Leslie Sims: It's a great, humbling experience to watch people watch what you made, and you spent so much time trying to put it out there. And when I say remember the human, it's more like remember to get their attention in the right way. Even a terrible ad that people are making fun of, I guess, would be better than the one that nobody saw at all. That literally plays out there and it doesn't connect to anybody. It didn't offend anybody, but it didn't really move anybody. And it's like nobody's looking for your ad. Everybody's got too many things coming at them. Entertain me, make me feel something good.

Greg Stuart: Welcome to Building Better CMOs, a podcast about how marketers can get smarter and stronger. I am Greg Stuart, the CEO of the nonprofit MMA Global. That voice you heard at the top is Leslie Sims, the chief marketing and creative officer at Impossible Foods. I was really excited to have Leslie on the podcast because, like me, she comes from the ad agency world in New York City. Before she joined Impossible Foods in 2022, she worked at McCann Worldgroup, my favorite Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy, and Deloitte Digital. Now, today on Building Better CMOs, Leslie and I are going to talk about the difficulties that plant-based meat companies have and have had to overcome, emphasizing your value prop not just to consumers but to humans, and why the wrong answer often looks right at first, and so much more. This podcast is all about the challenges that marketers face and unlocking the true power that marketing can have. Leslie Sims is going to tell us how she did that right after this.

Well, Leslie Sims of Impossible Foods. How nice of you to join me today.

LS: Well, hello there. Thank you very much for having me today. Great to see you.

GS: This is going to be fun. Both you and I have, you bigger than me I think, but both have ad experience backgrounds, don't we?

LS: Yes, quite deeply actually. All different kinds.

GS: Did you ever think you would leave the agency world? Did you think you'd stay there forever or were you looking for an exit ramp at some point? I'm just curious.

LS: No, I love agency world. I mean, I would probably still... And even my last gig before this was dabbling into the consultant world because I was really curious about why are agencies not getting... The money seems to be going in a lot of other places. Where the heck is that going? But I was still within the agency side, Deloitte Digital and in all the branding and ecosystem building. But yeah, I love the agency side. I don't think I would've left if it weren't this opportunity probably and Peter calling.

GS: You know what it was for me? It was the internet. I was running the Interactive Group within one of the YNR agencies. You and I both have YNR backgrounds.

LS: Oh yeah, yeah.

GS: And you know what it was? You'll laugh at this. Because I was this shiny object, do you know that? Head of Interactive. At one point, it would've been whoever ran mobile was a shiny object.

LS: I fully remember. Man, I remember the digital creatives. We were like, whoa. They called them ninjas back then, though.

GS: And I got dragged into every new business presentation we did, and I just reached a point where I was like, you know what? I just don't know I want one more Friday of they're coming to me and saying, "Cancel your plans. You need to be here all weekend. We have a new business pitch on Monday."

LS: But I will tell you that was every creative. I mean, especially, and when you're leading the place, it's certainly every weekend.

GS: Yeah.

LS: So I think in that regard, you're just talking agency life. And I think it's getting worse.

GS: Yeah, yeah.

LS: Which I can't believe. It used to feel like it was hard, but it's really people are pitching just for campaign actions now. It's a unique time out there for sure. But I loved agency world.

GS: It was a lot of fun, though. I liked the idea of having to step in and figure out somebody's business really fast, understand the problem and bring solutions quickly to the table because that's generally what they were oriented to.

LS: Well, I think in the best cases for the great clients, they recognized it as the business driver that it was. Your best innovation pipeline is you could run a campaign and suddenly people were looking at your product differently tomorrow than they did yesterday and without really almost having to do anything to earn that.

GS: Amazing.

LS: And with the best clients, they would be willing to do some pretty interesting and provocative things. And lo and behold, some of the best projects I've ever worked on ended up being huge drivers for their bottom line as well. So, I have a real appreciation for it.

GS: I think I looked up... did you do the easy button for Staples? Was that really you and your team?

LS: Oh my goodness, I definitely was on that team. Yeah.

GS: Oh my god.

LS: It was fun. That was a tough sell-in, but yeah—

GS: Really?

LS: Talk about—

GS: It's so obvious it's the perfect campaign, right?

