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17 Unignorable, Winning Marketing Campaigns by Vegan Companies
30th May, 2024
Though veganism has been around since 1944, it has really picked up only in the last few years. What has caused this acceleration? Rapid growth in awareness, amped up activism, growing health concerns to name a few.
Vegan brands too have played a crucial role in increasing awareness through their memorable and witty marketing campaigns, especially those in the Food and Beverage (F&B) space.
As someone who has spent her entire career in marketing and strategy, I find each vegan marketing example given here to be a veritable masterclass in vegan product marketing. So if you own a vegan brand or aspire to, you won’t want to miss this deep dive.
17 unignorable, winning marketing campaigns by 5 vegan companies
Unsurprisingly, all the examples of great, memorable marketing campaigns have come from vegan F&B brands. Getting someone to change or modify their eating habits is far more difficult and nuanced as compared to changing their preference for fashion accessories or personal care products. Even cultural and religious influences come into play when it comes to food transition.
Hence, plant-based food and beverage brands have had to break category codes wherever and however possible. The 5 vegan brands studied here have done this far better than the others through widely different creative approaches and experiments.
The learnings from these vegan food marketing campaigns can apply even for vegan personal care or fashion or accessories. At the end of the day, every vegan brand has the same 3 underlying purposes i.e. sustainability, animals, and health.
Distinguishing factors of and key learnings from winning vegan marketing campaigns
Each campaign from a brand has stayed true to the brand purpose consistently, be that sustainability or saving animals or health improvement.
1. Copy is king. Each of these creatives had outstanding, powerful copy to convey the message in an unforgettable manner.
- Each had a distinctive tone of voice, used persistently across every communication touchpoint, thus building the brand’s own personality.
- Most used some form of humour and sass to draw attention, to hold that attention and often to provoke a reaction.
2. Visuals are queen. Most of these campaigns had extremely eye-catching visual elements like bold and consistent colour, attention grabbing font and images. These helped brand recognition and recall, especially at the point of purchase.
3. Most of the winning and unignorable vegan marketing campaigns have used traditional mass media, above-the-line (ATL) media to build brand awareness and recognition amongst the masses/ mainstream consumers.
4. They are quick to take action within moments. Many of these campaigns work because they were riding the trend. Moment marketing at its best. This can happen only if your marketing team and processes are set up to allow for quick creative decisions and execution.
That seems to have given them a much-needed boost in appeal because only if you and I both have been exposed to the same ad in say, the same newspaper, are we likely to discuss or talk about it. Does or can anyone discuss a digital ad they alone were targeted with? No, right?
Without further ado, let’s dive in and check out unignorable vegan marketing campaigns. They pack quite a bit of inspiration and takeaways.
1. Oatly
When we think of vegan marketing examples, the first name that invariably comes up is that of iconic oat milk brand, Oatly. The brand is a powerhouse of witty and creative marketing and advertising campaigns. An interesting bit of trivia: They do most of their creatives in-house and their in-house creative team is called Oatly Department of Mind Control. Cool, huh?
This unusual department name itself should give you an idea of how purposefully unpredictable their marketing campaigns might be. As someone once said, “You can spot Oatly’s brand voice a mile off.” It is playful in general yet hard hitting when it comes to sustainability.
That’s why it is very difficult to pick only 1 example from Oatly because, frankly, every piece of communication is worth studying. It is “consistently inconsistent” and “provocative”. Provocative in terms of being rebellious, trying to create friction by speaking transparently and like a human, not like a brand.
They heavily use offline media like outdoor ads, print ads, packaging design to show their wit and convey their message. Most of their marketing campaigns are backed by a dedicated campaign microsite to keep the conversation going.
Some unignorable, winning Oatly marketing examples:
‘Wow no cow’
Though this TV commercial is banned in Sweden because of a lawsuit filed by Swedish dairy lobby, Oatly ran this extremely silly and no frills ad in the US during Super Bowl 2021.
They knew the ad would get dissected and discussed, equally loved and hated by vegans and non-vegans. In anticipation of that, they even offered t-shirts for sale on their website that said ‘I totally hated that Oatly commercial’. The t-shirts sold out!
The Climate Footprint Challenge
Oatly recently launched a print and OOH campaign to talk about their lifecycle Product Climate Footprint (PCF) that is now printed on their product packaging. But that’s not why the campaign has gone viral. It went viral because they are challenging the dairy industry to display their PCF too on equal amounts of ad space donated by Oatly. They even put up a registration form for interested dairy brands on their website, with a proper legal contract to boot.
Free newsletter called Spam
This is probably one of the rare big offline campaigns launched specifically to promote a free newsletter. They went all out with this campaign, as they do with most of their OOH. They totally plastered the city where the campaign was launched.
Fckoatly and fckfckoatly and fckfckfckoatly
Some would call this a PR masterstroke, some would call it unnecessarily irreverent. But no one can ignore this site launched by Oatly to consolidate in one place every bit of criticism lobbied against them….and their answer to each of those.
It is meant to help those who hate the brand. And then, because they are Oatly and they have to be cheeky, they created two other sites for those who hated the first/ second site! Though this wasn’t a paid campaign, this is a brilliant example of an organic pull marketing campaign.
