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 communications director, informed Adweek. “Our mission is to actually 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 missed,” Schindlbauer stated. “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 People 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 positions WhatIF as “greater 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 glorious dissatisfaction with the established order,” Yunes stated. “They present up with options, they make folks and locations more healthy, they usually nonetheless have the humility to confess that irrespective of how they innovate and enhance, extra change isn’t simply potential—it’s required.”
Regeneration is “greater than a buzzword,” creatives stated, noting the schooling and assets that WhatIF invests in its farmer communities.
“They’ve embraced this charming urgency that we’re all right here briefly, so we’ve obtained to go massive now,” Williams stated.
The model’s founder and CEO, himself a former farmer, stated it requires “radical honesty” to enhance the ecosystem.
“Incremental change gained’t do,” Chris Langwallner stated. “We will’t simply kick the can of sustainability down the street anymore.”
WhatIF, based mostly in Singapore, first dropped its merchandise in Australia, New Zealand, Ghana and Malaysia. Within the U.S., the model debuted in Might 2022 and is now obtainable 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 through Amazon.
