Bloom Thinks: The Power of Occasion 3

What’s the future of occasion and how can brands get ahead of it?

The sting of closing nightclubs and youth clubs is hopefully sharp enough to reverse their decline. We’re realising just how much we stand to lose. We all need offline places to enjoy the spontaneity of IRL hangouts and community.Happily there are a few green shoots of re-openings. From community-owned pubs to hyper-niche, hyper-local clubs; a new generation of diverse, participatory venues is appearing on the horizon.

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Algorithms will make some areas of life more convenient. But we hope predictable, AI-moderated experiences will feed a desire for a more human opposite. So opportunities for occasion-led brands will increase, online and well as off.

The biggest opportunity is to expand from occasion into lifestyle. As shown in Part 2, occasion is creatively rich. The occasion’s tempo, casting or setting give the brand a springboard to launch merchandise, collaborators, soundtracks, events or apparel. The brand transcends product to become a curator. Every innovation helps bind the brand even closer to the occasion.

Jack Daniels was one of the originators of this approach. It accelerated its association with hard rocking occasions by innovating into high-margin merch like clothes, lighters and homewares. So it became not just the drink of rockers, but also an accessible way to signal a hard rocking lifestyle (or a refusal to tidy your bedroom).

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Poppi has followed in Jack Daniels’ devilish footsteps, but for a more angelic drinking moment. The US soft drink has expanded out of a healthy fun occasion into a healthy fun lifestyle. Its approach intuitively mixes online and IRL. Selected influencers share content giving Poppi an authentic place in their daily lives, from ‘get ready with me’ videos, to fridge restocks and food pairings. Every post portrays the brand as part of a wellness or self-care routine, with a vibrant design that’s impossible to miss in digital or bricks & mortar stores.

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The occasion + lifestyle approach is also Poppi’s springboard for innovation. In2025 the brand launched Alpine Blast with caffeine, activated to appeal to gamers and challenge Mountain Dew. Alongside its multichannel distribution strategy the launch looks like a plan to extend into all spaces of its audience’s life – at home and outside, at work and at play, online and off. The current and future brand architecture is built off Poppi’s razor sharp target occasion – always fun, shareable, stylish and healthy refreshment, but for different needs and moments.

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For old JD or new Poppi occasion is an incredible powerful marketing weapon. It’s an efficient way to develop positionings, architectures and innovations that are relevant, meaningful and memorable. And it gives brands the greatest, most irreplaceable role in consumers offline and online lives. To win brands must remember to carefully define their target occasion, build an identity that signals it, and integrate it into all their activations and conversations.

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