Gardein

We helped Gardein stop preaching and start wooing—winning hearts (and grocery carts) with a campaign that made trying meatless feel like falling in love.

Gardein: The Great Meat Escape

Client Category
Food & Beverage · CPG · Plant-Based & Better-For-You

Services Provided
Brand Strategy · Packaging Design · Campaign Creative · Digital Content · Social Media · Media Strategy · Retail Activation

Business Challenge

Gardein had a classic innovator’s problem: adored by vegans, ignored by the mainstream.
The brand lived in a passionate niche — the “vegan ghetto” — a space too small to scale, too stigmatized to cross over, and too identity-laden for everyday shoppers.

Plant-based was booming in specialty stores, but in the average grocery aisle, meat still controlled the throne. And consumers who wanted to reduce meat weren’t willing to join a lifestyle movement to do it.

To become a true category leader, Gardein didn’t need more vegan cred.
It needed cultural permission.

Strategic Insight

The future of plant-based wasn’t veganism.
It was flexitarian freedom.

Millions of consumers wanted to cut back on meat quietly — without labels, judgment, or “don’t you know what’s in that?” lectures. They wanted meals that fit their lives, not their identities.

Our insight:
People didn’t need convincing to become plant-based.
They needed permission to try plant-based.

This aligned directly with BYU’s creative filter — leading with Emotion, Relevance, and Difference instead of dogma .

Creative Solution

We built a mainstreaming platform that removed stigma and added joy:

“Meatless Made Easy.”

A taste-first, judgement-free reframe that turned Gardein from niche lifestyle brand into everyday meal solution — something anyone could enjoy without identity politics.

Brand Accessibility Revolution

• Full rebrand
• Removed “vegan tribal” cues
• Built a mainstream grocery presence with appetite-forward visuals

Mass Market Infiltration

• National TV, digital, and social campaign
• Normalized plant-based choices for everyday families

Taste-First Evangelism

• Influencer content focused on flavour and convenience
• Avoided guilt, lectures, or moral positioning

Trial Conversion Strategy

• Smart sampling at retail
• Let taste (not ideology) drive conversion

Retail Territory Expansion

• Broke out of the specialty case
• Earned space in center-store and conventional frozen aisles

This wasn’t plant-based activism.
It was plant-based liberation.

Results

📦 Significant national grocery distribution expansion
📈 Double-digit year-over-year sales growth
🥇 Established Gardein as the mainstream plant-based default
🛒 Became the category’s accessible, everyday choice
💬 Shifted consumer perception from “vegan food” to “great food that happens to be plant-based”

Category Takeaway

Gardein didn’t grow by converting vegans.
It grew by liberating everyone else.

True category leadership isn’t about winning inside a niche — it’s about expanding the entire market by removing barriers to trial and making new behaviours feel normal.

The lesson for food & beverage marketers?

Make the unconverted comfortable, and you build an empire.
That’s how Gardein became the King of Plant-Based Mainstream Appeal.

When you make plant-based easy, plant-based wins.