A campaign from Erich and Kallman plugs plant-based meat by playing into summer occasions such as grilling and hot dog eating contests.
Impossible Foods’ first campaign since its rebrand earlier this year is a new plea to animal meat eaters to consider plant-based versions. The campaign—which comes as grilling season heats up—features a backyard barbeque, hot dog eating contest and a burger joint to push the notion that “plants can be meat.”
“People know that they should eat less meat but they want that emotional reaction,” said Leslie Sims, Impossible Foods’ chief marketing officer. “We are not a meat replacement, we’re meat too, just made from plants and we like to challenge that convention.”
The ads are narrated from the perspective of a male meat eater, who presents a call to action for meat eaters to eat more burgers, hot dogs and meatballs, just made from plants.
The brand earlier this year changed its packaging from teal green to red as a way to blend into the meat aisle and associate the brand with red meatiness.
The creative
The spots, from Erich and Kallman, have an Americana feel, with one scene showing a family-style meal of a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. The campaign also has several 15-second spots that feature different Impossible products, including chicken nuggets, burgers, hot dogs and sausage patties.
“Meat lovers don’t have to be meat quitters,” Eric Kallman, co-founder and chief creative officer at Erich and Kallman, said in a statement. To showcase the products’ similar attributes “we presented Impossible meat being devoured in the same ways—with the same enjoyment—as traditional meat, challenging preconceived notions of what makes meat ‘meat’ and giving them a reason to try it themselves.”
The insight
The campaign’s tone is built on messaging lessons learned from Impossible Foods’ last campaign, “Making Meat History,” a 90-second musical spot about the history of meat from Terry Crews’ agency Super Serious that ran during last year’s Tony Awards. Part of that campaign featured side-by-side comparisons of a real burger and an Impossible one.
The comparison ads resonated more with meat eaters, and the brand realized it could do more to highlight the similarities between traditional and plant-based meat.
“We took everything from last year and did rigorous message testing, and our takeaway was that meat-eaters, in a consistent way, knew we were talking to them, and that we could lean on that message more,” said Sims. “For this latest campaign, we wanted to have a clear value proposition for them—you love meat, so why not try us and be better for the planet?”
In the lead ad, the environmental message is very understated, with the lead male character merely acknowledging that “meat has problems.” The health messaging is more apparent—he urges people to “punch cholesterol in the face.”
“The tone is supposed to have a light tongue-in-cheek humor,” Sims said. “We are talking to hard-core meat eaters, but we don’t want to be preachy.”
Media strategy
The campaign will run on linear and streaming TV, digital, social media and billboards in New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Media buys for the campaign were handled by Horizon Media.
The campaign will debut during E!’s Met Gala red carpet show tonight—the Gala over-indexes with Impossible customers, according to the brand.
“We will run ads during the red carpet and will have a presence on the ground at the Mark Hotel,” said Sims. “The Met theme this year is the ‘garden of time,’ so we will have the ‘garden of meat.’”
The brand will serve Impossible sliders with brie and truffle aioli, and passion fruit barbecue Impossible chicken nuggets.
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