LS: Really? I love talking to all my digital friends about, "You guys are talking about apps and things, and I made a button that didn't do anything but just talked a lot and it made them $100 million." And it became their highest single selling SKU...

GS: Did it?

LS: ... within their Staples stores over toner.

GS: The button itself.

LS: The button itself.

GS: Not only the brand...

LS: Seven different languages.

GS: It became a product. It was a product.

LS: It became a product that was an absolute... And they made all the revenue on it instead of having to split it with all the toner companies. It was straight up revenue for them. That was one that, at the time, they were very hesitant to buy that campaign because they were like, "We knew we were easy, but anybody can say easy if you're a breakfast waffle or if you're a whatever." And we were like, "But you guys will say it first." It's like physical manifestation. It's just one of those things that I'm comfortable in looking at what can be.

GS: Yeah.

LS: I have a lot of weaknesses, but I'm very comfortable with trying to look into a hunch-based activity. And that's what creative really is. It's like what do we think is going to work? You're never going to have data that's going to 100 percent prove everything.

GS: No, not until you get out there. You never know for sure. Right?

LS: Yeah. I give them a lot of credit. They jumped for it and they went and it worked really well for them. Drove a lot of sales.

GS: I don't know if you remember when the idea maybe first got bandied about within the agency, even before the client. Did you know it was a good idea when you first heard it or did it take a little while to orient towards it?

LS: Well, my partner and I came up with it, so kind of we're biased. We thought it was brilliant of course. We're like—

GS: But you could still say, "Are we kidding ourselves? Do we think it's a good..."

LS: "We're so brilliant! Let's go to lunch." We probably had to write 20—and I'm not exaggerating—20 different campaigns to show how it could potentially launch because there was a lot of hesitation internally over there. I think their CEO finally was working with our chief creative at the time, Joyce King Thomas, to say, "Just do it. Just pull the trigger and do this one." The other one that they were looking at was a character that was made out of office supplies. They were feeling like that one was more tied to the brand and so this was, on their side, a leap. But on our side we were like, "I think everybody's going to get one of these things. It's a metaphor, but it's like this thing." This was back in the early 2000s. We always thought it was brilliant. We had a lot of convincing to do.

And I will just add, we were asked off our own campaign after the first six months because as creatives we were so like, "We know where this can go, you could make these, you could actually sell these." And they were just like, "You're overreaching." It was a good learning opportunity for me to know how far to push and when to stop, but we were so like, "We could see this. We know it could work." And lo and behold, over time it did end up getting made and had a long life, but you learn through your failure sometimes, too. That was a nice humbling experience to get asked off my own campaign, but it was very satisfying to have it go out in the world and even more satisfying in these days to be able to point at things. And there's a lot of really great creative out there that's also driving business.

And I just love finding those as often and as frequently as possible to defend creativity. I think even now in the buildings that I work in, a lot of clients... well not a lot of clients now, even the people around me, it's hard to justify creative because it is so ephemeral.

GS: Yes, yes.

LS: Yet to your point, so much work goes into it. If you could put in as much data information, but yet nobody... One of my favorite examples as a brand act was that Ocean Spray TikTok. Do you remember that back during COVID? That dude who—

GS: The guy drinking on the skateboard?

LS: If an agency had made that and a client had been there—

GS: No way.

LS: It would've been—

GS: No way.

LS: He's got a tattoo on his head. I don't know whether that would be somebody that's aspirational. It's more than a single serving. It's the old music. We need young music.

GS: Everything was wrong, everything was wrong with that.

LS: And it was magic.

GS: And yet, yeah.

LS: It's magic. And so we're like, how do you keep that magic? How do you know which magic it's going to be? And when you try and make it down into this rational thing, it leaves less room for that magic to happen.

GS: Yeah.

LS: And so I love finding projects. If I have any in my past, I have a decent amount that also were really great at driving the brand, but also won in the award shows. But it's truly one of the only things that can absolutely take a brand and shoot it out of a cannon as far as both revenue and relevance is some kind of creative application.

