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Healthy soda brand Olipop’s approach to marketing includes both online and offline engagement, as the marketers behind the brand want to create real-life experiences that creators and fans inevitably want to share online. Enter the pop-up, a modern spin on what brands might have once attempted only at industry trade shows.
These pop-ups might feel spontaneous, but they’re not. Serious strategy goes into pulling them off. It’s helpful that Sahr Kahn, owner of Details Chicago, who works behind the scenes of many of Olipop’s influencer pop-ups, is a successful wedding planner. Kahn translates that ability to create meaningful experiences for the Olipop audience with activities, custom merch, and Instagrammable experiences. And for the Olipop brand, this kind of experiential investment pays dividends.
Why IRL Brand Moments are Gaining Traction
Pop-up events are part showroom, part digital spectacle, and part soft-sell strategy. Why do brands like Olipop gravitate to this style of marketing? Because Gen Z wants them. It’s tempting for brands to believe Gen Z is perpetually online, making digital experiences the only way to reach them. But that’s an overly simplistic view.
Data shows that Gen Z has a growing appetite for offline events: 89% of Gen Z respondents said live events improve their confidence, 69% reported they wanted a balance between real-life and digital experiences, and an overwhelming 91% said technology makes them feel disconnected.
In some ways, an in-person branded pop-up experience is an antidote to those feelings of disconnectedness. Gen Z influencers and their followers are happy to engage with offline events, especially if they’re creator-friendly and community-relevant.
Brands like Olipop that have made experiences a part of their core marketing strategy aren’t seeking novelty marketing. They view influencer pop-ups as part of a strategic shift: a way of steering the cultural conversation by building brand awareness more organically.
Changing the way people think about soda isn’t just a messaging challenge. It’s a cultural one. Kahn believes that the shift requires an emotional resonance that can only happen offline. Pop-ups are part of how Olipop plans to achieve that. While pop-ups deliver plenty of handy digital visibility, they also generate customer feedback, test the cultural fit of their new products, and close the psychological distance between the brand and its audience.
These results manifest in a number of ways. Customer feedback can be as simple as introducing three new flavors and witnessing, in real time, which one attracts the longest line. One visual element at an event might get more influencers taking out their phones and snapping a photo than others. Or there may be conversations you simply hadn’t anticipated. They are pop-ups, after all. Expect that there will be surprises.
But the name “pop-up” is also misleading. It takes a lot of work to make something feel spontaneous and organic, especially when you plan it.
How The Olipop Team Brings Events to Life
According to Kahn, planning for a pop-up typically happens in one of two ways. Either it’s mapped to a major strategic launch or marketing campaign, or it may arrive more spontaneously as a brand wants to join a unique cultural moment.
“For the bigger popups, [Olipop] gives us direction,” said Kahn. For example, Olipop might have a partnership with another brand, requiring more investment in an appropriate venue. Or Olipop may approach the event with an inspiration slide and basic information: which influencers they plan on inviting, when it will take place, and other nitty-gritty details.
Kahn takes that guidance from the brand and starts thinking visually. What’s this event's color palette? If promoting a lemon-lime flavor, yellow and green might dominate (as well as the presence of actual lemons and limes). What details might spark a camera moment? These questions also seed ideas for take-home items, giveaways, and experiences that might make the pop-up more memorable for their guests.
The brand might start with basic details for smaller, more spontaneous events, like the location and a few goals. Then Kahn returns with the design of the event, working through a chain of approvals. “Various teams weigh in on it,” said Kahn. Almost like a new book, each event goes through a “round of edits” with the brand.
The Orange Cream Drive-Thru: The Playbook
So what does a successful pop-up look like in practice? According to Kahn, one of Olipop’s strongest brand moments during a pop-up was the Orange Cream Drive-Thru in Los Angeles, which was done in partnership with footwear brand Crocs.
Complete with customization stations like decorating Olipop-themed Crocs and shirt embroidering, the event also featured a curated lineup of viral mocktails like Dirty Orange Soda, Pickle Cream Soda, and Protein Orange Cream. “We had an embroidery station, we had a merch shop,” notes Kahn. “We had people on skates. It touched every sense. It was just fabulous.”
Trisha Paytas, a TikTok influencer with over 10 million followers and a reputation for blending digital and live formats, turned up. Olipop shared her appearance on its TikTok channel, generating tens of thousands of likes.
But though star power drove attention to the event, it wasn’t about star power alone. The event was open to the public, allowing Olipop fans to walk or drive up to the retro-inspired installation and snag a free Orange Cream soda. The combination of public accessibility and buzzworthy star-driven attention created social buzz that was more than the sum of its parts.
“This was a successful pop-up because it wasn’t about exclusivity,” said Olipop about the drive-thru. “It was about celebrating the community that shows up for us every day. And that balance, between creator buzz and real fan connection, is something we always try to hold.”
But was the pop-up a success for Olipop’s brand, or simply a viral moment that drove views? And how can a brand tell the difference?
Metrics vs. Meaning: Defining the Success of Influencer Pop-Ups
“Social media is too much media,” said Shopify’s Head of Community Grace Clarke, “and not enough social. The brands that win are the ones that just stop playing the volume game.”
Clarke believes this more organic, in-real-life approach is underserved, particularly with Gen Z. “I talk to young people every single day,” she said. “DMs, group chats, voice notes. Of the 3000+ Gen Zs in my network, only 71 have ever been asked by a brand to engage, consult, etc.”
Focusing on quality of experiences over quantity of impressions extends to Olipop’s strategy, where the key ROI isn’t raw data like social media impressions. According to Kahn, the key ROI for Olipop is sentiment. How do people feel about the event once it’s done?
