It’s a soda brand popularity contest, and we’re all here to bear witness.

This year, prebiotic soda brand Poppi ran its second consecutive Super Bowl ad featuring influencers like Jake Shane and Alix Earle. But it wasn’t the creator campaign on the big screen that got people talking as much as the one online.

Ahead of the game, Poppi sent enormous pink vending machines to 32 creators and “fans of the brand” in NFL team cities, as well as The Boot bar in New Orleans. Recipients began posting videos of the machines, and mayhem ensued: some consumers expressed anger at Poppi for sending free products to “rich people,” while others bemoaned the message it sent to fans of the brand and smaller creators. “When it gets too extravagant…it just feels very out of touch,” creator Isabella Lanter said in a TikTok video response to the campaign.

All the while, fellow prebiotic soda brand Olipop, which did not run a Super Bowl ad, jumped on the opportunity to respond to comments, speculate on the cost of the vending machines, and even mail out Super Bowl-themed gifts. One comment from Olipop read, “For the record, those machines cost $25k each lol,” while a post on X said, “We don’t have vending machines, but who wants a jersey!!”

Allison Ellsworth, founder of Poppi, told Marketing Brew that the soda brand is now aiming to correct some of the information about how much it spent on its Super Bowl campaign, all while aiming to remain “above the fray” and figure out the best way to market Poppi moving forward.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” Ellsworth said. “The internet’s an interesting place where nobody ever knows what’s going to happen.”

Continue reading here.—KH

It’s game on for Major League Soccer, and the league, which kicks off its 30th season on Saturday, is making marketing and partnership moves to accompany the milestone.

MLS rolled out its 2025 brand campaign in one of the biggest ways possible, debuting it earlier this month during Fox’s pregame coverage of the Super Bowl across nine local markets where the league plays. The TV spot, called “Game On,” is meant to be high-energy, according to MLS SVP and CMO Radhika Duggal, and is also designed to build on the league’s “Our Soccer” brand platform that’s been in place since 2018. The new campaign is aimed at capitalizing on the growing popularity of the sport in the states leading up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico.

“We have experienced tremendous growth, but we’re just getting started,” Duggal said. “‘Game On’ was meant to highlight, ‘What is that MLS energy?’ and it is these four things: entertainment, momentum, belonging, and quality play.”

Read more here.—AM

If you look closely at Aston Martin’s F1 cars, you’ll notice the Citi logo. But it doesn’t take an eagle eye to notice the financial institution’s name on the Queens skyline.

From the 2009 opening of Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, to more recent sponsorship deals like the ones with Aston Martin and the Ryder Cup, Citi is putting its fingerprints on some major sports properties.

While Chief Marketing and Content Officer Alex Craddock, who joined Citi from BlackRock in April and became the company’s first CMO, has been with the company for less than a year, he’s already worked to “redefine the sponsorship strategy…to make sure that the sponsorship portfolio we have supports the business growth ambitions that we have going forward here in the US and around the world,” he told Marketing Brew.

We spoke with Craddock about that new playbook and how Citi approaches some of its individual sponsorship deals.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What are your top considerations when picking the teams, leagues, and sports you want to sponsor? Is it something that is going to be a passion point for our client? Is it something that we think our clients would be interested in engaging with, either at scale or in person? What’s the footprint in terms of geography? We have 95 offices around the world, and I want to make sure that what we have in our portfolio is not too US-centric. I want to make sure we’re reflecting the client base and our office footprint. We then think about whether it’s a good brand fit, and how we can contribute to each other from a brand perspective. And then last but not least, what are the activation opportunities?

Continue reading here.—AM

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The New York Times wrote about the new brand NikeSkims, and why Nike chose Skims founder Kim Kardashian to be a business partner.
• Bloomberg wrote about how the Oura Ring transcended its association with tech bros and appealed to the masses.
• Business Insider wrote about laid-off Meta employees defending themselves on LinkedIn from being called “low performers” by their former employer, and why that might not be a bad thing.