Whereas the 60-second hero advert touts the drink’s “creamy velvet” texture, many of the narrative hinges on its climate-conscious bona fides and main ingredient: the Bambara groundnut.
“If we have been to outline ourselves simply by making tasty merchandise, we’d be simply one other plant-based meals firm,” Sabine Schindlbauer, WhatIF’s advertising and marketing and communications director, advised Adweek. “Our mission is to essentially transcend and create a spread of regenerative meals.”
The corporate’s level of distinction is the Bambara nut, “a regenerative crop which has been under-cultivated and neglected,” Schindlbauer mentioned. “It thrives with little or no water and in poor soil. And because it grows, it leaves natural matter that heals the soil.”
Since many Individuals could have by no means heard of the Bambara nut, a protein-rich legume, “A Higher Higher” goals to make the ingredient accessible.
Planet-based meals
On the danger of showing grandiose, the advertising and marketing positions WhatIF as “larger than plant-based meals—it’s planet-based meals,” which creatives say can stand as much as scrutiny at a time of rampant greenwashing and greenhushing.
WhatIF has “this excellent dissatisfaction with the established order,” Yunes mentioned. “They present up with options, they make folks and locations more healthy, they usually nonetheless have the humility to confess that regardless of how they innovate and enhance, extra change isn’t simply attainable—it’s required.”
Regeneration is “greater than a buzzword,” creatives mentioned, noting the training and assets that WhatIF invests in its farmer communities.
“They’ve embraced this charming urgency that we’re all right here quickly, so we’ve bought to go massive now,” Williams mentioned.
The model’s founder and CEO, himself a former farmer, mentioned it requires “radical honesty” to enhance the ecosystem.
“Incremental change gained’t do,” Chris Langwallner mentioned. “We are able to’t simply kick the can of sustainability down the street anymore.”
WhatIF, primarily based in Singapore, first dropped its merchandise in Australia, New Zealand, Ghana and Malaysia. Within the U.S., the model debuted in Could 2022 and is now accessible in about 120 retailers, primarily in New York, Southern California and the Pacific Northwest, with that quantity anticipated to develop to 500 by subsequent month. It additionally sells by way of its newly redesigned web site and by way of Amazon.
