Talking Tofurky: Plant-Based Food Marketers Imagine Their ‘Got Milk?’

A movement is afoot among players in the plant-based food space to form a coalition to boost sales and combat stepped-up attacks from Big Agriculture, with an ultimate moonshot being the category’s version of iconic ad series like “Got Milk?” and “Beef, It’s What’s for Dinner.”

But what, exactly, would such a campaign look like? 

Though executives don’t expect the group to formally launch until 2024—with time then needed to enlist creatives and produce work—some are already considering what kind of message the industry should collectively send to the American consumer.

Opinions at this early stage are nearly as plentiful as the brands in the jam-packed space, perhaps underlining how challenging it may be to get consensus from the CEOs, founders and marketing teams who would eventually participate.

Battling Big Ag

Maybe no issue is more pressing than this: Should the industry, now suffering from public perception problems and slumping sales in faux meat, go bold and directly counterattack Big Beef and Big Dairy?

To that end, one exec envisioned a remake of the famous “Truth” anti-smoking campaign that could dig into factory farming, slaughterhouse conditions and other admittedly dark behind-the-scenes food safety issues. 

It’s yet to be determined if others would support an approach that aggressive, with most execs leaning into education-based efforts that would aim to dispel myths about plant-based eating and convince more flexitarians to give it a try.

Senior leaders and industry watchers readily ticked off a “what not to do” list that included making consumers feel guilty for not eating veggies and demonizing cows for their environmental footprint. Continuing to promote their Silicon Valley companies as food tech? That’s another non-starter because, as an exec said, “Nobody wants to eat technology.”

Read on for a sampling of insight and advice.

Get back to nature

Jenny Stojkovic, founder of the influential Vegan Women Summit and general partner at VC firm Joyful Ventures, thinks Beyond Meat may be on the right track with its recent bucolic campaign, “There’s Goodness Here,” set at a North Dakota faba bean farm: “From the consumer point of view, farmers are a trusted group,” she said. “Go for an agriculture theme.”

Whatever the positioning, it can’t be communicated in “one big shot,” she said. Rather it needs to be a “multichannel campaign with a heavy creator strategy, knowing that 50% of Americans use social influencers as their main food and nutrition source.”

Shed the tech-bro image

Andrea Learned, climate influencer, podcaster and corporate consultant, said the campaign should be created by and targeted at moms and other gatekeepers. “The existing brands feel tech bro-y and masculine. They’re not speaking effectively to women. Hire a really smart female-led ad agency that understands this space, and they’ll crush it.”

Give us inspo

Pete Speranza, a 23-year veteran of General Mills who’s now CEO at Wicked Kitchen: “The message should be inspirational and talk about how plants have been a solution forever. Maybe there’s a tie to regenerative agriculture. But the point would be to counter the misperception that you can only get protein from animals and to show people how to get plants in their diet in every daypart.”

Don’t preach to the choir

Ross Mackay, Daring Foods CEO, stressed an inclusive approach: “The narrative shouldn’t insist on adopting a stringent vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. Instead, it should underscore the significant impact that small, everyday changes can help. At Daring, we’ve never advocated for forcing carnivores into veganism. Instead, we believe in small swaps that drive forward collective benefits.”

Keep it light

John Bonnell, co-founder of Wholly Veggie, wonders if a self-serious tenor is the best plan, considering next year’s presidential race and the media onslaught that will surround it. “We don’t want to be pedantic or talk down to people, especially coming into an election cycle when they’ll be hit over the head” with constant political rhetoric. “It should be fun and lighthearted—humor is something people can get behind.”

Avoid the culture wars

Jonathan Schoenberg, executive creative director at TDA Boulder, the agency behind non-dairy brand Daiya’s homage to film noir and other unconventional ads, said there’s an obvious temptation to talk about climate change. The message might cut through—drawing connections between the plate and the planet—after a summer of unprecedented natural disasters.

“But that can be perceived as an elitist argument,” Schoenberg said, “and nobody wants to get dragged further into the culture wars.”

Actually, maybe don’t

Rachel Konrad, former head of communications at Impossible Foods and now chief brand officer at VC firm The Production Board, isn’t convinced that a coalition or a mainstream ad campaign would be effective for brands in the space, most with low household penetration and premium prices.

Instead, companies should get hyper-proactive and laser focus on earned media, she said, “speaking out whenever there’s an attack ad from animal agriculture and refuting everything, commenting all the time for news stories, putting out massive amounts of thought leadership, being at the U.N., at Davos, Ted Talks, creating viral videos and contests for fans, picking up user-generated content, using AI to generate ads for virtually nothing.”

A well-trod path like a professional consortium is a legacy move, not one that will serve the nascent plant-based industry, she said. “Following the incumbent industry’s playbook is a mistake because the game is rigged against you. It will not work.”