Poppi, the PepsiCo-owned prebiotic soda brand, has secured in-show product placements inside both Love Island USA on Peacock and Love Island UK on ITV — a dual-market entertainment deal brokered by Studio 55, ITV Studios' recently launched global brand partnership unit. The placement extends poppi's brand presence into scripted-reality programming watched by the exact demographic driving better-for-you beverage growth: younger consumers who are actively trading away legacy soda.
The deal structure matters for operators tracking how consumer packaged goods brands are allocating media budgets. Rather than running pre-roll or display against the show's audience, poppi is embedded inside the content itself — a format that survives ad-skipping, travels across streaming platforms, and generates organic social amplification every time a cast moment clips. Studio 55's explicit mandate is closing larger global licensing deals, which means more brand categories will be pitched this kind of transatlantic architecture in the next 18 months. Beverage, snack, and on-premise hospitality brands should expect competing proposals.
For operators in the beverage and hospitality channel, the intelligence signal here is distribution velocity. The Studio 55 announcement specifically calls out USA retail expansion and UK experiential activations as parallel tracks — meaning the in-show placement is not a standalone awareness play but a coordinated retail-and-experience push timed to the show's broadcast windows. That sequencing — entertainment IP anchors the brand story, retail and on-premise activations convert it — is a repeatable model that regional and national beverage suppliers are watching closely. Buyers at grocery, convenience, and food service are more receptive to brands arriving with proven cultural momentum than to brands arriving with a sell sheet. Love Island's audience reach provides that momentum cheaply relative to a national TV buy. Operators evaluating which emerging beverage SKUs to carry or feature should note that brands executing this kind of integrated launch tend to arrive at buyer meetings with faster velocity data and stronger consumer pull metrics than brands relying on sampling and distributor push alone. Understanding how to audit a brand's retail readiness before a placement like this is becoming a prerequisite for any supplier or distributor partner. Similarly, operators tracking how entertainment partnerships are reshaping beverage and menu trend adoption should keep an eye on what categories Studio 55 targets next — spirits, energy, and functional hydration are the obvious adjacencies.
The takeaway for the operator community is straightforward: poppi is using a premium content vehicle to compress the timeline between brand awareness and retail distribution in two markets simultaneously. The brands that close deals like this in 2026 are not necessarily better products — they are better-positioned media and licensing operations. If you are a beverage buyer, a hotel F&B director, or a hospitality group evaluating your better-for-you soda options, expect poppi to arrive with significant consumer pull behind it before the year ends.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
