't care about the region. You just, they are the people that everybody looks up to that they want to be a part of a bigger, exciting campaign maybe that we're running. And it brings in those smaller influencers to want to be a part of working with our brand. So dive a little bit more into this influencers of influencers and maybe give a specific example that's really worked for you recently in this area. For us, we just did a campaign with Jennifer Lopez. And I would say that who doesn't love Jennifer? I mean, it's like she is the queen. Everybody respects her. She's a triple threat. And you look at someone like her who has, I think, 160 million followers.

15:59She's the ninth most followed person on Instagram. What a lot of people don't realize is you don't look at her to convert, right? You're not probably going to see a ton of spikes, but it's going to bring awareness. After we went live with her, we had people that we've been trying to work with for a really long time that maybe didn't know who we are reaching out, begging to work with us. So that shows you the influencers of the influencers. JLo posted. Now everybody's like, wow, JLo posted. I want to be a part of this. Right. Um, and then what's really important. And I think honestly, it's number one.

16:35And what we really look at is that authentic relationship. They truly have to love poppy for me to work with them. So, I mean, even the JLo relationship, she was drinking it on set. I found out we reached out. It was something that she was already a fan of and And it was really organic and easy because she loved the brand versus a paycheck or a contract. It just never works out as well. Yeah, that's really cool and impressive. And I've definitely seen that in the podcasting space as well, where like guests on my show will say, wow, like as soon as the episode aired, we had all these other podcasts reach out to have us as guests on their show because they're looking at your feed to see who you're bringing on, et cetera, et cetera.

17:15And I've experienced that with some big podcasts that I've been on as well. and that's just kind of a really cool influencer of the influencers mentality, Fire Nation, that gets that domino rolling. Now, are you able to share any approximate numbers of what it would take to get an influencer like J-Lo to do a promotion with you? What a lot of people don't realize is what's the most expensive thing with celebrities, influencers, or any talent is their time. So for us, it's time for them to shoot the content, time for them, if they need glam, if they need videographer, you know, help with the, what content it is.

17:52And so what was really convenient for us is she was actually already on set filming her music video. So we didn't have to book any of that. We didn't have to worry about it. It was just already easy in there. So I can't disclose what we paid for her, but there is some metrics on how you kind of look at what you want to pay influencers and like a going rate. So for example, we usually go by, if you're around a million followers, it's usually around that like 10 K range. And then you can kind of scale down from there. If you're around the 200 ,000, um, followers, you're going to be in that, or excuse me.

18:28Yeah. 200 ,000, you mean that like 3000 to$3 ,500 range, but it just depends on what that scope of work is on top of it. Is it stories? Is it in feed? Are you going to get a put paid against it? What kind of usage do you have? So there's a lot of things that go into it that a lot of people don't realize. And then some people you can do longer partnerships with and get a deal if you work with them for six months or three months, or if you're sending them on a trip, it's a whole world and it's a whole strategy. So it's pretty safe to say that JLo's in the six-figure range for most of her deals. Yeah, you could say that.

19:07Could I say multi-six? I don't know if we want to go there. Fire Nation, there you go. I think you can figure that out. And one thing, Allison, that we really all want to do at some point when we're doing it the right way is to go viral in some capacity, in the right capacity. So give us some tips for achieving that virality and what to do when we do hit it big. Me personally, I was obsessed with TikTok. I knew it was the way of the future. I am just for context, a 34 year old mom with kids. I'm not the young Gen Z like TikToker doing the dances, but I just knew from working in the digital space that it was the way of the future and video is the way of the future.

19:53Right. And so I would lay awake at night trying to figure out how to break through on TikTok as a brand. And And it's actually really, really hard. They could care less about high gloss campaigns, typical ads, beautiful photography. It doesn't work on TikTok. So we kept doing a couple of the challenges and just kind of doing some fun behind the scenes skits. But one day I just sat down and I told my story like I did at the beginning of this podcast of how I started Poppy going on to Shark Tank and why Poppy was so important to me. And that video hit, I think it's almost up to 14 million views with over 400 ,000 comments.

20:38And it was just being authentic and real. So you kind of have to find what works for each platform. And then once you go viral, you have to lean into what worked and you have to continue and be consistent and work on engagement and don't give up. Fire Nation, we talk multiple times about being genuine, about being authentic, about just being raw and real. I mean, there's a lot of stories that I could share. I share one actually just a few days ago about a female trainer who was trying to break through and then something happens while she was doing a live training and that ended up being what had her breakthrough because she can now focus on that one thing that was bringing real value.

21:17You'll have to go back and find that one if you're listening to every one of these episodes as you should be. So it was quite a viral moment in a very unique and strange way. And what it comes down to, though, is what did Allison do? She was just open. She was just honest. She was just authentic and real and raw and talking about it. And then people wanted to learn more, to hear more, to support, to engage. I mean, 400 ,000 comments. I mean, sometimes I hear like 14 million views and I'm like, yeah, what's that? Like people flipping, flipping, flipping. And like, are they really seeing anything more than just like somebody opening their mouth about to say something like who knows?

21:54But when you hear 400 ,000 comments, and that was a number, right, Alison? 400 ,000 comments. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, that's people stopping and listening, consuming and then engaging, like taking time to write something, whether it be awesome or ask a question. So man, Alison, as we wrap this interview up, give us the one key takeaway that you want to make sure Fire Nation walks away with from our chat, as well as any call to action you may have for our listeners with your business, your brand, et cetera. And then we'll say goodbye. TikTok is the way of the future. I know I said it and I'll say it again, but what we really learned from the community on there, other than being authentic, is you will find the community that is your consumer.

22:38We found it was our exact demographic. we have built our SMS and email lists, I think in six months up to over a hundred thousand people just from our TikTok community. So as a brand, as a consumer, if you're selling or trying to build a brand for yourself, I would highly recommend to lean in on that platform. And you know, a lot of people always say, well, what do I do? And I say, just post, just try it just post and have some fun and my favorite quote of all time is doing something is better than nothing by a infinite amount so do something and what would you like fire nation to do as far as doing something as far as taking action to learn more about you connect with you and poppy and your brands and all of that jazz yeah so you can check out poppy at drinkpoppy.com or any of our channels at Drink Poppy.

23:35You can reach out, check us out on Amazon, Target Nationwide, Sprouts, Whole Foods Nationwide, many, many other retailers. Reach out, ask questions, but we'd love to hear from you. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with A, E, and J, L, D today of Poppy. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com. Type Allison in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything that we talked about today. Best show notes in the biz, links to all of the conversations. Allison, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

24:12For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Allison and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and your fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk and others. T-C-P-T-U-S. I just had to read that out. The Common Path to Uncommon Success.

24:50It's the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle, Fire Nation, of your dreams. So visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business, and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

25:29Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.