How Impossible Foods Adapted in Weeks to a Food Industry in Freefall

In this week’s episode of On Brand, we speak with Jessie Becker, SVP of marketing at Impossible Foods. It's been a wild ride for the food industry during the pandemic, and Jessie tells us how the plant-based meat company threw out its "beautifully designed" marketing plans for 2020 and started over—vastly accelerating its move into retail, working with restaurants on curbside pickup, and even starting a whole new direct-to-consumer shipping channel in just eight weeks. She also tells us how the brand prioritizes its selling points—taste, health and nutrition, and the fight against climate change—and when we can expect its first big consumer ad campaign.

Timestamps:

• 1:10 - How Jessie and her team have managed working from home.
• 3:26 - How Impossible had to pivot during Covid—accelerating its move into retail, working with restaurants on curbside pickup, and creating a direct-to-consumer channel in just eight weeks.
• 7:11 - How the brand balances messaging to businesses with messaging to consumers, and how important partnerships (White Castle, Burger King, Starbucks, etc.) have been to its growth.
• 10:11 - How Impossible is trying to replicate product sampling virutally, and whether it will do more consumer advertising soon.
• 13:38 - How the company balances product marketing with purpose-based marketing around climate, and how comfortable it is attacking the meat industry.
• 17:13 - How Impossible's content strategy is evolving, and why the brand currently does most creative work in-house.
• 19:10 - What it's like being the top marketer at a company that's growing so quickly, and what Jessie learned from her time at Netflix and Google.
• 25:01 - What Jessie is hopeful for, personally and professionally, as we proceed through Covid.

New episodes of On Brand roll out every Thursday at 4 p.m. EDT. Each week, Clio president Nicole Purcell and I chat with top brand marketers—most of whom are still working from home—about the value and effectiveness of creativity, what they want from their agency and solution partners, how they're shepherding their brands through Covid and beyond, and more.

See all the episodes here.

If you're a brand marketer who'd like to take part in the series, please get in touch.