Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: That JLo Moment with Poppi founder Allison Ellsworth

Transcript

GEMS: That JLo Moment with Poppi founder Allison Ellsworth · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  I really feel like at the moment, you guys are, you're obviously in a phase of growth because you're doing all this amazing stuff, but it really feels like you're focusing on brand versus like hard sell shove in your face. And what I mean by that is like when I saw your recent party at the Hamptons, which looked so cool and so fun and so colorful. And then when I think about the JLo thing, which we also need to talk about. And when I think about your TikTok, like everything feels like.
• 0:36
  created for community, created for brand awareness and not like, Hey, here's my product. Like here's an ad. You should buy it kind of thing. Like it feels brand awareness and brand building is this phase that you're in at the moment, which is so cool. Yeah. And I think you literally like hit the nail on the head with the, what everyone is wanting right now is like to be authentic.
• 0:59
  And that's what's really important to me, like as a founder and chief of brand and head of creative is I want us to come across as authentic and not like just a product. We're building a brand. We don't want to be a product. And so that opens so many doors for people to want to be involved and be part of your journey. And just like TikTok is something that gets really scary for brands because they're like, oh, it's just a bunch of kids on there dancing. And.
• 1:26
  But me as a founder, I just knew it was like the way of the future. And so we did start off by doing a lot of the trends and trying to dance with the cans. And I was like, this just isn't working. And so one day I sat down and I told my story of like, hey, you know, my name's Allison. And I got a deal on Shark Tank for my product Poppy. And it started because I had health issues. And I just kind of went through that whole story. And I posted 10 o'clock at night. I went to bed and I woke up the next day and it had like over a million views. Our sales on Amazon went through the roof.
• 1:56
  And today I'm still like one of the highest converters we've ever worked with. And I'm like, oh, that's crazy because I was just being authentic and real. That's authenticity for you. And so we cracked the code for us on TikTok. Now that doesn't work for every brand and you have to find what works for you.
• 2:15
  But we found just like on TikTok in particular, just being ourselves and talking about the product, why I started the company, why we picked the colors, right? Talking about these little how-tos and stuff like people really connected with it. But then you might need a different strategy on like Instagram, right? We're really curated. It's pretty. It's photo shoot, like high gloss a little bit more. But that's more what Instagram is used to.
• 2:45
  quite listening to like what everyone else is doing and having a little bit of fun. And that's the fun part of a startup is you can do that and you don't have to be part of the corporate cog to get everything approved and, you know, test approvals. Yeah. Yeah. And all that stuff. So like have that joy when you can. And I'm always like, yes, no death of joy. A hundred percent. As being a founder and like my husband is CEO, like that's something that's really important to us with company culture and building coffee is like, I don't want us to ever be that.
• 3:14
  even when we get really big and continue to grow. Right. So totally, totally. It's just, it's a crazy ride. It is a crazy ride. I want to talk about the recent crazy thing that is JLo. I was just like dying for you. That's the coolest thing I've ever seen. What happened there? Was this like a planned thing or did she just like pick up a poppy and dance with it? I don't understand.
• 3:39
  So it's kind of like it was a combination. So we honestly just been so lucky with so many celebrities organically becoming fans of Poppy. Like here we focus a lot on influencer marketing. We seed a lot of people. So we send out a ton of Poppy and just like what. Like how much are we talking like hundreds or like thousands a month?
• 4:00
  I mean, there's sometimes we'll do like a thousand a month and then the next month, maybe like 500. And then if we're doing a big launch, we'll do like 2000 or something like that. Wow. Okay. Right. And it depends. You'll do like a curated mailers, what we call them for like a certain like celebrity. Like if you're giving it to like Madonna, right? Like you don't just send her a boss. Yeah.
• 4:17
  So it just depends. But with JLo, it was funny because we've just have so many organic fans. And so it was one of those organic fans that she kind of her team reached out and we knew that she loved Poppy. I wanted to get it on set for her music video, Cumbria El Paso video. And it was in Miami. Miami's one of our big markets. And so like we made some calls and I was like,
• 4:45
  Get Poppy on set. I know she likes it. I knew she was a fan from us, like, sitting before, like, and sometimes you just, like, never know what's going to happen. And so we got a call. It was like, hey, we got some pictures and there's, like, X's on it. It was like, look, JLo's, like, drinking the Poppy. And because they didn't want us to, like, use the pictures, right?
• 5:02
  And I was like, how do we work with JLo? Like, I was like, how do we make this happen? And they were like, listen, like, most of the people that we work with, one, they have to love Poppy. Like, I don't want to do it just to pay someone and it's contractual. Like, it's one on, it's unauthentic. And so I found out she loved it. And so then just...
• 5:20
  at that time, the conversation of a partnership came up out of that, but it was not like a big endorsement campaign. It was like, Hey, we're on set. She loves Poppy. She did this really cool content. Like, do you guys want to work with her? And so it was like a really quick thing. Cause and it was easy because we knew she loved it. So we're like, uh, yeah, it's JLo. She has a hundred million followers on Instagram. Amazing. Like, let's make this happen. And so it happened like over a weekend. It's like every woman's dream. Yeah. I mean, it was just like, I was just like, who doesn't love JLo? Like,
• 5:48
  I don't know if you can get better. Like, honestly, are you allowed to share? Like when you say you work together from that, like you you agreed to work together. I assume that means you paid for it to be able to use that content. Are you allowed to share like ballpark what that kind of thing costs or is that like off limits?
• 6:08
  Unfortunately, it is off limits. I try to like how they always say, like, don't kiss and tail because yeah, okay. Within the business of what we're doing, it's not necessarily about the contracts and who you work with it. It's relationships and working with people and I would love to work with JLo again someday. And so it's like.
• 6:24
  once you like get in the nitty gritties of like what you paid for this, like, I'm sure she's doing all sorts of deals and it's very dependent on, I'm sure she, it's a product she loves versus a product she just wants to get paid for, which, you know, you never know that's between her and her team, but we really get to the point where you build the relationships and that's the more important part. And so we tend to not talk about price when it comes to those things. Fair enough. Fair enough. Just wanted to try my luck. No, I know it's fine. I get it.
• 6:52
  That is so cool. I think that is like, I guess as an entrepreneur, you hit so many lows, but you also hit so many highs. And that's surely got to be up there as like pinnacle poppy moment.
• 7:07
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• 7:32
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• 7:54
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