The Strong Roots Cauliflower Hash Brown Diet included 90+ campaign assets aligned across a host of marketing channels to promote Strong Roots Cauliflower Hash Browns. At the heart of the campaign was an actual 60-page printed diet book that featured a real 21-day diet developed with the help of a Registered Dietician, an interactive website, inspirational videos, scientific charts, animated exercise tutorials, testimonial videos, influencer social posts, media outreach/PR, email newsletters and UGC social content all marching in the same direction to promote both the diet AND the product.

After successful growth in its home market of Ireland and the UK, plant-based frozen food brand Strong Roots was ready to launch in the US. They had laid the groundwork for solid retail growth and were eager to achieve notoriety as a challenger brand. They hired us to help them make a splash.

The challenge: Every month seems to bring hundreds of buzzy plant-based product launches and press releases from the next great startup. At the same time, big-name traditional food companies continue to launch their own lines of dairy- and meat-free foods at a rapid clip.

How could we solidify Strong Roots’ positioning in the crowded plant-based market - much less the wasteland of the freezer aisle, which has generally been shunned as inferior to fresh produce? And how could we convince consumers that plant-based food can be simple and healthy and not the frankenfood that’s surfaced in recent

The ice cream diet infamously recommended that people consume ice cream; so an eating plan based solely on Strong Root’s hero product cauliflower hash browns doesn’t sound that far-fetched. Or does it?

We worked with a registered dietitian to create a legit diet and lifestyle plan centered around our hero product - Cauliflower Hash Browns, calling it the Cauliflower Hash Brown Diet. And then we brought it to life in fantastical, multimedia detail.

The intentionally humorous “diet” pokes fun at easy-fix fad diets and magic-bullet diet solutions (like Hydroxicut Noom and Weight Watchers) and the performance marketing tactics regularly used to convince participants of the “guaranteed” success of the diet.

Emerging from 1970s counterculture and rising in popularity has been the anti-industrial food movement. As an alternative approach to food it ideologically challenges the dominant scientific–industrial food ideology (Big Food).

A key code of the movement is to challenge the establishment and take on Big Food, Monsanto, and the FDA. Lots of plant-based brands have been good at framing their offerings as a challenge to the enviro footprint of the food establishment. Thus entered our challenge: lots of brands already operate in this space, so we needed a way to cut through.

We decided to take on industrial food by employing a populist prankster ethos. And we zeroed in on perhaps the only thing more emblematic of scientific-industrial food culture than fast food - America’s fad diet culture. The opportunity for Strong Roots was to market a viral diet craze featuring their hero product, while simultaneously making fun of viral

First, we partnered with a registered dietician to help write an actual 60-page diet book that included a 21 day eating plan, recipes, and exercises one could do before and during the consumption of Strong Roots Cauliflower Hash Browns. Consumers could get the book free in exchange for their email address, intended to build the brand’s database for its ecommerce business.

Next, we launched a dedicated website of coaching posts, inspirational videos, scientific charts, and animated exercise tutorials. Then came the launch of a full-funnel campaign riffing on fad diets and their trope-filled performance-marketing approach, including testimonial videos from actors who had appeared in diet ads in the past—giving them a new script that centers, of course, on cauliflower hash browns. Finally, social influencers, like Jeremy Jacobowitz of @jeremyjacobowitz (also known as “Brunch Boys”) and Nina Joy of @thefoodjoy, shared their journey “on the diet” with thousands of social followers.

Thanks to the campaign, which served as Strong Roots’ first major entrance into the US market, sales of Cauliflower Hash Browns crushed expectations at our target retailers the month of the launch, coming in 42% higher than originally estimated. Even further, our tongue-in-cheek tactics generated 2.1 million media impressions, and over 44,000 people began their journey on the Cauliflower Hash Brown Diet. We grew Strong Roots’ email list by 40% in preparation for an e-commerce launch. Even better, our satirical campaign was heralded by Adweek as “gloriously weird” and “hilariously honest,” and was recognized by AdAge as “the fad diet to end all fad diets.”