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In 2023, a self-styled influencer in the U.K. sent an email asking for a free car in exchange for touting the brand to her 33,000 Instagram fans. She didn’t get the car. What she did get was a social media storm of fury over her having the gall to ask for such a big gift.
The incident posed lingering question about influencer gifting: How much is too much?
Well, a full-sized beverage vending machine appears to be too much, at least judging from the backlash that Poppi has sustained after a Super Bowl-related stunt.
To juice up its Super Bowl 59 ad, the prebiotic soda brand sent 32 full-sized Poppi vending machines to high-caliber influencers across the country. One, Kaeli McEwen (Instagram following: 1.2 million), posted a video of the machine’s arrival, calling it “the most insane delivery ever.”
Well, insane is one word for it. Critics had others.
“Scrolling on TikTok just to see Poppi send vending machines full of soda cans for free to rich people is crazy,” said one on X. “Why do rich people deserve free things?”
But the machines were in fact loaners, according to Poppi’s communications director Farial Moss, who told ADWEEK that the appliances still belong to Poppi and “were never intended for one-time use.”
Even so, many expressed their indignation over what they perceived as a kind of marketing elitism.
“Times are tough economically and lots of people can’t even afford to drink Poppi at all—and they have to watch wealthy influencers flaunt this online?” TikTok user Alyssa Ege said in a response video.
“Not ONE Black influencer got a Poppi vending machine,” Jaclyn Gibson noted via TikTok. (This charge, too, is untrue: Moss said that the influencers who received machines were of “all races,” including those who are Black.