Week two: the content type that can make Bloom unmistakable

Week two of four. I wrote this post as coursework for the content strategy course in Full Sail University's Digital Marketing bachelor's program, where Bloom Nutrition is the brand behind my final project.

Last week I picked my brand and explained why. This week the research had to point at something I could actually make.

That hand-off is where most strategies quietly fall apart. I see it in my own client work at Serenity Marketing Agency: the audit is thorough, the recommendation is vague, and nothing ships. So here is my decision, stated plainly.

The content I selected

A comedy-driven, creator-made UGC video ad. Fifteen to forty-five seconds, shot vertically on a phone, posted to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, then amplified with Spark Ads and creator whitelisting.

The key word in that sentence is comedy. Bloom already makes plenty of UGC. Very little of it is memorable the next day.

The problem the research surfaced

I went into discovery expecting to find a visibility gap. I found the opposite.

Bloom has roughly 12 billion views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube and sits in more than 50,000 retail locations (Saudi FoodTech, 2026). It is tracking toward about $500 million in revenue this year, up from around $300 million (Robert, 2026). It runs a network of about 59,000 affiliates, and nearly all of that creative uses the same six-to-ten-second flavor and mixability hook (Latterly, n.d.-b).

That is enormous reach pushing a single template.

The template made sense at the start. It's how a scrappy greens powder got famous. Today it's a liability, because Bloom Sparkling Energy drives about 60% of sales (Saudi FoodTech, 2026). That puts Bloom in the cooler next to Alani Nu, which Celsius acquired for $1.8 billion (Celsius Holdings, 2025), and Poppi, which PepsiCo acquired for $1.95 billion (PepsiCo, 2025).

Bloom cannot outspend companies that size while running the same kind of creative. Its one durable advantage in that cooler is being unmistakable, and humor is the cheapest form of distinctiveness available to any brand.

Why the format holds up

The persona from my week one discovery still drives this decision. Demographically, Bloom's customer base is roughly 85% female, concentrated between 18 and 34, in households earning $60K to $120K (Canvas Business Model, 2026). Psychographically, they're college-educated, they value flavor, aesthetics, and ingredient transparency, and the fastest-growing segment is wellness newcomers arriving through gut health. Behaviorally, they discover products mid-scroll, and 31% of women take a purchase action after watching a TikTok video, compared with 22% of men (Negus Viveiros, 2024).

Format performance backs it up. UGC drives about 29% higher web conversions, UGC ads earn roughly 4x higher click-through at 50% lower cost-per-click, 61% of Gen Z prefer UGC to any other format, and 87% of Gen Z trust online reviews more than advertising (Influee, 2026).

Bloom already uses UGC at scale. The real question is what that UGC is allowed to say.

Three campaigns I'm learning from

Liquid Death: Greatest Hates

A canned water company that grew from about $3 million in revenue in 2019 to $130 million in 2022, roughly a 4,233% increase, on the way to a $1.4 billion valuation (House of Marketers, n.d.). Greatest Hates is a recurring album series whose lyrics are real hate comments about the brand, taken verbatim and uncensored. Volume 2 was a 14-song punk record featuring members of Rise Against and Alkaline Trio (Billboard, 2020). The customer experience team pulls the lyrics straight from real emails and comments (Alternative Press, n.d.).

I chose it because customers wrote the material and because it runs as a series. Liquid Death's SVP of marketing, Dan Murphy, describes one of the brand's best-performing tactics as finding unpaid, unprompted organic posts and putting paid media behind them, so the feed picks the winners before a dollar of media is spent (Marketing Brew, 2026). Bloom could do that tomorrow with 59,000 affiliates.

Olipop: comment-section comedy and the five-cent PR kit

Olipop is the closest competitor doing this well: a functional beverage sold to the same woman on the same platform. In February 2025, Poppi shipped custom vending machines to 32 influencers before the Super Bowl. Olipop's comment put each machine at $25,000, implying a campaign near $800,000, a figure Poppi disputes as fabricated and inflated by 60% (Marketing Brew, 2025). The unboxing videos pulled millions of views, and sentiment soured as people asked why the machines hadn't gone to schools or nurses. Olipop spent nothing. It replied in the comment sections of those videos ("For the record, those machines cost $25K each lol") and positioned itself as the people's brand for free (Marketing Brew, 2025). It then sold 5,000 PR kits to customers for five cents each, and they sold out in under two minutes from a 30,000-person waitlist (Donaldson, 2025). Olipop reached roughly 586,400 TikTok followers and 4.2 million likes after shifting ad spend toward creator relationships (SARAL, n.d.).

I chose it because the joke carries a point of view: Olipop sides with the customer. Bloom's affiliates are real customers, so that angle is open and unclaimed.

