The fact that plant-based dairy and meat substitutes are adopting the terminology and imagery of animal products is necessary to increase penetration. In time, new categories will emerge with their own codes. “They must not ruin it now.”
The imitation phase
A particularly far-reaching proposal that sought to ban producers of plant-based dairy alternatives from comparing their products to “real” dairy products was withdrawn by the European Parliament last week, much to the relief of the plant-based sector. “This ruling boosts the self-confidence of the sector”, says Olaf van Gerwen of Chuck Studios, a company that designs ‘culinary identities’ for food brands. He believes it is only logical that plant-based dairy alternatives refer to the terminology and imagery of the dairy sector: it has everything to do with the idea that they functionally replace those dairy products.
“It is vital: to gain market penetration, you have to make it clear what you are. You see a similar trend in the world of meat substitutes. Those brands rely on the branding techniques of the meat world to tell what they are not. It is woven even into the brand names: The Vegetarian Butcher, LikeMeat, Impossible Meat, Karma Kebab, etc. They are still in the phase of imitation, but in time, the winners will be those brands that truly know how to create something new. The time will come when an authentic new product will emerge, with a new visual language as a part of it. At that point, you will not hear the meat lobby whining any more, because they will not have a right to speak. At that stage, it becomes really new and fun.”
New partnerships
The defensive attitude of the dairy lobby is understandable, but pointless, van Gerwen thinks. Social developments cannot be stopped, he says: “This was a last resort for the big dairy companies. Fear is a bad adviser. If you are afraid of your competitor stealing your market share, you have to roll up your sleeves and do better. A clever dairy or meat farmer does not bury his head in the sand, but embraces the trends and goes along with them. There are currently plenty of new partnerships emerging: in the Netherlands, Beyond Meat is building a factory in collaboration with meat company Zandbergen. Danone has already taken over Belgian Alpro, and Unilever and Nestlé are also investing heavily in plant-based products. These are companies with impact.
The tables are starting to turn, our interlocutor noticed. “I am a meat lover myself, but I am beginning to resent it. It is starting to get a negative connotation. Look at the meat on offer in the supermarket: it is not good for anyone across the entire chain. Not for the animal, not for the farmer who earns nothing from it, not for the planet, and not for those who eat it either. There is no longer any excuse for eating meat and dairy every day. There is no longer a need to do so.”
Controversial marketing
He refers to the many start-ups working with cultured meat. “Mosa Meat expects to introduce the first hamburgers made out of meat from bioreactors to the market next year. They will still cost a multi-fold of ‘regular’ beef burgers, but it is a good start.” Meat is becoming a luxury product. However, producers of lab-grown meat will have to think hard about how they market their products. “I hope that there will be industry-wide consultation on this, because a name like ‘cultured meat’ just does not appeal to me. Let the whole industry come up with a good category name for cultured meat, so they get it right the first time around. They must not ruin it, as this has already happened a few times in the history of marketing. Take alcohol-free beer, for example. Only now is it starting to turn good again.”
In terms of functionality, all these new products are substitutes for dairy or meat, but emotionally it has yet to come to life. That is starting to happen now. “A company like LiveKindly Collective wants to become the Unilever of vegan products. They have former Unilever employees who understand marketing like the back of their hand. They know what a brand adds to a product. Another great example is Abbot Kinney’s who have delicious products. They named their plant-based yogurt Yog for short: they are not allowed to use the name yogurt, so they invent a new name. A spectacular brand is Oatly: they have a kind of anti-marketing that works well. As a rebel in the market, they use far fewer dairy codes: no white wave in a glass on the packaging, but they have a graphic design in black and white. Nice, controversial marketing that suits their disruptive character.”
Culinary identity
Olaf van Gerwen helps food brands build a distinctive identity using a unique visual language. After all, the issue with many food products is they look very similar as soon as they come out of the packaging. So how do you make the story behind the brand visible? That is the speciality of Chuck Studios, a photo and video production company that now has offices in Amsterdam, London, Moscow and Los Angeles.
“There are exceptions to the rule, of course, think of biscuits or chocolate: the brand is often not only on the packaging but also on the product itself. But beer looks like beer, and milk looks like milk. We have learned to not merely make food look fantastic but to find a way to code the image so it always looks like the brand in question. That’s how we became specialised in designing ‘culinary identities’ for food brands so that they use the same visual language consistently across all touch points at all times. How to distinguish one pasta sauce from another without having to see the brand, that is the challenge for us.” A challenge that promises to become even more exciting as new generations of plant-based products will appear on the shelves.