GS: It's funny you say that, Leslie. By the way, the listeners don't know, this was not at all the conversation we were planning to have, but it's kind of what happens. I did the funniest presentation, you'll love this. So I got to found multitouch attribution, give a new way of measuring. But the issue that happened in the book that the gentleman and I actually wrote around that was... And I'm going to go in a funny direction because I'm talking about a measurement product, right? So transformation, how measuring works. What was interesting about that is that what we realized is that most marketing campaigns didn't have a solid strategy and the consumer too often didn't understand the goddamn message. And so we took a step back and said, "Long before you start measuring how you bring this to market in an effective, channel-based approach, you've got to make sure the strategy's right. You've got to make sure that they even understand it and aren't confused in some way." So what was interesting about that, I got asked to do a presentation at an ANA event for the CFOs. I'll never forget this.

LS: Oh my. God bless you, man.

GS: I basically walked in. I'll never forget. I walked in. I've never given this presentation since. I only give it once. I basically said, "Let me explain to you why you CFOs and you in procurement are ruining your own businesses. I'm not here to save the agencies. They will live or die based on their own. It has nothing to do with it. I'm telling you what you're getting wrong." And it was all about, I basically ran the mathematics behind the X factor of magic.

LS: Oh my, I would like to see that. I would love to see that.

GS: I remember it was Bob Liodice. He would sit in the front row and from what I recall, he was horrified I was talking to his members in this way. But I was like, "You're killing, you're missing the point." I think my basic theory is the greatest return on investment is getting better creative done right.

LS: Oh, like, oh my god. I'm violently plus one-ing you right now. Yes, please.

GS: Forget all this other bullshit, the procurement about working down CPMs. And listen, I have all the background to not have gone there, but I've been in the agency world. I saw it. The magic can happen and that's what you just said. But it's very hard.

LS: When the magic happens... Sometimes it doesn't happen, though.

GS: That's the problem.

LS: That's the real shame of it. And so you're just like, I still believe in the magic. I'm learning all of the different performance tactics that you can do. And I'm fascinated with the potential of AI. We're working with Media.Monks right now on some of our other digital ecosystems, but what I think brought me into this job was the opportunity. I've also, in the last 10 years or so, become more panicked about the environment. I don't know whether it's being a parent, whatever's been happening, I'm just more...

GS: Yeah, you're concerned about the future.

LS: ... aware than ever. Yeah, we're really messing it up. We're really screwing a lot of stuff up, and we need more companies that are solving the problem, but letting us continue to live the way we do.

GS: Yeah.

LS: Because people are very hard to change. Behavior is very difficult and it's hardwired. This brand is the perfect blend of an environment warrior brand and also cheeseburgers. This is my favorite Venn diagram.

GS: You're saving the world. And then it's also, it's about as American pie.

LS: And I can go eat nachos, yeah, and still be killing it. And it's for profit, so not everything that's for the planet needs to be nonprofit. The opportunity to come into this company, now we're just starting.

GS: I saw the data here. You shouldn't quote it. I can. Just publicly, $200 million revenue, something like that. A little bit less than that I think. Yeah, you're just getting started as a category.

LS: We're still privately held. There's us and then there's Beyond. We see ourselves as a $2.5 billion industry.

GS: Okay.

LS: Which is the plant-based meat, which is not like a MorningStar.

GS: Just take a moment and explain Impossible Foods to the audience. Just make sure everybody has a root in that so they know the business.

LS: Absolutely, yeah.

GS: And the role. We kind of touched on that. You and I started to half in because we both know the story and we're big fans of Peter McGuinness. That's why you're there. I love Peter, the CEO. But go ahead.

LS: Impossible Foods was a company that was invented by a brilliant guy named Pat Brown, and he has a great podcast that he was on called How I Built This. Great for people to go back and listen to. It's the first experience I had with this brand during COVID walking my dog around the neighborhood a hundred times a day. But it's a new category, and it's basically taking plants and putting it together in a way that it acts and behaves like meat.

GS: Yes.

LS: And not just like Morningstar Farms, which has been around for 20 years, but meat like your cheeseburger that you know and love. Beyond is probably our closest cousin in this world. And we have different formulations, but we're in the same place. And we've only been in existence... I think the company started 10 years ago, but that was in deep innovation phase. We launched at Burger King somewhere back, I think it was like 2018, and had the Impossible Whopper, which made it mass overnight so everybody could give it a shot.

