How We Made Thousands Despair, Then Hope Again

$400,000 to $1,200,000.

That's what marketing agencies quoted when I asked what our IRyS campaign would cost. 20+ person teams, campaign planners, directors, screenwriters, editors, gaffers, so on and so forth. Six month timelines from conception to completion.

Of course, we couldn’t afford it.

We’d set ourselves a high bar with the Takanashi Kiara KFP campaign, and we knew anything else we did would carry high expectations. Everyone was watching to see if we could do it again.

Trouble is... We had no budget to work with to create things with, because soda has really, really low margins when you’re not buying pre-made syrup.

The pressure weighed down on us. What if we couldn't live up to KFP? What if we were really just a one hit wonder, and we’d only be able to deliver a pitiful shadow of what KFP had been to the IRyStocrats?

This is the story of how we turned despair into hope, and how we used the IRyStocrats' own expectations from KFP to bring them through their own journey of Hope and Despair.

See, soda has high margins at restaurants because they just need to buy the syrup that's pre-manufactured from billion dollar, multi-national brands with economies of scale, but for our small batch stuff... it's extremely expensive to make. And also especially to ship! Water is heavy, after all, and soda is mostly water (Shocking, I know).

Hope Soda and Hopium Soda is made in the USA with cane sugar, not HFCS, in a tiny batch, with licensing fees, using roughly double of the highest quality natural flavors than other companies use, and with functional ingredients like L-theanine and L-tyrosine, amino acids that help with anxiety and stress. The fees for just the labor of canning, tracking all the ingredients and proper documentation of CoA, specs, nutritionals, CoCs, chain of custody, and transportation(water is heavy) adds up to more than double the total cost of mass market cans... BEFORE the actual costs of the cans and ingredients themselves!

Economies of scale come in with high volume, when all that documentation, R&D, supplier search, testing, etc, etc all get absorbed within hundreds of thousands of cans, and there's negotiating leverage. All of that manifests as up front costs right now, and there's no guarantee of volume or further runs.

Our best case scenario was to only break even from the soda at the projections we calculated from previous drops.

But hey, the thing about loving vtubers is you do stupid things. You do cringe things. And you do it all because you can, because you want to commit to the bit, and you want to give back to all the good times that you’ve had because of them.

Was it the most financially sound decision? No, probably not. And looking back on it, maybe that’s why this wasn’t something that others had wanted to do. Any way you sliced it, it was going to be really, really hard to make this financially viable. Any dollars spent on marketing or content creation was likely not going to be made back.

The constraint was clear, and the lack of funds tied our hands. For something like Hope Soda, a product that’s been so directly tied into IRyS’ lore, and so beloved by the fans... How could we create content and videos for it that would do it justice?

I think most companies would’ve given up, or just released it with some pretty basic silhouette teasing, followed by some motion graphic announcements. Y’know, the standard kind of stuff-- It works, it’s certainly easier, and it minimizes marketing budget while maximizing potential profit.

But we didn’t want to do that. I spent a lot of time rewatching IRyS’ streams, looking through her twitter, watching the discord, and thinking. We didn’t have the budget to rent cars, do drone footage, or any of the original ideas that came to my head.

But... one late night, scrolling through aimlessly again, staring at the document full of crossed out ideas, Gravity playing in the background, these lines sparked something in my head.

“Do you see the light... or does it feel like abyss?”

Hang on.

What if the draw wasn’t a huge visual spectacle? What if it was something more personal, something based on IRyS duality of Hope and Despair?

My mind began to race, and I jolted up, despite it being 2am. I knew when this kind of energy hit, I was in for a late night. When those ideas hit... you gotta capture them in that moment, no matter what.

I wrote it all in a single night, and submitted it to Cover.

And they approved it, and so our path was set for the campaign of Hope Soda: Inspire real Hope and Despair amongst the fans, and then cap it off at the climax with real "hope" (soda), playing off IRyS's mischievous nature.

When the first episode of our series was released, there was a flurry of excitement and speculation... and most of all, confusion, just as we expected.

After all, the reveals we made in the video didn't point towards any of the usual products that we’re known for making. Guesses ranged from yuzu ramen to bittermelon ramen to knives and all manner of things in between. A few tentative guesses of soda were made, and the hopium began. All according to keikaku (keikaku means plan).

The speculation really kicked up into another gear when I announced that we'd be giving out free sets to the people who found the most references. This created a lot more people looking closely on the videos, which, hey, I worked really hard on 'em and also spent a ton of time finding and integrating the references in...

That being said, the IRyStocrafts found all the references in a STUPIDLY fast amount of time, with exact timestamps and more.

This also worked to our advantage in episode 2, where I did actually hide a Hope Soda can within the wide shot. The tweet I posted on my @timjzheng account was specifically to hint at this:

“okay don't huff on too much hopium now

but there's more clues wrapped up in here

but it's also probably not what you think

also i do have a twin but he's not in these”

Taken by itself, it’s innocent enough... but read deeper into the phrasing, and...

