Bazooka Brands is running a creator-driven sales competition through August, recruiting two MomTok personalities to front rival candy lineups and drive measurable shelf velocity at retail — including convenience — on four of its flagship impulse items.
Jessi Draper leads Team Ring Pop and Push Pop; Mayci Neeley fronts Team Juicy Drop and Baby Bottle Pop. The brand will track sales lifts across the month and donate to both creators' chosen charities regardless of outcome, though the team posting the larger gain claims bragging rights.
The Activation Map
The campaign launched with three New York City activations — Times Square sampling beneath branded billboards, a Push Pop subway stunt featuring the brand's Pushy mascot, and a Baby Bottle Pop "nightlife service" in Union Square Park. A Salt Lake City leg follows later in August, culminating in a pop-up loaded with candy, merchandise, and DJs. Both creators will also appear in select retail stores as part of the in-store campaigning push.
The format is deliberately built as a rolling content series rather than a static ad flight, with behind-the-scenes footage and fan-facing social posts dropping throughout the month across the brands' Instagram channels. Dave Dreyer, Chief Marketing Officer of Bazooka Brands, framed the approach as one that puts the company's legacy SKUs back inside current cultural conversations. "Programs like the Great Candy Battle help put our iconic brands back at the center of culture where they belong," Dreyer said.
Why It Matters at the C-Store Counter
For convenience operators, the Bazooka portfolio — Ring Pop, Push Pop, Juicy Drop, Baby Bottle Pop — sits squarely in the high-margin impulse candy segment at the front end and checkout. Candy is a consistent top-five inside-sales category for convenience retailers, driven heavily by single-serve, grab-and-go formats that match the formats Bazooka competes in. Creator-fueled campaigns that generate social awareness around specific SKUs can pull casual shoppers into more deliberate purchase decisions on the forecourt side of the store, particularly when the audience skews toward parents with children — the core MomTok demographic.
The broader trend lines support the bet. Influencer-linked product campaigns have demonstrated measurable sell-through bumps in the confectionery and snack category at mass and convenience channels, as brands look for alternatives to traditional trade spend. Structuring the competition around tracked sales data — rather than impressions or engagement metrics alone — gives Bazooka a direct read on whether the creator investment translates to register movement, a metric that matters to category managers reviewing planogram performance.
The campaign runs through August 31.
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.
