Allplants’ super clever Veganuary campaign

According to Stef Johnstone (the brains behind this campaign) the challenge was: "How do we excite people about vegan food when the word vegan comes with so much baggage?"

And seeing as this January became our their biggest sales month, with record signups & reactivations, we'd say they smashed it.

Love it.

We love it when brands build campaigns around customer insights and just a really deep, proper give-a-shit-ness about customers that aren't fully bought in yet.

(And if you're an emerging brand or doing something different, that's a lot of people. Even craft beer in 2026 still has huge misconceptions from the general public.)

And that's exactly what Allplants played off here.

They knew that the plant-based category had a perception problem with people outside of their core audience.

It was everyone else that needed a bit more convincing.

They were talking to the flexitarian who's trying to eat a bit less meat. The person who'd eat a vegan meal on Tuesday but still wants a bacon sandwich on Sunday morning. The person who is worried that becoming a vegan (or eating less animal products) means giving up that one thing they love, like cheese or their latte.

Most plant-based brands accidentally reinforce that gate-keepy-ness.

The earnest tone, the guilt-adjacent messaging, the "you won't miss it" stuff... all feel like they're written for people who have clearly never grappled with the reality of never having a cheese toasty ever again.

And that's why Allplants' campaign was so damn good.

Their "0% judgement" line was a flag in the sand that the usual plant-based gatekeeping doesn't apply here. They're saying "you're welcome at this table whether you're fully vegan, mostly flexitarian, or just a bit curious."

And in the welcome email, they double down on this by empathising with the struggle right off the bat.

And that's the move we love.

Because so much copywriting advice tells you to overcome objections. And that's true, for sure. But that doesn't mean you have to push back against objections.

"You think plant-based food is boring? Here are five reasons it's not." is technically being persuasive but emotionally, it's adversarial.

It puts you on opposite sides, which causes customers to dig their heals in. (Psychologists call this reactance. The more you push back against someone's objection, the more committed to it they become.)

Allplants do something different. They meet the objection with empathy. "We know it's hard. We've been there."

It's not a pushback. It's not saying the customer is wrong. They're just saying "hey, look we get it. We struggle with it too. Here's something that makes it a little easier."

Which means there's no teenager brain saying "hey, no. I'm not budging." The audience is more open to the idea.

Super smart.

Nick this for your brand: when you're facing an objection, try empathising with it before you answer it. Don't start with the counter-argument. Start from a place of "yeah, we get it."

Acknowledge that the hesitation is reasonable. Then offer the gentlest possible version of the next step they can take.