Red Bull: the Soapbox Race

Red Bull is the brand Bloom now faces on the energy shelf. Since 2000, across more than a hundred events worldwide, amateur teams have built motorless vehicles and sent them down an obstacle course in front of thousands of spectators, scored on showmanship as much as speed. In other words, the event is engineered to produce hilarious failure (Red Bull, n.d.). Red Bull can also afford big paid media: an Adbeat pull on redbull.com shows 117 ads running in a single month across 198 publisher sites, all programmatic, with 43% of the creative in video and one landing page live for 666 days (Adbeat, 2026). The Soapbox Race is the other half of Red Bull's model, where every attendee becomes a camera (IIDE, 2026).

I chose it because Red Bull builds a situation that generates comedy and lets the crowd film it. That's the unlock for Bloom: give 59,000 affiliates one absurd, repeatable premise to play with.

The one I won't copy

Bang Energy is the closest match to Bloom's current model: fitness influencers and college ambassadors posting dozens of UGC videos a month, roughly $300 million in sales against about $2,200 in traditional media (Extole, n.d.), and the fastest-growing energy drink in the country by 2020. Then Monster sued over deceptive health claims and acquired Bang's assets out of bankruptcy in 2023 (Latterly, n.d.-a).

I saw that collapse up close. I was on the moving crew that moved the founder out of his house after the sale, a sprawling multi-acre property in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in South Florida. I have carried furniture out of the end of that strategy.

UGC volume only protects a brand when the product can back every claim the content makes.

The mechanism: Crash the Cooler

A format needs a launch plan to become a strategy, so here's how I'd roll it out.

Bloom invites its affiliate network and its customers to submit a 30-second comedy spot for Bloom Sparkling Energy, shot vertically on a phone. There is one creative rule, borrowed from Liquid Death: the can can't be the punchline. Entries post publicly under a branded hashtag, a public vote narrows the field, and the winner takes cash plus the prize creators actually want. Their spot becomes Bloom's paid creative for the quarter, running as a whitelisted Spark Ad with their handle still on it.

The precedent is Doritos' Crash the Super Bowl, which ran from 2006 to 2016, drew more than 36,000 fan-made entries, and placed a fan-made spot in USA Today's Ad Meter top five throughout that run (PepsiCo, 2024). Doritos revived it for Super Bowl LIX and pulled more than 2,000 entries for a single $1 million prize (Adweek, 2025).

It fits Bloom because the current affiliate program rewards consistency, with 59,000 people making the same flavor demo, and a contest rewards distinctiveness. It also flips the cost structure: 2,000 entries for one prize means 2,000 pieces of creative, and every entry promotes Bloom whether it wins or not. That's the Red Bull mechanic. The public vote is the Olipop move, putting customers in the spotlight. And every entry gets screened so nothing carries a health claim Bloom can't support, which is the guardrail Bang lacked.

Where it lives and what it feeds

Here's how the piece moves through the customer journey.

Awareness. The comedy spot runs natively on TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, then gets amplified through Spark Ads and creator whitelisting, so paid budget follows the entries that already proved themselves.

Consideration. The spot is repurposed onto the Bloom Sparkling Energy product page, where a real person enjoying the drink answers hesitation better than another rotating product render. The Bloom Journal carries the ingredient education a 30-second joke has no room for, and it captures search traffic that video can't reach.

Decision. TikTok Shop makes the video itself shoppable, and 50,000+ retail doors mean the same asset can end at a Target shelf or in a cart.

Loyalty. This is where the contest earns its keep. Every entrant gains a stake in the brand, and the affiliate network grows from a distribution list into a community with something to win.

That sequence is the whole argument in miniature: match the message to the medium and the moment, and let each channel do the job it does best.

Where this gets complicated

A fair analysis needs the counterargument too. Four things give me pause.

Comedy fails in public. A flavor demo that misses gets ignored. A joke that misses gets quote-tweeted. Humor is also the hardest thing to brief. Liquid Death employs an in-house team of comedy writers, a very different cost structure from a hashtag and a prize.

Tone risk cuts against the brand. Liquid Death's aggression works because it sells water to people who enjoy being in on the joke. Bloom sells feel-good wellness to a majority-female audience that arrived through gut health. Irreverence has to stay warm here, closer to Olipop than to Liquid Death. Getting that calibration wrong would do more damage than sameness ever could.

Contests produce volume first. Doritos got 2,000 entries and aired one. The other 1,999 only become assets if they're watchable, which means real screening costs, rights and usage terms, FTC disclosures across thousands of posts, and compliance review on every health-adjacent claim. That overhead is where good ideas usually die.

My own numbers disagree with each other. My week one discovery put Bloom at roughly 15,000 retail doors, and this week's reporting says more than 50,000. One source frames the company as scaling toward $1 billion, and another puts this year near $500 million. These are most likely snapshots from different moments in a fast-moving company, and I'd rather flag the spread than quietly pick the flattering figure. My evidence is tiered the same way: Kozinets et al. (2010) is peer-reviewed, Forbes and Marketing Brew are credible trade reporting, and the influencer-platform breakdowns are useful but partly self-reported by companies with a stake in the answer.