“We measure success through reach, social chatter, content creation, and event attendance,” said Olipop, “both online and on the ground. But the most important signal is sentimental. We look at how people responded, how it made them feel, and whether the experience deepened their connection to the brand. If it did, we know we hit the mark.”
Kahn’s experience with weddings speaks to the importance of focusing on less-tangible successes. Her specialty is in creating memorable moments for people attending her events, and Olipop wants to work with an expert who knows how to do that well.
“Not everything can be perfectly measured,” said Olipop. “But the stuff that sticks in people’s minds usually isn’t. So take the swing. Make it count.”
If people are trying to find connection in new, meaningful, and not always digital ways, then a successful brand will meet them at the ground level.
Planning Timelines and Flexibility for Influencer Pop-Ups
If a successful pop-up is a mix of definable metrics (impressions) and intangible memories (unique moments), that still presents a challenge. How does one plan for that?
According to Kahn, it depends on the event itself. While Olipop might have strong, well-defined plans for a pop-up that coincides with a specific marketing campaign, not every event is going to feel so brand-appropriate. The brand might map out an event well in advance—say, if the brand is activating interest around a women’s sports partnership with the brand, it’s not too difficult to look at a calendar and see when a pop-up can work around a game. However, that’s not always the case.
“Ideally, we’d love to plan a full quarter out for events,” said Olipop. “But sometimes a great idea strikes and you just have to roll with it. We’ve done events [in] as quickly as two weeks before.” Part of the appeal of events is the spontaneity involved, and brands like Olipop don’t want to lose that, either.
The key is not losing sight of why the pop-up exists in the first place. The brand is looking to build a strong, real-life connection with its attendees, even if it’s planned long in advance. The brand is also looking to create those real-life “moments” that you can’t necessarily plan, but you can plan around. That means juggling two types of pop-up events: those that come as part of detailed campaigns, and those that feel more like catching lightning in a bottle.
What unites the two? Kahn believes in creative freedom with tight brand guardrails. Every event goes through an approval process with the company, meaning that no pop-up takes place that goes outside of what Olipop envisions. It’s a balancing act. A brand’s marketing needs should match the audience's desire for spontaneous, organic feelings of community.
Advice for Brands: Mastering the Art of Pop-Up Events
How can today’s brands replicate the success of Olipop? Kahn says that starting small works. If you’re showing up in real life, you’re already doing something that many brands forget: using an off-screen strategy to generate onscreen digital buzz.
Clarke echoed this sentiment, saying that your marketing pop-ups don’t have to be “scalable” to be effective. “A lot of what the best brands are doing is invisible to you,” says Clarke. “[Because] you are not part of their community.”
Creating your first brand pop-up might be similar. A pop-up may not register on the digital Richter scale, but the mere act of showing up in real life is enough to start moving the needle.
“Almost everything is digital in marketing now,” said Olipop. “So it’s important to us to stand out and show up in real life.”
As for targeting these events to specific influencers or marketing segments, Olipop said that being intentional is important. “We have a dynamic planning style, meaning we don’t allocate a very specific number of events or budget, but rather let the ideas dictate where we should go. We never want to have an event just to have an event. There needs to be that reason behind it.”
It’s a fluid approach, but executing it isn’t about creativity alone. It requires brand input to watch for social trends and audience-relevant events that might resonate.
The idea is to move quickly, but not carelessly, according to Kahn. “What should be important is be authentic to your brand and come up with something versus follow thing,” says Kahn. “If your brand is playful, find ways to do it. If it's more retro, find ways to do it. But more importantly, really find a team that can ideate for you and create something that's a little off the beaten path.”
Speed can be important for capitalizing on a trend or getting a pop-up running to coincide with a real life attraction, but it’s not the only thing that makes a pop-up successful. Many of Olipop’s events feel spontaneous, but are curated, planned, and edited entire quarters in advance.
Part of making an event feel spontaneous is taking calculated risks. To achieve this, Kahn recommends not placing too much emphasis on metrics.
“ROI matters, no doubt,” says Olipop. “But if that’s the only thing driving your decisions, you’ll play it too safe. The best experiential moments come from taking smart risks and doing something people haven’t seen before.
Consider the drive-thru example. Olipop’s plan included all sorts of activities for the real-life experience. “We created a full sensory experience,” says Olipop. “We had a pop-up and turned into a full-on experience with customization stations like decorating your Olipop crocs, and shirt embroidering.”
Not every activity garnered the same kind of attention as the mocktails did. And not every activity during a pop-up is going to be a huge hit. But adding all of these activities together into a single event did resonate with people. It only takes one small spark to create memorability throughout an entire pop-up.
Don’t be the Brand Watching from the Sidelines
If your brand still treats pop-ups as a “nice-to-have” option in your marketing efforts, you’re missing the point. While it’s true that the success of a live pop-up can be more difficult to measure than viral success, the real-life resonance of a brand is about more than wide appeal or exposure. They’re tools for cultural memorability that won’t ever show up on any dashboard.
When you look at a pop-up event by itself, it can be easy to miss why these in-person experiences are important. One single ingredient, like decorating Olipop crocs, might not seem like it will have the impact you’re looking for.
But each event is looking to contribute to the unique chemistry of the brand. There may be one or two elements from the event that stick out. You might invite an influencer who loves one of them. You might attract the attention of a celebrity who posts it on Instagram. Or you might get real-world feedback on a new product or flavor that you never would have noticed if your launch had been online-only.
In that way, pop-ups are a little like weddings. There’s no predicting which moment will be the most memorable. But it is possible to treat the act of planning with the attention and care it deserves, which eventually leads to memorable moments becoming inevitable.
