In this case, the eating does the talking, with the spots leaving out the consumers’ reactions when they learned they had been duped.
“We skipped the reveal,” Schoenberg said. “This is a creative territory that has been tread before, and we wanted to make sure this work felt fresh.”
Plant curious
Daiya, with a home base in Canada and distribution at 25,000 U.S. retailers, has expanded beyond its flagship cheese line into frozen pizza and “cheezecake,” salad dressings, sauces and boxed “mac and cheeze” in recent years.
With the ads, the brand introduces a new tagline, “100% plant-based even if you’re not,” intending to appeal to more flexitarians and reach beyond the niche vegan and vegetarian demos.
“Daiya wants to be inclusive to everyone,” according to John Kelly, vice president of consumer marketing. “Getting people to eat plant-based is hard because they often think the taste won’t be good, so we wanted to create an ad that would combat that apprehension.”
The agency team sees the tagline as “a long overdue invitation.”
“It seems ridiculous in terms of the category that this is such an original approach,” Schoenberg said, noting that “more non plant-based people should’ve been welcomed into plant-based foods sooner.”
The category has leaned into gourmet positioning, he said, and might seem aloof to some consumers, while certain plant-based segments like meat and dairy “are now part of the culture war.”
“Rather than pour fuel on that fire, we want to welcome as many people in as possible and allow for trial and a potentially partial plant-based diet,” Schoenberg said.
Inflationary swings
Dairy substitutes are a thriving segment of the overall $8 billion plant-based food industry, though products’ higher prices have hurt sales recently as consumers battle inflation at the grocery store.