Other regular, random but always on-point OOH
2. La Vie
This French plant-based pork brand believes that to fight against Big Meat, it needs to be bold and fearless. Their communication is focused on entertainment through sarcasm, wit and self-deprecating humour, especially related to their French heritage.
Their marketing campaigns aim to provoke a reaction out of the viewer.
Most of their campaigns that have gone viral have been OOH takeovers, be it in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. Here are some examples of their viral vegan marketing campaigns.
The Gathering
This controversial campaign smartly targeted not only vegans and vegetarians but also specific religious niches within the otherwise huge meat-eating audience. Though it received pushback from different quarters, the ad did its job of getting the brand noticed and considered relatable by distinct target segments.
Pre-launch campaign
The UK loves bacon. La Vie believes its plant-based bacon tastes the same as animal-based bacon. In order to gain an easier entry into the UK market, the brand activated UK citizens through this campaign. La Vie ran this pre-launch campaign through print and OOH. Most of them went viral on social media and got appreciated for its quirky and self-deprecating humour.
And the pre-launch campaign worked!
Haarlem, Netherlands campaign
Right after Haarlem in the Netherlands announced a ban on meat ads for environmental reasons (the first city in the world to do so), La Vie did the best moment marketing through its OOH campaign.
3. Just Eggs
One of the world’s largest vegan egg brands, Just Egg uses “insightful humour and irreverent swagger” in order to convince people that plant-based food is healthier for them. Their marketing focuses mainly on the personal health and taste benefits of plant-based eggs.
Like La Vie, the use of a bold, solid colour in all communication is also one of the reasons their marketing campaigns are easily recognizable.
Really good eggs
This big campaign was led by celebrities Jake Gyllenhal and Serena Williams and uses their trademark humour to drive home the taste aspect of their plant-based protein i.e. eggs. Their aim is to “make everyone feel that no matter where they are on their dietary journey, if they like really good eggs, they’re with us.” This TV ad also had an OOH leg, curbside advertising, in-store communication, etc.
Plants don’t get the flu
Just Eggs does a lot of moment marketing campaigns. At the start of 2023, avian flu was killing millions of chickens across the US and the world resulting in egg shortages and price hikes. Just Eggs seized the moment to release print ads and billboards reiterating that their plant-based eggs don’t have stock shortages or price hikes because plants don’t get the flu.
Valentine’s Day- “Plant-based lovers do it better”
In another moment or occasion based marketing campaign, Just Egg ran a provocative and cheeky Valentine’s Day, 2021 campaign. The campaign included an iconic billboard, separate campaign microsite, print ads and also a unique tie-up with Arlo Hotels. Though the ad got pushback from the meat industry over its health claims, that didn’t stop it from gaining popularity online.
Calling out climate inaction by the Congress
Last example of good moment marketing by Just Eggs is around Earth Day 2022. The brand launched a guerrilla marketing campaign promoting Just Egg meals with dishes named after relevant Congressmen who were not acting on climate change. E.g. “Ted Cruz’s Cancun Vacation” and “Rick Scott’s Special Interest Sammy,”
The campaign used OOH, social media, dedicated page on their website called #EggingCongress (to help people send messages to the Congress) and experiential marketing through food trucks in Washington DC.
4. Meatless Farm
Though Meatless Farm is now bankrupt and sold, there are learnings to be had from one of its breakthrough marketing campaigns that helped it reach its peak in 2021.
M*** F*** Campaign
The M*** F*** campaign did that for Meatless Farm. It went viral on social media when launched in 2020 and still regularly makes the list of best vegan marketing campaigns. It was bold, unusual for the category and oh so witty. It managed to do the difficult task of getting some reaction out of the audience. Some laughed, some got shocked, some got angry. Either way, it got noticed and spoken about.
The other reason it worked so well was the contrary depiction of a senior person saying “censored” words. The campaign was so successful that the tag line M*** F*** was incorporated into their packaging as well.
5. allplants
This UK based vegan, chef-made, ready-to-eat meal brand is doing a fabulous job when it comes to marketing. Compared to other vegan brands, they are not trying to get everyone to turn 100% vegan 100% of the time. They are “non-judgemental” and pragmatic. They believe that “We don’t need a handful of people being perfectly sustainable. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”Keeping true to this welcoming and encouraging attitude, the brand has been doing a lot of campaigns in OOH, social media, TV and blogs.
Try going Vegan…ish
The concept made it very easy for someone to try eating healthy and more plant-based without the guilt of not being able to eat that way all the time. The striking headline and the way it is incorporated visually would definitely make any passer-by pause.
Veganuary activation
To motivate waning willpower in the middle of Veganuary 2022, allplants did a giveaway activation. People could pluck coupons for free allplant meals and in case of dire need of motivation to continue eating vegan, they could smash the box containing exclusive, limited vouchers for free one year subscription to allplants.
Conclusion
That was vegan marketing inspiration galore, right? We hope this extensive global benchmarking gives you enough ideas to creatively grow your vegan brand awareness, recognition and business. That could then contribute towards achieving your overarching mission i.e. to convince as many people as possible to take at least one step, big or small towards sustainability, animal rights and better human health.
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