Lydia Hoye is the Founder of consumer PR agency Bound to Prosper. With 20 years of experience working with global brands, she now brings her expertise to bold and progressive brands and is on a mission to help the plant-based industry grow and go mainstream.
Three ways the plant-based industry can help people transition how they eat now and in the future
By Lydia Hoye
Future generations are your future stakeholders.
My plant-based daughter only knows the words ‘milk’ and ‘meat’ when referring to the plant-based versions. At seven years she’s growing up with a new set of semantics and a way of understanding what she consumes.
BBC Good Food research has found that one in five, 5–15-year-olds say they are vegan or vegan-curious – this research shows we have a generation defining how we consume in the future. Plant-based brands should be thinking about this fresh audience to help them create their strategies now.
But we’re failing this next-gen plant-based consumer every day – there’s a gaping hole in our school canteens for decent plant-based meals even though there are good meat, milk, and egg alternatives available. Just this week UK newspapers reported ‘Fury at vegan school dinners… children need dairy and meat’, alongside pictures of potatoes, rice, and baked beans. This old information will only propagate if, as an industry, we don’t change perception from the bottom up.
Plant-based brands need to build long-term brand equity and not just short-term sales by understanding what the wider audience needs now and next.
The opportunity to define ‘category norms’ on the supermarket shelf
As a parent providing nutritious meals, I need options that meet my ‘traditional’ recipe repertoire. I want to see a grocery aisle that takes the UK’s top 10 favourite family meals with simple, time-efficient plant-based ingredients that I can replicate with ease.
Recent research has found that almost half of people in the UK crave new meal ideas and 46% have experimented with plant-based diets but stopped due to a shortage of tasty plant-based options (17%).
As an industry, we constantly talk about taste and innovation, but this shouldn’t be detached from actual mealtimes. It’s time to make supermarket shelves less confusing for shoppers to navigate plant-based with more in-store promos and joint awareness campaigns to encourage trial. Plant-based needs to disrupt the mid-week shop with resources like meal plans, grocery lists, and practical support to time-poor shoppers when they are most susceptible.
Let’s be an unapologetically confident category.
There is a lot of misinformation, and the plant-based industry has been on the back foot but it’s time for change.
Plant-based brands tend to lean on three core messages.
- As a direct replacement
- As a more sustainable way to eat
- As better for your health
But tactical messaging will only do so much. What can make the difference for brand success is a defined brand identity, challenging traditional notions of what food should be – brands like Oatly and THIS, do this so well.
The way we instill confidence in the consumer is by being a confident category, creating strong brands that people form an attachment to.
Remember that people often retrofit their reason to buy into something, it’s just about giving them enough confidence to try.
