# Zevia spends 8-figure budget on Cardi B campaign to pull soda drinkers from Coke and Pepsi *The zero-sugar brand bought Super Bowl airtime and national TV to make celebrity endorsement pay at grocery shelf.* By **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal** — The Stash Edge, Hako Shikin LLC. Published 2026-07-22. Canonical: https://www.pops4.com/stash/articles/zevia-2026-07-22t21-3 Subject: Zevia Tags: celebrity endorsement, cpg marketing, retail velocity, substitution strategy, influencer roi, beverage --- Zevia, the zero-calorie soda brand sold in **30,000** retail doors, committed eight figures to a Cardi B campaign that includes Super Bowl commercials, national television buys, and a multi-platform social push, according to Marketing Dive. The campaign marks Zevia's largest single marketing investment and the company's first use of a mainstream celebrity to compete directly with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in the carbonated soft drink aisle. The campaign positions Cardi B as an advocate for ingredient transparency, appearing in 30-second spots that name-check artificial sweeteners and challenge the "diet" soda category. Zevia paid for airtime during the Super Bowl pre-game show and secured inventory on broadcast and cable networks through Q2. The creative leans on Cardi B's reputation for candor: she reads ingredient labels on camera, questions why legacy brands use aspartame, and tells viewers to "read the back of the can." The spots drive to retail, not to a DTC funnel. The mechanism is substitution, not trial. Zevia is not asking consumers to adopt a new behavior; it is asking them to swap one grocery SKU for another in a category they already buy. Cardi B provides permission and social proof for a switch that requires no new habit. The brand calculates that her **400 million** Instagram followers include tens of millions of U.S. soda drinkers who have never heard of Zevia but trust her judgment on everyday choices. The Super Bowl buy ensures the message reaches a mass audience in a single moment, collapsing the awareness gap that typically takes years of sampling and shelf presence to close. The investment only works because Zevia already has distribution. A celebrity campaign without national retail is attention that evaporates at the point of purchase. Zevia has shelf space at Target, Whole Foods, Kroger, and Albertsons, meaning a consumer who sees Cardi B on Sunday can buy the product on Monday without a special trip. The company is betting that high-frequency TV and social will drive enough incremental basket adds to pay back the media spend in 12 to 18 months, a faster return than the three-to-five-year payback typical of brand-building in CPG. A small physical-product brand cannot afford Cardi B or a Super Bowl spot, but it can run the same substitution play at micro scale. Identify a creator with **10,000 to 50,000** followers in your category whose audience already buys a competing product. Offer a flat-fee deal: **$2,000 to $5,000** for three Instagram posts and two Stories over 90 days, all focused on why they switched from the incumbent to your product. Supply them with a simple message: name the competitor, name the reason you left, show the new product in the same usage context. No aspirational lifestyle shots—just the swap. Secure the content rights, run the posts as paid ads targeted to zip codes where you have retail or Amazon availability. Track promo code redemptions to measure direct return, but watch for lift in organic search and retail velocity in the targeted markets. The goal is not virality; it is permission to switch for people already in the aisle. The broader pattern: celebrity and creator campaigns pay when they compress time to trial for a product that already has a path to purchase. Attention without distribution is a vanity metric. Zevia spent eight figures because it had **30,000** doors and a substitution story that required no behavior change. If you have **30** doors, the play is the same—just smaller, tighter, and measured by SKU movement, not impressions. ## The takeaway Zevia's Cardi B bet works because it shortens the path from awareness to shelf grab in a category where distribution already exists. --- ## Publisher **Hako Shikin LLC** — Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded 1997. ASI 217876 · DUNS 18-204-6339. Principal and author: **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA**. - Author: https://www.huanggoodman.com/about - LLM context: https://www.pops4.com/stash/llms.txt - MCP endpoint, for AI agents: https://mcp.pops4.com/mcp - Client dashboard: https://dashboard.pops4.com/ - Catalogue: 70,000+ products, 200+ brands