Flora Plant B+tter could have been another me-too contender in the alt-dairy sector, vying to compete for share of a relatively small market.

Our strategic approach completely reframed the task, setting ourselves the audacious goal of stealing share from the big dairy brands with the ambition of totally changing how people see something they’d previously perceived as ‘the norm’.

This is the story of how we adopted a ground-breaking approach to persuade people to step out of butter-buying autopilot, developing a campaign to challenge and de-position dairy butter as the default.

• Situation

Dairy butter is perceived as the norm with the big dairy brands dominating with the biggest shares of the spreads sector.

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• Brief

Help butter-lovers believe that plant butter tastes just as good as dairy butter whilst also being a more sustainable choice.

• Objectives

Drive awareness and trial of Flora Plant B+tter.

Flora Plant B+tter is a delicious 100% natural, plant-based spread that 80% of people loved once they’d tried.

But we live in a culture of dairy dominance, with decades of advertising spend hardwiring us to embrace dairy without question- some of the most classic ads of all time are milk ads! The dairy industry even manages to influence nursery age children with posters informing them milk will help them grow up big and strong!

So, unsurprisingly, the majority of people are positive about dairy products whilst plant-based spreads are viewed with suspicion.

There is, of course, a niche market for plant-based ‘alternative’ spreads but we wanted to win a share of the larger mainstream dairy-butter market.

To do that, we needed to win over butter-lovers. But they were perfectly happy with butter, it tastes great and it’s the ‘normal’ choice, not that ‘weird plant-based stuff’.

To succeed, we needed to shake people out of butter-buying autopilot and reframe what they perceived to be ‘normal’.

The client briefed us to lead on ‘tastes like butter’.

Which was true. But doesn’t every non-dairy spread ever created tell you that?

Slice-of-life advertising that promised butter lovers they would love the taste wasn’t going to cut it. We would be telling the same story as everyone else in the alt-dairy category with less money to spend shouting about it.

We needed an approach that would break category norms, get noticed and get talked about.

To catapult ourselves into hearts and minds, we needed to achieve 2 things:

· Challenge existing perceptions of butter

· Establish Flora Plant B+tter not as, ‘as good as’ butter, but as ‘better than’ butter

One of the findings buried within the quantitative research decks was the fact that people had lower expectations of plant butter vs dairy butter. They thought it wouldn’t taste as good and perhaps they also thought it just sounded strange.

It also seemed odd to us to whenever we talked about plants in this context, it seemed incongruous for plants to be associated with butter.

But then we had our lightbulb moment!

We thought, hang on a second, butter has always come from plants! They’re the fundamental base ingredient in dairy butter.

The really strange thing isn’t that Flora Plant B+tter is made from plants, it’s that dairy butter is made from plants that then have to travel through several metres of a cow’s intestines!

The strategic idea was summarised as follows:

‘Made directly from plants, without the weird cow bit.’

The creative work is a direct interpretation of the strategy. The executions reframe perceptions of butter by humorously surfacing its cow-y strangeness and at the same time placing Flora Plant Butter on dairy butter’s turf.. Humour was vitally important in making this approach both impactful and palatable.

The work felt bold and purposeful but, crucially, non-preachy.

We knew we would raise a few hackles by challenging butter-lovers and confronting them with a contentious view of their beloved dairy-butter.

But by raising a smile along with the hackles, we managed to land a campaign with sustainability at its heart, making both butter lovers and the butter industry feel challenged rather than demonised.

The campaign led to growth across the Flora brand portfolio for the first time in 10 years, re-acquiring millions of UK households and actively encouraging dairy butter buyers to trial Flora Plant B+tter.

Awareness and Consideration

Brand Awareness increased from 12 to 24%

Consideration increased from 32 to 40%

Purchase Behaviour

Sales volume +52% in the last 52 weeks

Sales value +39.5% in the last 52 weeks

Household penetration increased by 38%

Source: Kantar Brand Health Quarterly Tracking up to Q4 2023

And the parent brand has seen a significant uplift in sales & household penetration too (all Flora products are dairy and palm-oil free.)