LS: And then we were in groceries, started really heavy up during COVID, and there was a lot of experimentation obviously back then. We were just shooting out of the cannon there just into the world and with this brand-new product that people were like, "Wow, I don't know whether I believe you." And then they would try it and go, "You do taste just like meat." And the problem was, then they'd just go back to eating meat because they were all assuming, "That's great. Now that these vegetarians and vegans can have a cheeseburger, too, with their vegan cheese if they can find it." And we were like, we love the vegetarian/vegan populations a hundred percent, and they have been our core core. But our real goal is obviously to make an impact on the planet and the wellbeing. The impact of animal agriculture in greenhouse gas emissions, in water usage is more than the transportation sector globally. And most people don't know that. The food that you eat and, primarily, cattle...

GS: I've heard that. Yeah, cattle has more negative impact than our cars. Is it that far?

LS: Literally every car, truck, boat, every one of Elon's rockets that go into space, all of those combined do not have the same impact as animal agriculture and of that, primarily, mostly beef.

GS: I've heard that. Yeah.

LS: And here's a great statistic for you, 45 percent of the landmass on the planet that isn't covered in ice is being used to either raise cattle to eat or grow food to then truck and feed these cattle to raise them fast so that we'll eat them.

GS: Crazy.

LS: Forty-five percent of the landmass. For just comparison, not quite 2 percent of the landmass of the planet that's not covered by ice is cities, townships, paved areas, just for comparison. So our appetite to eat, especially beef—the least efficient food on the planet—is absolutely making such an impact on our greenhouse gas emissions. And so there's this product now that if we could move people over to eating this—where Pat Brown was going at the beginning—this could bridge us as a globe to keep those emissions down until we are a fully green electrical grid, until we are up to speed on all of our other energy sources. So they had invented this, Google tried to buy them. Incredible, incredible product. I mean, I love all of our products. The problem has been exactly that. People out in the world are thinking, "Yeah, but why would I eat it? I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian."

When we came out, I think they were just getting such great press. It was such new news and people were trying it, they just saw it going up, up and up and up. All of a sudden—right as I started, frankly, I'm not going to take it personally—but we started kind of slowing down a bit.

GS: It was so overhyped and so excited. And I think what you're suggesting there, if I'm hearing it right, was the foundation strong enough? Was the narrative, the messaging—I bet is where you're going to go—strong enough to continue for this to go, which is what we're going to get into.

LS: Yeah.

GS: Before we go there, can I ask you one other thing? You oddly have listed on your LinkedIn profile, which is so funny to me, but you worked at a place called A Bar A Ranch in Wyoming? What?

LS: Yes, yes. Indeed.

GS: And you put it on LinkedIn. I mean, it's funny.

LS: Well, you didn't want to have any gaps in the old resume, right? I wanted people to know I was there. But yes, I did work at a ranch, but it was a guest ranch. So it was more they have horses and people take their families there, and it was probably one of the beginning stages of, I call it my first midlife crisis, but it was—

GS: Well wait, wait. That was pretty early on in your career, though, from what I could tell.

LS: That's what I'm hoping, because I was 27, so it doesn't bode well for me. I'm hoping that I'm going to have staged variety of midlife crises.

GS: Okay, good.

LS: But yeah, it was a real appreciation for the outdoors when I was there. There wasn't the internet, there weren't cellphones. It was back when God was a boy, but it was...

GS: Totally.

LS: ... a really amazing time to go and just convene with nature, frankly, and serve people probably a ton of steaks and things. You're right. There's a little bit of irony there.

GS: There you go. I've driven across America. I've told people, I said, "You don't think there's much in Nebraska? Wait till you get to Wyoming."

LS: Hey, now.

GS: Really just nothing there.

LS: Hey, now. Wyoming's got a lot of stuff.

GS: That's said from the New York City boy here. I guess maybe that's it.

LS: I encourage everyone to go to Wyoming, not just skiing, but Laramie, outside of Laramie. The parts out there beautiful, but lots of sagebrush.

GS: Amazing. Yeah, I'm a lot of sage... Exactly.

LS: Thank you. Thank you for recognizing that.

GS: Let's get into Building Better CMOs. The MMA's job, we're a nonprofit trade association. My job is to go fix stuff, to find problems. As great as I love the ad business, as great as I understand, and I've worked with a lot of great creative people like you. I love that part of the business, but I think we've got a lot of challenges in this business that we still need to work on. I always like to ask the guests, what do you think marketers don't necessarily fully appreciate or understand? What do you think we get wrong about the business as a general sense? What do you think we could just be more appreciative of, to be more focused on, to put a greater emphasis on that will help make marketing/marketers more successful? What do you think that is in your opinion?

