Vegan food: Do we need 'something else'?

Opinion piece by Mark Westcombe

“Mark, I can eat meat, fake meat, or something else. Give me meat or something else, I’m not going to eat your fake meat.”

My sister continued, “Give me a pumpkin and chestnut Wellington, mushroom filo, or sweet potato and chickpea pie.” She clearly knows what her ‘something else’ is.

At a glance

Does my sister point at opportunities in our products, framings, who we’re targeting, and how we can take advantage of that?

Talking with her makes me wonder if we’re missing a trick. I wonder if, like my sister, some people could be won over by diversity rather than replacement. I wonder if there’s a category of ‘something else’ we could and should be innovating alongside ‘new meat’. World foods that are accidentally vegan, and reinvented traditions... a new tradition of animal-free British foods that can claim the centre of the plate, like a ‘pease pudding and gravy pie’.

The interim results of our recent segmentation study suggest my sister might not be alone in her ‘something else’. The 41% most attached to animal meat seem more inclined to swap it out for familiar foods like pasta, rather than ‘new meat’ replacements. So meat mimicking products might not be the best offering for the meat-lovers, nor might meat-lovers be the best target for suppliers.

Instead it’s the already ‘active ethical eaters’ (10% of the population) that are most likely to swap animal meat for ‘new meat’, alongside the fact they’re obviously swapping more often. Though they’re not looking for meat mimicry, nor persuaded by meat mimicry messaging; they’re looking for products that match the nutrition of animal meat.

Even the most promising group for behavioural change, the ‘moveable middle’ segment – ‘hesitant ethical eaters’ – who are open to ‘new meat’ aren’t looking for meat mimicry, and it’s not meat mimicry marketing that wins them over either.

So there might be some rethinking to do about who’s buying what, and why; what products we provide to whom, what marketing appeals to them, and whether there’s new opportunities waiting for us. For now, back to my sister.

My sister as a case study: an interview of one

It was last year and I was off to a GFI symposium. I needed to learn about plant-based foods… and fast. So I grabbed what was available, my sister, and did a qualitative study of one. It turned out to be what one food company founder called, “gold dust.” Here’s what I learnt.

Naughty, but not too naughty

I put my sister firmly in the animal 'meat-loving' camp, but a few years ago I had spotted a packet of VFC nuggets in her freezer, so I had an opening … why had she bought them?

“They’re naughty, but not as naughty as chicken nuggets. I avoid chicken nuggets, it’s bad meat, and I want to buy quality meat. But on a Friday I want something ‘naughty with my pint’. So they’re naughty, but not as naughty, or as bad for me, as chicken nuggets.”

I’d seen vegan calamari, shrimp, mince and kebab meat in her kitchen too, all of which had puzzled me.

“I bought them as an experiment. I thought, ‘oo, I’ll try those’. They’re things to have with a beer.”

It turns out she rates the shrimps more than me. In fact I think she rates everything similar or more than me. It's just being vegan, I've more reason to try them.

I was surprised at the kebab meat:

“It was the packaging. I spotted it cos it was new, and colourful, the red, I spotted it just on packaging. Vegan products all look dirty green or brown. You can spot them a mile off. Why would I want to buy that? Get away from preachy, the ‘we’re so virtuous’. It's a put off. It’s about looking at something and actually fancying it, not being provoked into thinking is it vegan or not.”

And the Quorn mince, that seemed odd, why?

“It’s not trying to be mince. It’s different. It’s something else.

Like bean burgers. We loved bean burgers from Burger King as kids. But they’re bean burgers, not plant burgers, plant sounds like grass, it doesn’t work. Give me a beetroot burger, lentil burger, bean burger. I like them in their own right. If I want a beef burger I’ll buy a beef burger. I’m buying them cos I fancy a lentil burger, as an alternative. Most people like to vary their diet. The fake burgers all stick to the roof of your mouth. They’re sticky. I’ll never be convinced by a vegan burger.

So sell me something that sounds exciting. Give me a choice where I don’t know what to choose. Give me a choice of:

• Beef and ale hotpot (i.e. animal meat);

• Sweet potato and goat cheese filo (i.e. vegetarian); or

• Squash pie (vegan)

That’s an equal choice. Fake steak, I’m not going to consider it. Between a meat shepherd’s pie; lentil shepherd’s pie; and a vegan shepherd’s pie; then I’d buy the first two, but not the last. Just don’t put a vegan label on [the lentil one]. And stop separating it out; put it with the convenience foods.

I quite like Richmond Sausages though. Most people think ‘I need to mix up my diet, I know it’s not good to eat red meat everyday’.

