Advertising for plant-based foods brings humor into a weighty category

There is one last cheeky message at the end of the video: “Plonts – it won’t save the planet, but it probably won’t hurt it either.”

Down to the clown

According to Tavel, it wouldn’t have worked for Plonts to follow the plant-based advertising model, which often relies on rural imagery. The Silicon Valley-based brand is made from soybeans and microbes through a fermentation process, so “all those images of fields and farmers don’t reflect the company.”

And as for the Plonts crew, they limited themselves to clowning, said Tavel, since the target audience consists of young, urban people, early adopters, flexitarians, die-hard foodies and other trendsetters.

“The biggest risk for a new brand is that no one cares,” says Plonts co-founder Josh Moser. “So many sustainable food brands talk so earnestly about the very real problems they’re working to solve, and we felt like people were starting to get tired of that.”

Plonts intends to “say serious things by saying non-serious things,” Moser added. “That led us to create a kind of anti-advertisement that parodies typical mission-driven branding and the pressure it puts on consumers.”

Selling sustainability

As a young company, Plonts is entering a market segment that is already crowded and is becoming even more crowded with a mix of newcomers and established players such as Follow Your Heart, Violife, Babybel, Miyoko’s, Climax Foods and Perfect Day, to name a few.

It won’t be easy to stand out from the crowd, but taking the comedy route is “a smart move given the harsh tone and politicization of the climate in this year’s U.S. presidential campaign,” Jennifer Stojkovic, founder of the influential Vegan Women Summit, told ADWEEK.

In the broader plant-based space, brands like Beyond Meat have built campaigns around the theme of “from plate to planet,” with mixed to poor results. Although consumers consider environmental protection a priority, they generally do not base their purchasing decisions on it, especially given inflation and the fact that plant-based foods tend to cost more than their animal-based counterparts.

Taste remains a key purchasing motive, and established brands like Impossible Foods, Daiya, and others tailor their marketing messages accordingly (and sometimes target humor as well).

“It remains to be seen whether the sustainability approach will resonate in the U.S., as much of the success of these messages from brands like Oatly to date has been in the European market,” Stojkovic said.