Impossible Foods was founded in 2011 with an ambitious goal: to eliminate the need for animals in the global food system by 2035. While the mission of the company was widely understood by employees and investors, the mission was not the focus of communications around the launch of the Impossible Burger. Because Impossible Foods' success and the company's ability to accomplish its mission fully depends on creating consumer demand for the burger, the communications around the company from launch in July 2016 on was completely devoted to Deliciousness.
As the company grew, however, it became increasingly important to communicate around the motivation behind the company. In August 2018, Impossible released its second impact report entitled Mission: Earth. The impact report served as the launching pad for a much larger integrated campaign, intended not only to educate the public about Impossible Foods' mission, but also to raise the issue of animal agriculture as a huge contributor to climate change on the global stage.
The campaign theme, Mission: Earth, was inspired by CEO Pat Brown's musings about the ultimate beauty and magic of planet earth, and the tendency humans have to take that splendor for granted. It has been widely documented that when astronauts travel to space, they spend the most time marveling at our planet. The Mission: Earth campaign became a rallying cry to not lose sight of our great fortune in inhabiting this planet.
Impossible Foods' Mission: Earth campaign included a downloadable impact report, a short film "The Return" directed by graffiti artist Nick Walker portraying an astronaut's return to earth after a long separation, and a two-part launch event featuring a Facebook Livecast panel discussion about the company's mission and dinner at Mission Chinese. Social and earned media strategies were deployed to amplify all aspects.
The impact report candidly charts the company's progress in the pursuit of its 2035 vision. The report also highlighted the results of a study published on PLOS from researchers at Denmark Technical University to understand the impacts of adoption of Impossible Foods' product at a national scale. Those researchers found that if Americans were to replace 50% of ground beef from cows with Impossible Foods' plant-based beef, we would conservatively:
Most importantly for the larger Mission: Earth campaign was the opportunity to invite consumers to play a role in this movement.
The impact report and short film served as the content that fueled the launch event in New York, attended by sustainability experts, cultural influencers, chefs, and media. The event included a panel discussion featuring Impossible Foods' CEO Pat Brown, former Governor and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Christine Todd Whitman, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University Jeffrey Sachs and WeWork's Chief Sustainability Officer, Lindsay Baker. The panel was followed by dinner at Chef Danny Bowien's acclaimed restaurant Mission Chinese, with custom dishes featuring Impossible meat.
The event aligned with Impossible Foods' grassroots outreach strategy. Rather than paying for influencer posts or traditional ads on social, Impossible Foods taps into its growing popularity and platform of loyal fans across channels to create buzz. Impossible Foods' communications team engaged in conversations with like-minded journalists and influencers on social media, inviting them to the event or offering early looks at the report. The groundswell of #MissionEarth social posts, combined with original stories from traditional media relations efforts, resulted in a new level of understanding of the company's mission and vision for the future.
Ultimately, Impossible Foods' communications, creative, and marketing teams were able to translate the brand's mission into a report that is now referenced by media and sustainability industry experts alike. "The Return" and other creative content produced for the campaign and event, exemplified by the Impossible Foods' astronaut mascot, became powerful documentation of the company's bold vision.
The Mission: Earth campaign produced some of the company's highest performing content to date, resulting in nearly 300 million unique impressions across online, social, and broadcast.
Online reporters and outlets responded, filing 228 original articles, and broadcast coverage included 19 pieces resulting in 334,893 impressions. The total social coverage of the campaign resulted in 191 mentions, 464,599 impressions, with the Livecast of the Mission: Earth panel on Facebook achieving a Unique Reach of 50K and 7.6K views as of 9/20/18. Total AVE for the campaign reached $11.86 million.
In addition to the awareness metrics, Impossible Foods' Mission: Earth panel event fomented valuable long term relationships with various leaders in the sustainability community, including Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, public policy analyst, and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University who has since elevated the topic of animal agriculture's contribution to climate change on the global stage, making it the focus of subsequent UN talks.