“Don’t huff on too much hopium now” -- This refers to not only the name of the Hopium Soda, but that we were setting up for the Hope Soda Tumbler bait and switch later on, especially for those who DID find the Hope Soda Tumbler sitting in the background.

“But there’s more clues wrapped up in here” -- The Hope Soda Tumbler was literally wrapped up in wires :^)

“But it’s also probably not what you think” -- Not the real Hope Soda SKU, but the Hope Soda Tumbler

“Also I do have a twin but he’s not in theres” -- I’m a twin in real life! I have a twin named Tom who co-founded Vite, but has since left for health reasons. But, obviously, this also refers to the fact that the Hope Soda Tumbler has a “twin” that’s just not in the video :^)

Funnily enough, everyone was so focused on the lines themselves that they forgot to look closely at the video itself. The Hope Soda tumbler in the background wasn’t found until later.

It was a bit slower than expected after that was found, but things started ramping up quick with the 3rd video, and we cackled with glee as the discord and twitter exploded with conspiracy theories. The final revelation of soda was what nailed it, and with the clues we’d set out of Yuzu Lemon Melon, people were creating all kinds of theories as to what it’d actually be, what the references indicated, and the Hope Soda Tumbler was spotted in the background quickly this time, further fueling the discourse.

Hope was riding at an all time high, with people confidently knowing it’d be soda... but was Hope Soda, then, Yuzu Lemon Melon flavored for some reason? Surely not... it was a cherry soda, right?

...right? Even the blurry screenshot of the Hope Soda tumbler in the background showed a cherry...

Then, the final video dropped... where we revealed Hopium Soda and the Hope Soda Tumbler.

HOPE SODA WASN’T REAL.

The despair began to sink in. People were optimistically happy about things, in general, but we knew there was despair and disappointment across the audience, when the bait and switch happened and they found out it was the Hope Soda Tumbler, not the “real” Hope Soda.

I helped pushed this narrative by correcting people with very specific words, like:

“Legal would like us to clarify this is not the  Hope Soda SKU this is Hopium a completely different SKU and that's a steel tumbler not a can of soda!!!

Sorry to get your hopes up”

Which is technically true :^)

People were excited, and also in some amounts of despair... and then came the final part. This one was harder, as we had to go live, and hit everything at just the right moment, so that people were able to see IRyS’ video before they went to our website. We prepared everything, hands hovering over the button...

Just one problem.

We were launching during OffKai opening. The thing was, if we put up our things early, then the surprise would be ruined, and we KNEW someone would take pictures and spread it across the internet... and so, we held on to some of the things we had, not putting them up, waiting, waiting....

And then the time came, and all of our content and website and socials and everything went out in a flurry, and we scrambled to finish up our booth with all the Hope Soda related items, and finally, it was out there--

And the response was brilliant, hilarious, and everything we’d hoped it would be.

People watched the 3 attempts and 3 descensions of the cans, watched Carl fall, and watched the fan fall onto him, symbolizing the last of the “fan service” we would be doing, and watched the Hopium turn into the real Hope Soda in IRyS hands, and it was fantastic to watch and so much fun to see the comments and everyone talk about it even while scrambling to greet people and talk to them at OffKai and check comments and answer things where we could and the whirlwind of a weekend that happens when you try to do a gigantic launch alongside the biggest Vtuber convention of the year.

We probably broke even on the soda.

At least, that's what we thought.

But what we did succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. IRyS went trending, according to the Discord, especially when Jean Wanwan’s video we filmed with her also went live, boosting the interest and keeping the algorithmic momentum. The emotional roller coaster we orchestrated became the thing everyone was talking about, and we watched as the numbers rose...

And it looks like we're gonna do a bit better than break even.

Thanks to you.

There’s something that those marketing agencies with their million-dollar budgets and sentiment analysts will never understand. If you do something for profit, people, especially vtuber fans, can sniff it out from a mile away. On the other hand, when you have an idiot CEO who doesn’t want the title doing stupid, fun things, because he, too, is one of the fans wanting to give back... Well.

Everything we did goes against traditional marketing and sales. We didn’t push on the product features, didn’t press endlessly on the benefits and how we were better than competitors. We used a small budget... but it turns out that despite not maximizing for profit, we managed to do alright after all. We did it all because IRyS trusted a ramen company to make her soda. We did it because the community deserved something real, and as much care and detail put into this as it deserved.

I guess at the end of the day, we, too, were surviving on Hopium, and the Hope that what we did would be good enough to make the business ends meet, despite stupidly not optimizing for it.

But Hope does come in many forms, doesn’t it?

And what are we going to do with the extra, unexpected profits?

Well. This was Part 1: Hope, wasn’t it?

:^)

You’d best believe we’re putting it all into the next part too.

Meanwhile, go buy some Hope and Hopium yourself, support what we do, and help fund what’s coming up next!

-Tim, CEO/Founder Vite