A woman wearing what can only be described as rags struggles to push something large, round and yellow up a mountain. She let out a primal scream. A female comedian’s face appears overhead, shining through ominous clouds. This isn’t the cold open for a wacky alt-comedy web series—it’s a advertisement for a plant-based cheese company.
The company in question is called Plonts, and the big yellow thing is of course a big wheel of (plant-based) cheese. From here things get weirder: The comedian whose face looms large in the sky is Kate Berlant, an artist known for her screwball and self-referential work. As Berlant bickers with the woman on the mountain, her wry and silly presence immediately sets the ad’s tone. With this tongue-in-cheek approach, Plonts seems to be saying that it’s no ordinary plant-based cheese brand – it’s a cool plant-based cheese brand, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously and doesn’t want you, the consumer, either. This ethos is aptly summed up by the ad’s tagline: Buy Plonts “won’t save the planet,” it says. “But it probably won’t hurt.”
In the plant-based protein space, Plonts is zigging where other brands zagg. Many plant-based brands—whether it’s oat milk or fake beef burgers that really bleed—have introduced themselves to consumers by extolling the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet. But learning that sustainability isn’t a deciding factor for most customers, alternative protein brands have pivoted in recent years, putting more emphasis on things like taste and nutritional benefits.
Rather than relying too heavily on any of these messages, Plonts’ new ad makes a show of playfully touting its climate benefits – and questioning whether consumerism can really get us out of the climate crisis.
If nothing else, this tactic makes the company stand out. “The category of plant-based foods, I would say, has had a pretty uniform ethos or party line,” says Jason Moran, creative director on the marketing team at Red Antler, a branding agency.
That line has traditionally been hyper-focused on the environmental benefits of eating more plants and less meat. A vegan diet results in 75 percent less greenhouse gas emissions as a diet high in meat. Because animal agriculture tends to require both land for grazing and cropland to grow inputs for animal feed, livestock also use a disproportionate amount of the earth’s agricultural land – about 80 percent.
These statistics once seemed like the key to swaying consumers to eat less meat. A decade ago, plant-based protein companies made a serious case for the environmental benefits of fake meat. When Beyond Meat launched its “beef-free crumbles” in 2014, CEO Ethan Brown told reporters that addressing “all this doom and gloom about climate change” is “as simple as changing what’s in the middle of your plate.” At times, plant-based companies have doubled down on that rhetoric, practically pleading with audiences to see the writing on the wall. In a 2016 TED Talk Introducing the world to Impossible Foods’ hyper-realistic veggie burgers, company founder Pat Brown (no relation) said that the global appetite for meat “is the main reason behind an ongoing game slaughter.” Eliminating animal agriculture may sound like a difficult task, Brown said, but it “has to be done.” The oat milk brand Oatly took one out a full page newspaper advertisement about “how the pursuit of profit without regard for the planet should be considered a crime,” according to the company’s creative director.
Now the same companies are trying different approaches. Market research has shown that consumers are more motivated by factors such as taste, familiarity, price and nutrition than plant-based foods’ “altruistic qualities,” such as sustainability. Earlier this year, Impossible Foods announced “a new brand identity inspired by the desire of meat.” This kind of brand positioning alludes to meat’s climate impact without saying the word “climate” directly – and instead by repeating the word “meat”. (“[W]don’t you solve the meat problem with MORE meat?” reads one page on the Impossible Foods website.) Meanwhile, Oatly has continued to highlight the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet, but in surprising, off-the-wall ways. The brand’s cheeky “Help Dad” campaign aims to convince reluctant fathers to switch to oat milk, while its recent mock exposed attacks “the dairy industry’s lack of transparency about the climate impact of its products.”
Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Carl’s Jr.
Rarely, however, has a plant-based protein brand consciously leaned into the ambiguity surrounding consumerism as a meaningful lever for climate action, as Plonts does. In the ad, Berlant suggests that the woman on the mountain doesn’t have to huff and puff up that tattered path—an act meant to symbolize eating a plant-based diet to save the planet. Instead, the woman can buy Plonts. “Fighting climate change is too difficult,” the company declares about it website. “Eat some plant-based cheese instead.”
Here, Plonts takes an honest stab at having it both ways: The company acknowledges the environmental impact of avoiding dairy without overemphasizing the power of individual choice. “It’s really frustrating to be up against this massive problem where, you know, realistically, our individual sacrifices aren’t going to move the needle on climate change,” says Sophie Moscovici-Troyka, brand manager at Plonts, who previously worked at Impossible. food “At the same time, you see a lot of mission-driven companies pushing consumerism as the answer to climate change, which has all kinds of paradoxes in it. We wanted to make fun of that tension.”
To avoid the guilt that can come with eating meat or dairy on a hot planet, “We definitely took inspiration from different comedians and brands,” Moscovici-Troyka said. On the comedy side, that includes comedian and actor Julio Torres, who joked about it the hardest part of being vegan is all the excuse. (“People ask me if I miss meat or dairy,” the joke goes. “I mean, I miss being liked.”) On the branding side, Moscovici-Troyka mentions Oatly and the bottled water company Liquid Death for their arc, irreverently approaches to marketing.
Plonts also appear to be part of a new wave of plant-based cheese companies promising to compete with dairy milk on taste. The cheese is made by adding cultures, enzymes and salt to plant-based milk, in a process similar to making dairy cheese; the resulting product is then aged to enhance its flavor, and additives are introduced to give it the ability to melt. Currently, the vegan cheese is only available to order at restaurants in New York and San Francisco, but the company hopes to break into retail in the future. It may be too soon to tell whether the brand’s messages resonate with consumers; just a few weeks after its launch, the company refused to share sales numbers. Currently, the Plonts ad is appearing on social media and video sharing platforms.
One of the best things any brand can do when establishing itself, Moran says, is to choose an audience: to know who you’re trying to sell to, and who you’re failing to reach. He suggests that even if Plonts’ approach does not appeal to everyone, it is on the right track.
If Plonts talks “directly” to the people who are “unsure or who aren’t actively making food choices to save the environment,” Moran said, it could be good business. While only about 4 percent of Americans identify as vegetarian (and even less than vegan), a 2020 report found more than half of Americans would be willing to eat more vegetables and less red meat. A slightly smaller percentage, 46 percent, said they would be willing to try non-dairy alternatives to products such as milk and cheese. For many, making environmentally friendly dietary choices just isn’t the point: Two-thirds of respondents said no one had ever asked them to eat more plant-based foods. Courting those diners, Moran said, “I think is powerful.”