People changing their diet aren’t expecting it to be as good, there’s a compromise you’ll reach, ‘it’s nice enough’. I’m limiting my Lurpak [butter] to twice a week and having an olive oil one instead. Lurpak every day is really unhealthy. Don’t set up an expectation it’s as tasty cos you’ll just be disappointed. I don’t want plant based Flora, the olive oil one looks more attractive, I won’t like the plant based one.

It has to be close. I’m not expecting it to be as tasty, I do want to still enjoy it though. I don’t want to be fooled [her emphasis].

Soy’s bad, jackfruit coming halfway across the world, avocados are terrible for the environment, and the energy used in labs — you’re not as virtuous as it’s made out to be [sic].”

And that’s how she ended the conversation, a reassertion of her identity, and the status quo.

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A warning

It’s a data point of one (we hope to do more), but a case study can always inform.
In our quantitative research we’ve found 5 psychographic segments in the UK population and her thoughts at best represent one, the ‘meat-lover’.

As a meat-lover, she’s:

• not thinking about change,

• comfortable with her diet and ethics,

• but not closed to change, and open if ‘something else’ is put in front of her.

She’s not well served by advocacy messaging, nor by products that mimic animal meat.

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An analysis: what might be going on here?

What my sister’s doing is revealing her cognitive frames, those things that subconsciously influence her when choosing food. I’m a rights activist; an outsider to the food sector, behaviour change, and/or vegan advocacy.

I’m not an ethnographer, nor a marketer either. I’m a mathematician with a 20-year career in strategy and impact for projects with 25+ year durations, but here’s what I take away from my sister as a case study of one.

• Permissive Indulgence: “They’re naughty, but not as naughty as chicken nuggets” probably contains more insight than most quantitative consumer surveys. What she’s revealing is food as an allowed pleasure and indulgence. There’s a lot of indulgence references, and health references, but she’s not about to go the whole way health-wise, see: “I’m limiting my Lurpak [butter],” “ [butter] everyday is really unhealthy,” “bad meat,” and “it’s not good to eat red meat everyday”. Her goal is enjoyment without excessive guilt; and moderation without sacrifice. That’s typical of UK consumers, and a strategic advantage we can leverage with both our products and marketing: an indulgence that’s a bit healthier than others. The low alcohol market is riding this same wave.

• Ritual and Culture: Nearly all her examples signal cultural continuity and her choices are context-based: Friday pints; naughty food; pub food. These are emotional, cultural and comforting associations, and seem to be what matters most. She mentions pies; burgers; pastry; and pub-style foods, even when meat-free. She’s open to ingredient change, but within familiar cultural forms. ‘New meat’ is not culturally familiar to her. She thinks about food through occasions, moods, and social contexts, not diet choices or even ingredients – “naughty with my pint.” Her buying is not what will make a meal, but what will make a Friday night with a pint, lunch on a lazy Sunday, or on an evening after she’s got in late. So the opportunity is to build products and marketing around her rhythms and occasions, and the associations she has with these moments.

• Identity: She’s not necessarily rejecting vegan products, she’s rejecting the identity package. She’s sensitive to what food signals socially and that’s “a put off.” “Dirty green,” “spot a mile off,” “grass,” kicks in before any consideration or taste expectation begins.
  

  • She’s put off by the vegan label and our moralism, our “preachy” and “virtuous.”

  • She reacts not because she is immoral, but because moral pressure threatens her autonomy.

  • She doesn’t want to be judged, neither does she want to be provoked into a moral analysis when choosing food about whether it’s vegan or not.
    

  We’re not her tribe, and fundamentally she doesn’t want to be associated with us.
  

  This explains why she’ll buy olive oil spread, but not plant-based spread; why she’s not going to consider fake steak; or be convinced by a vegan burger. She’s not being illogical, she’s being perfectly logical to maintain her cultural identity. This is not something education or better products will overcome alone. This is the job of category branding and marketing.
  

  Perhaps her deepest frame is wanting to retain agency, rather than be converted. She wants choice, indulgence and novelty discovery, not recruitment, correction or conversion. A “give me exciting new options” is going to work better than an implied message to replace or reduce animal meat. It’s subtle, but it’s an important distinction. Her ‘something else’ framing works because it reduces the threat to her identity. It’s also what dieters will tell you … instead of focussing on what you’re cutting out, focus on what you’re introducing.

• Honesty: She uses the term ‘fake meat’, and is emphatic about “I don’t want to be fooled”: Her problem here is not an absence of meat, it’s perceived dishonesty. “Don’t set up an expectation it’s as tasty cos you’ll just be disappointed.” This is really important, especially when we’re framing industrial farming as untrustworthy. In the public’s eye we have a further contradiction... we’re positioning veganism and plant-based as healthier, but what the public sees is packaged junk food. We can square this with my sister’s “not as naughty'“ message.

