OLIPOP Wins Category Share, New Customers, Grows Sales with Dry January Campaign

OLIPOP is a new kind of soda crafted with only 2-5 grams of sugar and includes fiber, prebiotics and botanicals to support digestive health in 15 delicious flavors. Their success in 2023 landed them on our list of fastest growing emerging brands.  

Far from resting on their laurels, OLIPOP leveraged Instacart’s promotions functionality, display ads, and a themed brand page to run a highly successful multi-channel campaign in January.

OLIPOP’s Mocktails in Minutes Campaign 

OLIPOP saw the popularity of Dry January – giving up alcoholic drinks during the month of January – as an opportunity to promote their soda and capture customers looking for non-alcoholic alternatives to their favorite cocktails. 

They launched a ‘Mocktails in Minutes’ campaign across Instacart and several social media platforms, utilizing clever copy to tie their sodas to Dry January — like asking customers ‘Is it a coincidence that mmmmm and mocktail both start with m?’ The campaign featured gorgeous creative in addition to a bespoke landing page that featured a “Virtual Soda Sommelier” that could create mocktails on demand with household ingredients on hand.

Then, as the cherry on top (cherry soda that is), OLIPOP ran a promotion on Instacart for their single cans during each weekend in January. This drove trial, converting intrigued consumers into new to brand customers while also rewarding their loyal customers shopping from their favorite retailers on Instacart. 

Instacart Ads – Better Together

As we often tell our CPG partners, our ad formats work best when they work together. Say you run a sponsored product ad and show up on the search results page. Winning that placement with a competitive bid can be a great way to maximize your sales. It goes a long way, but getting that premium shelf space doesn’t mean the consumer adds your product to their cart. But if you run a promotion on that product at the same time as your sponsored product ad then not only are you showing up in a highly visible spot but you’re incentivizing the customer to buy. 

OLIPOP had a campaign that synergized extremely well. It centered on a cultural ‘tentpole’ moment closely tied to their brand and products; they ran a promotion on each weekend in January alongside multiple ad formats on Instacart; they built and launched a Mocktails in Minutes page on Instacart; and they used social media channels, PR and a landing page to help increase awareness and drive customers to their campaign-specific Instacart page. 

Ad Campaigns – You Get What You Put Into It 

Great ad campaigns get great results. Here at Instacart we succeed when our partners succeed – and when that success comes from a well-thought out, fun and engaging campaign, even better! 

OLIPOP put together a great campaign and so we’re thrilled they got great results from it. What kind of great results? Here’s what they saw^*— 

Their sales growth on Instacart highlights the impact of the overall campaign and the popularity of their promotion. With their promotion running on each weekend during Dry January, you can see the corresponding increase in sales as compared to the weekend of 12/31. In fact, during the final weekend of the campaign, OLIPOP’s sales grew 208% YoY compared to the year prior. 

And it wasn’t just the weekends that were a success. As you can see in the graph above, while the promotion clearly had an impact, the ‘trough’ between each weekend’s peak also rose throughout January. This trend suggests the other elements of the ad campaign provided a sales lift as consumers continued to purchase more OLIPOP singles throughout the weeks, even when the promotion was not running. 

OLIPOP’s monthly share of the Soft Drinks category also grew in January 46% higher than their previous 6-month average share — so they weren’t just getting more sales (a win in and of itself) they were winning more category share. 

Attracting New to Brand Customers

Another highlight of OLIPOP’s ad campaign was the number of customers on Instacart they were able to attract. One of the best uses of promotions is to attract new-to-brand customers; the promotion gets them to try the product, the quality of the product and some good placements in ‘Buy it Again’ lists on Instacart gets them to stay.

OLIPOP’s customer count increased +59% MoM during Dry January. This includes both new and returning customers. New customers were at an all time high, with NTB customers growing 15% MoM. That’s a lot of new fans. 

“We’ve seen many of our consumers romanticizing their OLIPOP experience and enjoying it as a non-alcoholic alternative, so we tapped into that consumer insight to leverage our brand during Dry January. The ‘Mocktails in Minutes’ campaign blew us away with its success, showing just how much potential there is in tapping into cultural moments like this and how important a multi-channel campaign can be.” – Leah Dockstader, Director of Trade and Shopper Marketing at OLIPOP

*Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes. 

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This post contains third-party claims and advertisements.  Instacart does not make any representation as to the accuracy or suitability of any of the information provided herein by our third party advertisers.

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