Poppi Says Backlash Over Sending Vending Machines to Influencers Is a Big Misunderstanding

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.

Ege and other critics would have been happier if Poppi’s marketing department would have done something more egalitarian, such as sending machines to random influencers or to college campuses where many people could use them.

But here’s the thing: That’s actually what Poppi did.

“Both creators across the U.S. and people in New Orleans received these machines—with our first consumer event taking place at the popular Tulane hot spot The Boot, where college students could enjoy complimentary Poppi for the Big Game and beyond,” said Moss, who added that “these machines will be rolling out to [fans] via events, social giveaways and nominations in the weeks to come.”

Meanwhile, Poppi competitor Olipop has notched plenty of publicity from the misunderstood influencer stunt, even adding kerosene to the fire with posts such as: “For the record, those machines cost $25K each lol.”

For the record, they weren’t, Poppi maintains. The $25K price tag is more than double the machines’ actual cost.

Brands sending free stuff to influencers is not new, of course. Nor is consumer ire over watching others get comped when everyone else has to pay. A survey published on Purse Forum in 2019 asked consumers how they felt about influencers receiving free bags from Louis Vuitton. Nearly 87% of them said a freebie that big was “going too far.”