Where this lands

Bloom already has the reach. What it needs is distinctiveness. The research points to comedy-led, creator-made UGC video as the one content type that delivers distinctiveness without media spending Bloom can't afford, and a contest is the most cost-effective way to produce it at the scale Bloom's affiliate network already operates.

Next week I turn this into the creative brief: one page, clear enough that someone else could produce from it. In week four, I build it.

This week taught me that creativity is a disciplined process. The real idea is the structure that reliably produces comedy, and that structure came from research.

I'm documenting this publicly for a simple reason. The framework I'm testing on a half-billion-dollar wellness brand is the same one I want to hand to a family-owned business in Lake County that has a real story and no idea how to put it on camera.

Studying a brand this month too? Connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me what content type you landed on, and what almost talked you out of it.

References

Adbeat. (2026). Red Bull (redbull.com) advertiser profile. https://www.adbeat.com/free/advertiser/Red-Bull/redbull-com

Adweek. (2025). Doritos' Crash the Super Bowl ad winners and creators. https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/doritos-crash-the-super-bowl-ad-winners-creators/

Alternative Press. (n.d.). Liquid Death album Greatest Hates interview. https://www.altpress.com/liquid-death-album-greatest-hates-interview/

Billboard. (2020, November 17). Alkaline Trio & Rise Against members help Liquid Death water turn hate tweets into a punk album. https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/liquid-death-mountain-water-releases-greatest-hates-vol-2-album-hater-comments-9486200/

Canvas Business Model. (2026). What are the customer demographics and target market of Bloom Nutrition? Business Model Canvas Templates. https://businessmodelcanvastemplate.com/blogs/target-market/bloom-nutrition-target-market

Celsius Holdings. (2025, April 1). Celsius Holdings completes acquisition of Alani Nu. https://ir.celsiusholdingsinc.com/news/news-details/2025/Celsius-Holdings-Completes-Acquisition-of-Alani-Nu/

Donaldson, A. (2025, July 2). Olipop's latest marketing stunt drew a 30,000-person waitlist and sold out immediately. Inc. https://www.inc.com/ali-donaldson/olipops-latest-marketing-stunt-drew-a-30000-person-waitlist-and-sold-out-immediately/91208652

Extole. (n.d.). How Bang energy drink influencers tap into Gen Z to generate $300 million in sales. https://www.extole.com/blog/how-bang-energy-drink-influencers-tap-into-gen-z-to-generate-300-million-in-sales/

House of Marketers. (n.d.). Liquid Death marketing strategy. https://houseofmarketers.com/liquid-death-marketing-strategy/

IIDE. (2026). Marketing strategy of Red Bull. https://iide.co/case-studies/marketing-strategy-of-red-bull/

Influee. (2026). 44 UGC statistics every marketer must know. https://influee.co/blog/ugc-statistics

Kozinets, R. V., de Valck, K., Wojnicki, A. C., & Wilner, S. J. S. (2010). Networked narratives: Understanding word-of-mouth marketing in online communities. Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 71–89. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.74.2.71

Latterly. (n.d.-a). Bang energy marketing strategy: A case study. https://www.latterly.org/bang-energy-marketing-strategy/

Latterly. (n.d.-b). Bloom Nutrition marketing strategy: From TikTok virality to retail dominance. https://www.latterly.org/bloom-nutrition-marketing-strategy/

Marketing Brew. (2025, February 13). How Poppi's Super Bowl vending machine campaign spiraled out of control. https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2025/02/13/poppi-olipop-super-bowl-vending-machine-campaign-controversy

Marketing Brew. (2026, January 12). How Liquid Death is keeping social marketers on their toes. https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2026/01/12/liquid-death-social-marketing-strategy

Negus Viveiros, B. (2024). TikTok views lead to shares, research, purchases, especially among women. EMARKETER. https://www.emarketer.com/content/actions-taken-from-tiktok-views

PepsiCo. (2024). Think you can do better? Doritos challenges fans to make a stronger Super Bowl ad for a chance to win $1 million. https://www.pepsico.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024/think-you-can-do-better-doritos-challenges-fans-to-make-a-stronger-super-bowl-ad-for-a-chance-to-win

PepsiCo. (2025, May 19). PepsiCo completes acquisition of poppi, accelerating strategic portfolio transformation. https://www.pepsico.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/pepsico-completes-acquisition-of-poppi-accelerating-strategic-portfolio-transformation

Red Bull. (n.d.). Soapbox Race. https://www.redbull.com/int-en/tags/soap-box-race

Robert, Y. (2026, April 28). How Bloom Nutrition is scaling to $1 billion by prioritizing its community first. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/yolarobert1/2026/04/28/bloom-nutrition-scaled-to-1-billion-by-prioritizing-its-community-first/

SARAL. (n.d.). Olipop influencer marketing. https://www.getsaral.com/academy/olipop-influencer-marketing

Saudi FoodTech. (2026). From greens powder to $500M platform. https://saudifoodtech.sa/from-greens-powder-to-500m-platform/