• Openness. She is though, open. She’s willing to experiment, to reach a compromise, to try the vegan shrimp in breadcrumbs. She even quite likes Richmond Sausages. I suspect these are essentially replacements for processed animal products, not the steaks, nor chicken breasts, nor raw animal meat parts. There’s less of a leap of difference. Steak defines steak; chicken does not define a chicken nugget, the whole package does. The batter, crispiness, crunch, softer inner, shifts in texture and flavour, hold it in your hand, and the associations of when you’ll eat these, i.e. with a pint.

• Excitement, diversity and ‘something else’: The aesthetics she signals are colourful, red, “fancying it,” variety. She names the role of packaging in spotting something new. “Sell me something exciting.” She’s repeatedly referencing novelty, adding variety and experimenting. That’s different to replacement, or swapping animal meat for ‘new meat’. Instead her cognitive model, and the opportunity, is expanding her repertoire. Her “it’s not trying to be mince. It’s different. It’s something else” is perhaps the single line that most captures my sister’s cognitive frame. She’s accepting alternatives when they present themselves honestly and as different, but resisting imitation framed as equivalence.

  
  The lentil burger feels legitimate because it declares itself openly; it has its own identity; and it is not pretending. There’s a lot of reference to things in their own right. The examples she offers are foods associated with the comfort of pub culture, like a pumpkin and chestnut Wellington, and they all stand in their own right. They are not mimicry or direct substitutes. This ‘something else’ category is one to potentially develop.

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The ‘something else’ category

A Financial Times article from 2022 points to this idea of ‘something else’: “another area is a whole different plant-based segment that does not try to mimic meat.” Massimo Zucchero, previously head of plant-based meal solutions at Nestlé, says there of this category that it’s about “putting vegetables at the heart of, the centre of the plate, in a delicious way.” This is the food industry’s ‘fight for the centre of the plate’.

There are foods already doing this. The pulled mushroom of the Mushroom Meat Co is hitting the spot with something that meets my sister’s needs: comfort, familiar, novel, healthy, and not an identity threat. The Tofoo Co’s Dippers sells ‘Friday night naughty pint food’. Veg Forward has its Mushroom Poppers, and M&S has plenty like their Butternut, Almond and Pecan Nut Roast. Thallus Foods are innovating their mushroom steaks.

Some need investment, some need scaling, some need branding that doesn’t signal vegan. What they all need is a sector, and potentially philanthropy, that invests in marketing a cultural category that they can sit within – one that’s strong enough to get them beyond the vegan aisles.

My sister is not about to become vegan, but she’s ready to be tempted by diversity. Sociology’s Practice Theory, though, tells us that when we diversify behaviour we open ourselves to shifts in our ethics, and identities. ‘Something else’ might bring my sister to new foods, which in turn might eventually bring her to veganism.

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The takeaways

My sister and the meat-loving category is not the best target for advocacy, or meat mimicry products. If we are to invest in persuading this category they might need ‘something else’ as well.

This is a cultural strategy and category branding project, not just a food tech one. We need to invest in creating culturally desirable identities and associations, not just better products. Currently my sister’s not going to be tempted to try the ‘new meat’ products to find out if they’re any good.

Our separate quant research suggests those most buying ‘new meat’ products are not persuaded by marketing meat mimicry, like blood yielding burgers. Instead they’re after nutrition and are more persuaded by marketing appeals to their ethics.

There’s a marketing opportunity for the existing sector to leverage the “naughty but not as naughty” frame for current plant-based food products.

Critically what my sister reveals, is that consumers don’t think about or experience food categories in the same way us advocates and innovators do. Ultimately my sister is not ideological, absolutist or closed. My sister is saying: I don’t want to join the vegans, but I do want tasty variation. It’s our job to make that easier.

Part 2

Later this summer, I’ll offer an opinion on how we might pursue a cultural ‘something else’ strategy that could tempt my sister with a ‘New tradition of British food’.

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Where next?

You can read the quantitative segmentation report and messaging guide and on our website. It identifies 5 segments in relation to ‘new meat’ and plant-based food, people’s aspirations, how persuadable they are, and what messaging might persuade them. It suggests who to focus on and how. In exploring segments, it resolves many of the strategic debates we keep circling. Maybe everyone was right, just not universally. We were each right for a particular psychographic segment.

At Animal Think Tank, we’re continuing to explore different segments within the ‘moveable middle’, including attitudes to food and ethics.

If you’re running your own public testing and would like to compare notes, we’d love to hear from you at narrative@animalthinktank.org or via the Ask ATT Slack channel.