Name: Allison Ellsworth Breaks Down Her 80/20 Rule For a Successful Marketing Campaign
Uploaded: 2026-05-15T15:50:00Z
Duration: 5 min 23 s
Description: Being a good leader. Having a successful marketing campaign. Selling a company. These are hallmarks of the business world—but are they driven more by luck or skill? Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of Poppi, breaks it all down with Gunjan Banerji for The WSJ Money Interview.

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Being a good leader. Having a successful marketing campaign. Selling a company. These are hallmarks of the business world—but are they driven more by luck or skill? Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of Poppi, breaks it all down with Gunjan Banerji for The WSJ Money Interview. Photo: David Wells

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Being a good leader. Having a successful marketing campaign. Selling a company. These are hallmarks of the business world—but are they driven more by luck or skill? Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of Poppi, breaks it all down with Gunjan Banerji for The WSJ Money Interview.

Allison Ellsworth Breaks Down Her 80/20 Rule For a Successful Marketing Campaign

We are going to finish with a really quick game of luck versus skill. You're going to pick a card and then tell me whether that topic is more driven by luck or skill.

Oh goodness! Okay, let's do it. Being an influencer. I think it is a skill, and let me tell you why. To get online and be strategic, to build an audience that people are authentically connected with, you have to be willing to be open, try new things, build a content plan. So you have to have a lot of skill. Maybe a little luck, but since we can't do both, absolutely, skill.

Do businesses in 2026 need to invest in influencers to be successful?

Absolutely. Not only invest in influencers and work with creators and influencers, but also be a founder-led company, like I did at Poppy. If you are not online and talking about your product, your competitor is. Okay. A successful marketing campaign. Okay, so I don't think anything is lucky when it comes to these things. So this is skill, and this is how you have a successful marketing campaign. You should look at cultural moments in society. You know Coachella's gonna be big. You know the Grammys, Met Gala. You know that there's gonna be some kind of Halloween moment. You know there's gonna be some holiday moment. You look at these cultural moment tentpoles, build your marketing campaigns around that. Another thing is, we did an 80/20 rule at Poppy. So 80% of the plan was in place, and then we allowed 20% for cultural moments. If the Kardashians wanna call and do, or Poppy was at their Christmas party, if you have 100% of your marketing budget allocated, it doesn't leave room for you to jump on those cultural moments. So 80/20 cultural tentpoles usually can be pretty. Okay.

Did you at any point take your marketing too far? 'Cause you guys did get into some legal trouble about overstating your health claims?

You know, I think when I first started the company, I started it for my personal health journey, and I was so authentic and real in telling my story. And when you first start out in a company, you don't know what you can and can't say. And so we said stuff at the beginning talking about gut health and better for you, that at the end of the day, I was just telling my story. We did switch about year one, but it doesn't take away the fact of what we said, and we learned from it. So we did end up having a class-action lawsuit.

What did you learn from that?

You know, I think I learned in my next business, don't make claims. Like you really shouldn't. You should be truthful to your consumer in the way of speak to the product. Get a good attorney to look at your labels. Professionalize it, right? It can't just be like, "I started this in my kitchen." But unfortunately, most brands start there. I remember our buyer from Kroger, when we got sued, emailed me and she said, "Congratulations, you've made it." At some point, if you're a business, you're gonna get sued. And it's kind of the cost of doing business. Okay. Being a leader. Ooh! I mean, gosh, I'm saying everything is skill. I had to learn to be a good leader. During Poppy, we did like a 360 review, and I actually asked everyone like, how they thought I led. And what I learned through that process is I was very blunt. It discouraged other people from speaking up and being creative, which is the last thing I wanna do, because I think my superpower is making anyone feel like they can do anything. And so through that process, I learned that that was something I had to be aware of, which then in turn made me a better leader. I wish one of these could be luck. Okay. Oh, successful exit. This is so hard, 'cause I think it's luck and skill, but I think luck looks a lot like hard work and skill. I think that Poppy is very rare, and when it comes to a successful exit, people see what we did, and they aspire to live the American dream that we lived. It is very rare for what happened to us to happen again or to other people, but it can happen. And with that, I do think there's a lot of moments along the way that took us to that journey. But it was all through we professionalized our business.

So you held around 12% of the company when it was sold, correct?

No, it's a little bit more than that. I know that some of the stuff went around, and it's one of those things that I don't quite say, 'cause I don't want people to come at us. But I know people, like I think with Rohan, they're like, "At exit, everyone was diluted along the way." We were more than 12%. But I think...

Can you give us a ballpark?

You know, it's more than 12, less than 25.

I was gonna ask if you regretted selling along the way, and you wish you had held on to more of the company.

I don't regret it for a second. I think that founders that hold onto equity, and it goes back to why I gave every employee a Poppy equity. I mean, look at where I am. I have so much success and so much to be grateful for.