LS: You start with the easy questions, don't you? I'm like, "God, I was hoping you were going to tell me." No, I'm kidding. I mean, those are...

GS: I could give you a long list. That's why we have the podcast.

LS: Yeah, those are good questions. What I would say, I have the benefit and privilege of being able to work across a huge variety of different kinds of brands, products, sectors over the course of my career. I was in agency side, as you mentioned, for 25 years and worked on everything from Cirque du Soleil to the Postal Service and the Navy to Budweiser, Miss America.

GS: Yeah, Miss America. Yeah. In fact, I think I saw—not to distract you from your answer—but I think I saw you took the bikini out of Miss America.

LS: Yeah. Well that was Gretchen Carlson. What a badass. But yeah, she had called us and said, "I just inherited this brand. I don't know what to do." And we were like, "We'll work on it if there was no bathing suit competition." And she's like, "You know what? Yeah." We had a lot of women at the agency and, pre Barbie days, pre everything. We got a call, "Would you guys want to work on it?" And they were all like, "Yes." Because these are brilliant women, and somehow it turned into a bathing suit competition. And the women who are competing in this competition, it's for scholarship money. That one absolutely needed a rebrand, but I give Gretchen Carlson a ton of credit there.

GS: It was off brand. Exactly or off...

LS: It needed a full re-zhuzh.

GS: Wow.

LS: The first human face transplant was done by a woman who won Miss America.

GS: Really? I didn't know.

LS: Yeah, there's a lot of misconception out there. I think that all went haywire when their first sponsor that they got to cover them was a bathing suit company. And so, lo and behold, then all of a sudden they had to shove themselves into bathing suits to win a freaking scholarship. Welcome to marketing.

GS: Kind of like Impossible Foods. The world gets better over time, maybe, right?

LS: Well, I hope. I mean that's the goal and it's shifting mindsets, shifting long-held behaviors.

GS: Let's go back to... So what is the big challenge, opportunity, or missed that you think is going on out there from your experience working with a lot of agencies and clients over the years?

LS: In general, and I've always come from the side of the fence of we're much more focused on the humans that are at the end of the whatever medium you've chosen to go after them on. And I know there's a lot of data and there's a lot of ways that we can be predictive about them. But at the end of the day... and I'll quote this from a guy named Christopher Graves who's into behavioral science, maybe. I can't remember. He was at Ogilvy. He was brilliant. He and Rory Sutherland were two of my favorites. I love listening to them all the time.

GS: Oh, I love Rory, yeah.

LS: Chris Graves is so genius that he's like, with all the innovations that have been coming out in the world, always keep in mind that there's a 10,000-year-old OS that's on the other end operating it, and that's the human brain. Our brains have not updated in 10,000 years. You can put an iPhone in front of it. It doesn't matter. We're still responding as us, but don't forget that just because it's showing up on a feed or whatever, and we're so fixated on the medium, that you've got to remember that the things that compel us are largely the same. And how can you make sure that that persuasion shows up and manifests? I guess my answer would be I spent a good majority of my career just trying to make sure that the human is not forgotten. The human nature, which is usually wildly irrational and will respond. You need to get their attention.

And the idea would be how do you get the attention and also get them to feel something? Hard to do in mid and lower funnel, but those things are... We've got the conversion tactics and all of this I'm learning.

GS: You mean with a 10 percent offer doesn't really accomplish that. You're saying it doesn't...

LS: Well, hey, I would love to debate all day long. I'll tell you, maybe because I'm new at this and I never will claim that I've nailed it, I'm still fascinated. I love learning even at this stage in my career when I feel like I've learned... I knew a lot about brands and stuff like this, but ROI is a great example of, so what's more valuable? And the Solo Stove thing. I don't know whether anybody's talked about it, but that totally freaked me out and I'm like, this is maddening, but—

GS: I saw that in your email note. I don't know if I know what that is. I'm sorry. Why am I clueless?

LS: Snoop Dogg just did the, "I've given up smoke," and everybody was like, "What? Snoop's not going to be smoking anymore?" And then it turned out that he was doing, it was a great activation on behalf of smokeless Solo Stoves.

