Lab Grown Meat is set to transform how we produce food. We look at how a PR and marketing campaign prepared the ground by steering people away from traditional forms of meat by promoting vegan and plant-based diets.
Over the past few years, plant-based and vegan diets have moved firmly into the mainstream.
It’s often presented as a natural shift in tastes and values, but like most of the decisions and choices we make, it didn’t happen by accident.
In reality, our move away from eating meat has been carefully managed through a sustained campaign of PR, marketing, and persuasion.
The primary aim of the campaign was as a stepping stone to turn people away from traditional meat production, and to prepare them for the introduction of lab-grown alternatives, often referred to as in vitro or cultured meat.
Editor's Note
We are all influenced in our views, opinions and beliefs by the messages, images, voices, and values that surround us in our everyday lives. This is true whether we are talking about food, fashion, politics, or health.
The fact that veganism and plant-based eating has been promoted through PR and marketing does not make it any less real, meaningful, or valid for the people who have chosen it.
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Table of Contents
Nine PR and Marketing Tactics to Promote a Vegan and Plant Based Diet
When a similar message suddenly starts appearing across different platforms, it’s a sure sign of an organised and deliberate campaign.
The campaign to influence our move away from traditionally produced meat products follows a familiar pattern. Below are just some of the more obvious examples.
1. Normalisation
How Veganism Was Made to Look Normal
Normalisation works through repetition.
By consistently placing plant-based eating in everyday contexts, it shifted from something niche to something that simply felt part of a normal mainstream lifestyle.
2. Identity Marketing
Selling a Lifestyle, Not Just a Diet
Appealing to the kind of person someone wants to be is one of the most powerful tools in marketing.
This campaign tapped directly into identity and values, linking plant-based choices to a sense of who you are.
3. Third-Party Endorsement
The Trusted Influencer
This is a classic use of third-party endorsement.
By using familiar figures like celebrities and influencers, the message seems more trustworthy and gains credibility and social approval.
(Read more about the Third-Party technique in our free eBook here.)
You can explore this campaign and others like it in the memoirs of PR and marketing man Will Camden.
4. Cause Marketing
Saving the Planet, One Meal at a Time
Cause marketing works by attaching behaviour to a bigger purpose.
Here, meat reduction was framed as climate action, turning everyday food choices into a signal of environmental responsibility.
5. Emotional Appeal
Playing on Our Feelings for Animals
Emotional appeal works by engaging feelings before facts.
By focusing on compassion, cruelty, and the treatment of animals, the campaign created a strong moral case that was hard to ignore.
6. Health Framing
Health: The Big Persuader
Another use of the third-party technique uses athletes and fitness influencers to present veganism and plant-based eating as a route to better energy, better skin, weight control, and overall wellbeing.
(You can read more about the technique of Framing here.)
New Meats and Cannibalism ?
When Will Camden and his team were working on this campaign, they often talked about the less obvious ramifications of our society moving over to lab grown meat.
If meat is just a product grown from cells in a huge factory-type lab, then in theory, we’re not restricted to cows, pigs, or chickens anymore. We could produce meat from almost any animal, and from species we’d usually see in a wildlife reserve rather than on a plate.
Taken to its logical conclusion, it even raises the most taboo question of all…. that of consuming Human meat.
If no living being is harmed, where do we draw the line?
7. Aspirational Marketing
Making Plant-Based Food Look Cool
Aspirational marketing turns products into signals of status.
By giving plant-based food a premium, design-led image, it became something people wanted to be associated with.
8. Foot in the Door Technique
The Power of Small Steps
This is a classic foot-in-the-door approach.
A small yes, like choosing plant-based meals, makes a bigger yes more likely later, as people become more open to moving away from traditional meat altogether.
(You can read more about this technique here).
9. Social Proof / Bandwagon
How The Group Influences People
This is the bandwagon effect in action.
By highlighting growing numbers and shared participation through on-line campaigns, plant-based eating was presented as a movement people were joining.
(See other uses of the Bandwagon Effect here).
By the time lab-grown meat is widely introduced, the groundwork for a ready-made customer base will already be in place.
It will be presented and marketed as healthier, more sustainable, and more responsible than traditionally produced meat, making it feel less like something new to be wary of and more like the natural next step.
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