February 11, 2025

Vending the future

As the class war reaches what I hope is its apotheosis (lest we find ourselves living in an actual Atwood novel), I’m interested, as always, in the downstream cultural effects. Some are obvious, overt—a return to George W. Bush’s America, as I keep saying. For example: having racist, Holocaust-denial-hosting comedians populating your Bud Light ad to try to make angry white supremacist consumers forget you once featured a trans woman in your influencer marketing spend. But some are less immediately apparent.

I found it interesting to see the online backlash to Poppi’s Superbowl marketing efforts. Poppi, a “wellness” brand soda with an infinitesimal amount of liquid fiber, used the Superbowl to send white influencers (George W. Bush’s America) enormous Poppi-branded vending machines for short term, in-home use. I was tipped to the online backlash yesterday, when it finally made its way to YouTube where Isabella Lanter, a YouTuber who talks primarily about marketing, posted about it.

She had several complaints about the campaign. It was expensive. A rival wellness soda spread the rumor that each machine cost $25K, but—dubious numbers aside—it was certainly costly to ship the machines both back and forth. It was huge—requiring each influencer to live in a space large enough to comfortably house a vending machine. It was exclusive. Lanter repeatedly called it “unethical.” I don’t agree (what would “ethical” marketing even be?), but I found the word illustrative.

Latner’s biggest complaint? It was out of touch. It focused on a subset of consumer (influencers and wannabe influencers), while ignoring the average consumer who may pick up a can of Poppi during a lunch break at work.

But Poppi, running $2.50 a can, is cost prohibitive. Perhaps their marketing department knows what it is doing. They don’t want to bridge the gap between influencer and consumer. They may want to widen it.

According to anthropologist Crystal Abidin, the term “influencer” arose around 2005, a new term for bloggers, one which encompassed their new “multi-platform” reach. And, once defined, it was easy to see how influencers proliferated online, becoming not only a term but a new job category. One younger generations are desperate to join themselves. Over half of Gen Z (57%) reported a desire to become influencers, if the option were available, according to data from Morning Consult.

But, as Adam Conover points out in his latest YouTube rant entitled “Everything in America is gambling now,” the realities of influencing don’t match up with the expectations. Most full-time “content creators” (a word we all need to excise) earn $50,000 a year or less. Aspiring influencers often find themselves taking on massive rafts of debt in their efforts to turn their lives into Tide ads.

What Latner is seeing—the gulf between consumer and influencer—in Poppi’s recent marketing, may not be an accident but rather the point.

It is hard to understand on its face. But the main consumers of any product are not the average person, but the addict. This has long been true with alcohol, with the Washington Post reporting in 2014 the top 10% of alcohol consumers accounted for 60% of the alcohol sales. There aren’t hard figures I can find but you can bet the majority of gambling is done by America’s growing number of addicts.

It’s not hard to make the leap to shopping. Shopping can be recognized as an addiction, of course. But, as a main driver of capitalism, it can be hard to tell for some when shopping for necessities tips over into addiction. If you add a desire to become an “influencer,” into it, you could find yourself justifying any number of purchases as career-building necessities.

According to The Addiction Group, 33% of all compulsive shoppers have debt in excess of $10,000. Wannabe influencers must be in there somewhere. And they’re likely to purchase much more than your average consumer—maybe two or three times the spend of a regular person. I’d buy a can of Poppi, but, if you’re doing a “Poppi haul” video to try to convince the company to send you a themed vending machine next year, I can easily see one buying a pallet.

Latner is right: the Poppi marketing is out of touch with the average consumer. But, as the class war heats up, it seems companies aren’t interested in the average consumer any longer. They’re only interested in who will buy the most.