LS: It was great. And then their CEO was fired about a month and a half later because sales weren't what the board was expecting. And you go, "Excuse me?" First of all, that happened in November, so I would question when do people buy these things? Like when's busy season for those kinds of things?

GS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LS: But second of all, I just don't think there's a better activation to get in people's brains and go, alright, so they may not buy it right now. So now we're to ROI. Is it more valuable to know that you just got however many million potential customers who if they're ever in the category, they're going to buy that or would it have been better to put all of that into a conversion tactic of 20 percent off blaring out or 50 percent off to the ones who are looking just so that you could sell? I don't know whether there's a right answer for that. I obviously indexed on the former, but I understand that you need to be hitting numbers. You need to be making sure that the business is doing well. You're taking care of the bottom line as well as your future bottom line.

GS: I like that idea. Let's go back to this. So what does it mean to put... Let's make sure we're right. Is it putting human in the messaging and the communications and the strategy positioning? Talk more about what that means to you, and then ultimately the next route I'm going to go afterwards, which I'll repeat, is how have you done that over your vast career as a chief creative officer and so on? What does that mean to put human in it? How do you start to know when you maybe got it right or don't have it right?

LS: It's pretty easy. You know what's hard is that what's wrong always looks right. It's the panic work that we were talking about. When you start to feel like, I've got to put more in here. What if they aren't compelled by this? What if they need that it also works in the air fryer, and so you can start to cram it with information. And I guess I'm always saying, remember the human in that... How many ads do you remember seeing today? I guarantee you you've probably had at least 100 thrown at you depending on even whether you've left the house.

GS: I think the stats are most people are exposed to 1,500 ads a day, something like that. It's a big, big number. Yeah, shocking number. And you have very little recall. You'd have very little.

LS: How many do you remember?

GS: I don't think I can name one.

LS: And you're in the category.

GS: Yeah.

LS: And you're running a podcast.

GS: Yeah, I pay attention to this stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

LS: Most people I love—usually using my family, grew up in South Carolina—could not really care less about what I do, but they're awful nice to me anyway. They're just like, "Yeah, whatever. You make commercials, whatnot." But it's a great, humbling experience to watch people watch what you made and you spent so much time trying to put it out there. And when I say remember the human, it's more like remember to get their attention in the right way. Even a terrible ad that people are making fun of, I guess, would be better than the one that nobody saw at all. That literally plays out there and it doesn't connect to anybody. It didn't offend anybody, but it didn't really move anybody. And it's like nobody's looking for your ad.

GS: Nobody.

LS: Everybody's got too many things coming at them.

GS: Yeah, too many.

LS: Entertain me, make me feel something good. If you get to me and then I see something else somewhere and it makes me remember like, "Oh, I think I saw something about that." Give me something quickly that is either going to help me, make me laugh. Make me laugh is going to be one of the best things that happens on Sunday. I never go to any Super Bowl parties because I am maniacal about watching all these ads, and I never want to see them before. I hate all these release them early.

GS: Oh.

LS: Because I want to only see them on the day of.

GS: Interesting. You want to see them just in the moment in context.

LS: I'm just a purist.

GS: You are.

LS: It's my favorite day. And I love to see what brands are throwing their hats in the ring because they understand the medium. They understand why they're there. They're like, "I've got to entertain."

GS: I have one moment.

LS: Yeah, I've got this. "Everybody's watching and I've got to be cool, but I'm also selling something." I'm like, why isn't everything like that? We should be remembering that it doesn't mean that you have to get a celebrity for everything, but for crying out loud, if you're trying to throw a banner at me, recognize that I am not looking for your banner. Put that in it first, too, versus "I was able to fit the logo and three bullet points of things in there." I constantly am saying, remember there's a person who doesn't give a crap that's on the other end of wherever it is that you're sending this, and there is technology that allows them to skip it. So A, try and get to them and make it interesting, make me cry or laugh or whatever. And then it would be great if you actually had a product that brought something to the table. It's a super complex thing, but at the end of the day, we're helping save the planet, we're helping the environment, but people don't necessarily want to hear that when they're eating a cheeseburger.

GS: Let's take a quick break. We'll be back right after this with Leslie Sims.