poppi Turns Super Bowl Soda Anxiety Into a Brand Moment
"Soda Thoughts" is poppi's 60-second Super Bowl LIX commercial, created by Virtue Worldwide and directed by Dave Meyers of Radical Media, that dramatises the everyday mental spiral of choosing whether to drink a soda — resolving it with the tagline "Soda's for drinking. not overthinking."
poppi launched "Soda Thoughts" in February 2025 as its second consecutive Super Bowl-era campaign developed with Virtue Worldwide. The spot debuted during Super Bowl LIX in the United States, marking one of the most visible media placements available to any consumer brand in the American market. The campaign extended beyond the anchor 60-second film into six follow-on 30-second vignettes, each built around a distinct everyday setting — a girls' night, a diner, a drive-through, a convenience store, a pool party, and a movie theatre — all centred on the same strategic idea: that choosing whether or not to have a soda can be a loaded decision, per Virtue Worldwide.
The integrated campaign featured three social creators — Alix Earle, Rob Rausch, and Jake Shane — cast in recognisable, relatable situations designed to mirror real consumer behaviour in the United States. Tinuiti served as media partner across the campaign's distribution. The creative strategy, as stated by Virtue Worldwide, was to show that with only five grams of sugar, prebiotics, and no nutritional baggage, the choice makes itself. Clapboard, which archives and evaluates global advertising creative, rates "Soda Thoughts" at 72 out of 100. The campaign spans film and integrated media and is documented in Clapboard's archive as a single media asset submitted in February 2025.
poppi identified a specific and underserved consumer tension. For a growing segment of health-aware Americans, the act of choosing a soda carries genuine psychological weight — a conflict between desire and perceived consequence that no major soft drink brand had directly addressed in advertising.
Virtue Worldwide built the "Soda Thoughts" concept around that tension, naming it "analysis paralysis" and treating it not as a problem to dismiss but as a relatable, even comedic, truth. By surfacing the moment of indecision rather than bypassing it, the campaign created immediate recognition among its target audience. Virtue reported that the campaign achieved 70% awareness among women under 24, a demographic that skews heavily toward functional and better-for-you beverages. National awareness reached 45%, according to Virtue Worldwide.
The competitive context in the United States sharpens the strategic logic. OLIPOP holds an estimated market share of 15% to 22% in 2025 in the prebiotic soda category, according to marketintelo.com, making it poppi's most direct rival. Traditional carbonated soft drink incumbents such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo represent a second competitive layer — brands with enormous Super Bowl advertising histories but without the functional positioning poppi occupies. In the United States, the probiotic and prebiotic soda market was estimated at approximately 516 million dollars in 2025, projected to reach approximately 979 million dollars by 2033 at an 8.4% compound annual growth rate, according to marketresearchfuture.com. North America represented 43.2% of global probiotic and prebiotic soda revenue in 2025, according to marketresearchfuture.com. Super Bowl LIX provided poppi with a mass-reach platform to convert category awareness into national brand recognition at a moment of genuine category expansion across the US market.
Dave Meyers directed "Soda Thoughts" for poppi through Radical Media. Meyers brought a visual sensibility built on character-driven comedy and precise tonal control — qualities that suited a concept relying entirely on the micro-expressions and internal monologue of everyday consumer indecision.
The production approach leaned into familiar social-native aesthetics without sacrificing the production value expected of a Super Bowl LIX commercial in the United States. Each of the six follow-on vignettes — set across a girls' night, diner, drive-through, convenience store, pool party, and movie theatre — was constructed to function independently as a short-form content unit while remaining part of a coherent campaign system. This dual-format architecture, anchoring a 60-second broadcast spot with platform-ready 30-second extensions, reflects a production discipline increasingly standard among campaigns built for both mass reach and social amplification.
The casting of Alix Earle, Rob Rausch, and Jake Shane was not incidental. Each creator brought an established audience in the United States with strong indices among the younger demographics poppi targets. Their presence blurred the line between advertising talent and organic endorsement, a creative device that strengthens credibility without requiring the viewer to suspend disbelief. Chris Garbutt served as Co-president and Chief Creative Officer at Virtue Worldwide during the campaign's development, according to clapboard.com. VFX work was executed by Transformer LA, contributing to the visual finish of the spot. The integrated campaign was submitted to Clapboard's archive in February 2025 and is documented on YouTube as part of poppi's broader digital distribution strategy. Production credits beyond those named above are not fully catalogued in publicly available sources.
No independently verified third-party performance data for "Soda Thoughts" beyond YouGov and Virtue Worldwide's own reported figures is publicly available at time of writing. The figures that are on record, however, are structurally significant.
"Soda Thoughts" ranked first in YouGov's measures of Buzz, Ad Awareness, and Consideration among all Super Bowl LIX advertisements, according to YouGov. The same source recorded the highest lift in brand perception, awareness, and purchase intent among Super Bowl LIX ads for poppi. These are leading indicators of commercial effectiveness, not lagging sales metrics, but they represent meaningful evidence of resonance in the United States market at one of advertising's highest-cost, highest-competition media moments.
Virtue Worldwide reported household penetration growth from 3% to 22% — a 630% increase — alongside 45% national awareness and 70% awareness among women under 24. Sales figures cited by breef.com and prnewswire.com show poppi growing from approximately 200 million dollars to approximately 500 million dollars in revenue over a 2.5-year period, though this trajectory predates "Soda Thoughts" and cannot be attributed solely to this campaign. The structural effectiveness of the campaign rests on its ability to convert a Super Bowl LIX media investment into measurable brand salience — a task it appears to have accomplished with unusual efficiency relative to other advertisers in the same broadcast. Clapboard rates "Soda Thoughts" at 72 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence and cultural timing against modest creative risk.
"Soda Thoughts" is a 60-second Super Bowl LIX commercial by poppi, created by Virtue Worldwide and directed by Dave Meyers of Radical Media in 2025. It dramatises consumer indecision about drinking soda and resolves with the tagline "Soda's for drinking. not overthinking," extending into six 30-second follow-on vignettes across everyday US settings.
Dave Meyers directed the Soda Thoughts spot through Radical Media. Meyers brought character-driven comedic precision to the campaign, which required tight tonal control across both the anchor 60-second Super Bowl LIX broadcast and six shorter social-native vignettes produced alongside it for distribution across the United States.
Alix Earle, Rob Rausch, and Jake Shane appeared in the Soda Thoughts campaign. Each creator carried an established US audience among younger demographics, lending credibility to poppi's better-soda positioning without conventional celebrity endorsement framing, per Virtue Worldwide's campaign documentation and reporting by adsoftheworld.com.
"Soda Thoughts" ranked first across Buzz, Ad Awareness, and Consideration among all Super Bowl LIX ads, according to YouGov. Virtue Worldwide reported 45% national awareness and 70% awareness among women under 24 in the United States, alongside the highest lift in brand perception and purchase intent of any Super Bowl LIX advertiser.
Virtue Worldwide created Soda Thoughts for poppi, with Tinuiti serving as media partner. Virtue's concept centred on soda-choice anxiety as a relatable consumer truth. Chris Garbutt served as Co-president and Chief Creative Officer at Virtue during development, according to clapboard.com, and VFX work was handled by Transformer LA.
The poppi Soda Thoughts campaign is available on YouTube as part of poppi's digital distribution strategy, alongside documentation in Clapboard's global advertising archive. The 60-second anchor spot and six 30-second vignettes were distributed across digital platforms in the United States following the Super Bowl LIX broadcast in February 2025.
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