Poppi wants to be “culture’s favorite soda.” To do that, the 7-year-old prebiotic soda brand has pushed itself hard on college campuses and social media, further aided by hefty DTC partnerships with platforms like Amazon, and of course, Super Bowl commercials. And while it may take some time to accomplish, PepsiCo clearly also sees its potential.

In March, the OG soda brand for the new generation just bought Poppi for an eye-popping $1.95 billion off the backs of the gut-healthy drink’s marketing-led sales strategy, as outlined by its chief growth and marketing officers, Jeff Rubenstein and Andy Judd, who have identified and executed on these opportunities. Quickly.

“The ability to have a sales and marketing team that can move with that speed has opened up so many opportunities at every customer,” Judd said when explaining how the company can work with large companies like Walmart, while still breaking through with new customers.

With annual sales north of $500 million, up 38x from 2020, Poppi’s 34% market share in the booming functional sodas category is a sign its tactics are working.

Two departments, one brain

Rubenstein and Judd have worked together for over five years. They both said that with time comes trust, familiarity, and the latitude to experiment with the department structure.

Rubenstein said that while the revenue and marketing teams at the company are technically separate, they are often in lockstep with one another. Rubenstein’s 130-person growth department focuses on striking B2B deals with companies like Amazon and Fortnite, while also finding ways to optimize growth from geographic or product-specific trend data.

Judd’s department of 30 marketers focuses on conducting market research, aligning new products and sales strategies with the brand’s identity, and assigning the potential brand value to sales initiatives.

Keep reading here.—BS

Corporate offsites can be a welcomed (or dreaded) part of any job. You might be getting an all-expenses-paid vacation, but it’s still with your boss.

Given the large expense that goes into hosting a sales offsite—B2B event planning company BoomPop estimates that an average team retreat costs $2,000 to $3,000 per attendee—it’s important that companies and their employees get the most out of the experience.

Whether you like them or not, sales offsites—which includes events like sales kickoffs, quarterly meetings, or team-building exercises—have increased in frequency in recent years. According to a report from travel management company Emburse, the average number of annual corporate offsites has increased from 2.4 in 2019 to 2.6 in 2024.

BoomPop’s chief executive officer, Healey Cypher, told Revenue Brew there are five key things that sales leaders should keep in mind in order to host a successful offsite.

Don’t plan by the calendar, plan by the moment

While most sales kickoffs are held in January or February, Cypher suggests that companies should host offsites around important moments at other points in the year.

“We found that the best sales teams have critical moments, and they plan around that,” he said. “It could be a product launch, or could be a strategy shifting, or even a rallying cry—like we’re missing numbers; we need to get morale back on. There’s something about that that has a lot of benefits.”

Keep reading here.—LI