Impossible Foods used the print real estate of one news media brand to criticize another, taking out a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times to rebuff Bloomberg Businessweek after the business news outlet ran a cover story that suggested plant-based meat alternatives have become “just another fad.”

The print ad is a pointed rebuke to the latest in a number of stories from high-profile media outlets in recent months that call attention to the tribulations of faux meat pioneers. The ad features a Reddit thread in which users discuss plant-based meat products. Impossible also posted a blog on its website refuting some of the Bloomberg article’s points. Both the ad and the blog were created in-house by Impossible in a matter of days. 

“The NYT ad wasn't about picking a fight with a media company. It was about quickly responding and sticking up for our category, our company, and our mission, and getting our side out there,” Leslie Sims, chief marketing and creative officer at Impossible Foods, said in a statement. She officially joined the company from Deloitte Digital on Jan. 1.

“The Reddit thread was intended as a lighthearted poke, and to demonstrate that everyone has an opinion about where plant-based meat stands right now,” Sims continued. “The media has theirs, Reddit users have theirs and in our blog, we shared ours.”

The catalyst for Impossible’s rebuttal was a Jan. 19 article by Bloomberg food reporter Deena Shanker, titled “Fake Meat Was Supposed to Save the World. It Became Just Another Fad,” which lays bare some of the headwinds that the faux meat industry as a whole is facing: sliding grocery and restaurant sales; inconsistent or nonexistent nutritional benefits relative to the so-called “real thing”; and the challenge of making permanent inroads with meat-eaters, just to name a few. On the cover of the Jan. 23 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, the headline “beyond impossible” alluded to two brands in the plant-based industry, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

The story, which clocks in at over 4,000 words, includes input from the likes of an investment portfolio manager, a fast food chain CEO, a mother in New Jersey and Impossible Foods’ own CEO, Peter McGuinness, who joined the company in March 2022 from yogurt maker Chobani.

It also does not solely focus on perceived negatives. It makes clear, for example, that Impossible is “faring better” than its largest rival, Beyond Meat, and that there is still a reliable consumer base for animal-free meat alternatives, despite a bit of the early craze around such products wearing off.

“We stand by our reporting,” a Bloomberg News spokesperson told Ad Age.

‘Leave the rest to Reddit’

In its full-page counter to the Bloomberg story, Impossible Foods’ response at first appears to be a fairly light-hearted nod to its products’ flavor, leading with “When stories in the media are hating on plant-based meat, we throw our burgers on the grill & leave the rest to Reddit.”

But below that, a screenshotted Reddit post alludes to much more serious insinuations: that so-called Big Meat and Bloomberg are secretly in cahoots to make Impossible Foods and co. look bad, and that the New York-based media company is a regular disseminator of inaccurate reporting.

“I suspect it’s coming form [sic] a news outlet paid money to write a [sic] article by people who make money from meat sales,” one Redditor, whose username is blurred out, is seen writing in the New York Times ad, which ran in the paper’s Jan. 22 edition. “It’s Bloomberg so i [sic] would take it with a giant bag of salt,” reads another reply below that comment.

At the bottom of the ad, readers are prompted to check out Impossible Foods’ website, where the company released a blog post elaborating on its gripes with the Bloomberg article.

Also published on Jan. 22, the post calls out Bloomberg’s “subjective, one-sided take” that it likens to an opinion piece, criticizing everything from “editorialized framing” to the news outlet’s choice of lead photo, which is a frozen Beyond Burger patty.

The blog points out that, unlike some refrigerated options, frozen plant-based meat, chicken and seafood alternatives saw a collective uptick in sales in 2022. That figure appears to be referencing dollar sales, though, as total sales by volume were slightly down from the highs achieved a couple of years ago, data from retail analytics firm IRI shows.

It also claims that Impossible has achieved record sales every year since it “first launched on menus,” despite not investing in “any sustained marketing or advertising”—though Impossible has advertised over the years, including a national campaign developed by Wieden+Kennedy Portland—before concluding with “We like to think we’re speaking for all of the players in the plant-based space when we say—we’re just getting started.”

And looking at Impossible as a standalone company, it may very well have room to continue its solid growth. With the debut of products such as plant-based chicken nuggets and aggressive pushes into grocery stores, the California-based company has soared to the top of its competitive set, seeing more than 50% retail sales growth across the board last year—a fact that is mentioned in the Bloomberg story.