How the Poppi founder is using her platform to launch her next venture

“Do you want to build the next billion-dollar brand with us?”

Poppi founder Allison Ellsworth first posed that question on her social media accounts late last month in posts about her new CPG brand, of which details are still largely under wraps. Ellsworth’s team currently sits at 10 people, and she told us that since posting, the new brand has received more than 2,000 resumes for five open roles ranging from digital communications to influencer manager.

Multiple applicants are now in the interview process ahead of the November launch date, she said.

“I just posted on social media not fully realizing how viral it would go,” Ellsworth told Marketing Brew. “I just think it was a fun, modern way to recruit.”

Part of the posts’ success comes from the following Ellsworth has built from more than six years of sharing her journey at Poppi, from when it began as a startup to its evolution into a large-scale soda brand acquired by PepsiCo for an eye-watering $1.95 billion. While her new brand has received many applicants who are fans of the prebiotic-soda brand, she told us, those looking to work at Poppi 2.0 need not apply, as the new brand is “not competitive to Poppi,” per her post.

The immediate interest generated is a testament to the power and reach of being a socially native founder—something Ellsworth said has become table stakes for any brand looking to build affinity with the next generation.

“I’ve always seen my platforms as a way to not only build community, but to be transparent,” she said. “I don’t see why we wouldn’t continue to do all of that [with the next brand]. Why not use this beautiful tool that we have that everyone’s already looking to and is already inspired by?”

Don’t just buy, apply

Ellsworth first began posting founder content in 2020, and she has since inspired a new generation of brand-builders to share their experiences online. She now has more than 165,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram.

In the last few weeks, Ellsworth has regularly updated her original job opportunity posts, adding new roles and alerting her followers through Instagram Stories. Two Stories alone led to more than 300 applicants, she told us. The approach, she said, is a nice alternative to a LinkedIn post, which can be “kind of boring and a little bit old-school.”

There are some limits to using social media to recruit alone. Ellsworth said the brand has not yet received many applications from people interested in supply chain, finance, and ops roles, perhaps in part because “marketing, creative, [and] social roles respond best within the social world.” A number of applicants have also been younger or underqualified, which she said isn’t unexpected given the medium.

The plan down the line, she said, is to do more traditional recruiting—but for now, the posts seem to be working.

Founder first

With Poppi, Ellsworth said the overall strategy largely boiled down to “figure it out as we go;” with the new brand, she’s being more intentional with org charts and a focus on building culture from the start. She also doesn’t plan to be at the forefront of the brand’s social strategy this time around, although founder content will remain a part of it.

That’s in part because of increasing saturation in the space. For her new brand, Ellsworth said she’s looking to establish a new playbook and try new ways of breaking through online, including long-form content. She’s currently working with a film crew to document the process of building the brand, she said.

“I’m excited about the challenge to understand what’s next and how we can amplify and go big and look at other pieces of content or other platforms,” she told us.

For brands that have not yet experimented with founder- or executive-led content, Ellsworth said it’s worth experimenting with if only to better understand the social landscape and what’s trending—or perhaps help with recruiting, if necessary.

Not everyone is a natural in front of the camera, which some executives have learned that the hard way. But for those who are limited more by fear than anything else, it’s worth getting over, Ellsworth said.

“I always tell people, ‘Close your eyes and picture a room of 200 people,’” she said. “If you only get 200 views, that’s a lot of people. And you should be proud of that.”