Behind probiotic brand Seed’s ad approach, from a celebrity TikTok to Times Square nature videos

Last August, Gwyneth Paltrow made headlines for what seemed, at first glance, to be a woefully executed ad for Seed, the DTC probiotics company. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here Posted to Seed’s TikTok, the 19-second video showed Paltrow, sporting a chain necklace and blue-light glasses, talking about Seed’s DS-01 Daily Synbiotic supplement—before getting drowned out by her son steaming milk in the background. The video cut out practically midsentence, without Paltrow even saying the brand name. It immediately went viral, drawing curiosity, scorn and plenty of memes. @seed Gwyneth Paltrow loves our DS-01® Daily Synbiotic! Save 30% today with her exclusive code: GWYNETH30 ♬ Promoted Music - seed Cut to New Year’s Eve, when Seed unveiled its first out-of-home campaign. Launched on a giant digital billboard above the thousands of revelers in Times Square that night, the 15-second video—which ran regularly in the ensuing weeks—didn’t feature any of Seed’s products. Rather, it mostly showed footage of a bird sitting on the head of a deer. “Please enjoy 15 seconds of natural warmth,” it read. Though vastly different from each other, the two pieces of communication encapsulate what Seed likes to call its “anti-advertising” approach. The Paltrow video was actually a happy accident. While the Goop founder is a Seed investor, the brand told Ad Age that the video was unplanned—and that Paltrow, who posted it on her Instagram Story, was not paid. Still, amplifying it through Seed’s channels—turning it into a de facto ad—showed the brand’s willingness to embrace imperfection (and if need be, get roasted in the process). The nature billboard, meanwhile, showed Seed’s instinct to think bigger at the brand level in a category that’s heavily product driven. More efforts in Times Square have followed, as the media buy continues throughout the year. Both efforts are reflective of Seed’s long-term strategy to disrupt the supplements category—a plan that’s gathering further momentum through the recent hire of the company’s first chief creative officer. A strategy rooted in product As much as Seed often goes beyond product advertising, everything is rooted in the product, in the sense that the marketing is meant to mirror the disruptive nature of probiotics themselves, said Ara Katz, co-founder and co-CEO. “The microbiome completely reshapes the way we’ve always thought about health—our understanding of biology, our understanding of our bodies, our understanding of our connectivity to the living world, to Earth, to each other,” she said. “We use that same construct to say, ‘How can the brand itself be disruptive to some of the traditional ways we think about marketing?’” A number of Seed initiatives have put this strategy to work. Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here One campaign, “#GiveAShit for Science,” crowdsourced the world’s largest database of stool images to destigmatize conversations around poop and gut health. Another, “The Most Sh*ttiest NFT,” featured an NFT made from human feces—again reframing the value of poop. The brand’s “Learn to Earn” initiative mimics streetwear drops, but with limited-edition merch made available only to those who learn about science. For example, a custom defecation posture modification device (DPMD) was unlocked for those who took a bathroom-themed science class over a series of three emails—and then passed a pop quiz. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Seed (@seed) Seed also takes a novel approach to influencers. All paid endorsers must first “graduate” from an educational program so they know the science behind the brand. The “courses” appear as archived stories on the @SeedUniversity Instagram. Influencer marketing as a practice and supplements as a category are similar, Katz said, in that both are largely unregulated and tend to rank low in trust. Bringing accountability to both, based on science, boosts that trust, she said. “We have an entire module [in Seed University] about learning about FTC regulations of what it means to be accountable as an influencer, in addition to basically an entire science course,” said Katz. “For us, it’s about, ‘How can we imbue education and accountability into an area of marketing that’s so rife with opportunism, lack of regulation and misinformation?” The creativity of Seed’s campaigns is what ties it all together, combining the trust of the science with the approachability that comes from brand voice and personality. “We’re a science company,” said Katz. “All these things are reflections of a value system and belief that doing extraordinary science to impact health comes with accountability and responsibility. It all stems from who we are. From there, we figure out how to do it with a wink.” A nature pitch in the heart of consumer culture The Times Square billboard is another example of Seed’s contrarian approach in action, but it’s also a community building project. The deer video was sourced from @earth on Instagram, an account with almost 7 million followers that Seed manages and which features videos and photos of the natural world. Seed’s curation of @earth fits into its framing of probiotics as not just good for people, but good for the world. The brand sees environmentalism as a core tenet and subscribes to what the World Health Organization has termed “One Health,” which recognizes the interconnectivity of all life on Earth. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here Highlighting nature in Times Square is an unexpected, even subversive move in keeping with the brand’s ethos, Katz said. “As a brand that’s in some ways noncommercial, we were like, ‘Let’s go to the center of it all—to the greatest billboards on Earth,’” she said. “First, we wanted to harness the community,” said Charles Fulford, who joined Seed last fall as its first chief creative officer. “But we also wanted to go to the craziest, busiest couple of blocks on the planet and bring some value to folks there.” Seed supports the planet in its business model, with some profits from consumer sales supporting environmental research and solutions under SeedLabs, which explores ecosystems beyond the human body. To follow up the deer video, Seed held a contest for the creators who contribute to @earth to select the next piece of creative to feature. The winner was Kévin Pagès (@kevinpages_), whose clips showing the green mountains on the south coast of Iceland soon went up on the Times Square board. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Earth (@earth) The Times Square activation is “obviously really difficult to measure,” Fulford said. “But we’re looking at a different temporal scale. It’s not, ‘What did that do this week?’ It’s much more, ‘What is the trend over a longer period of time?’ What are the reactions to it in sentiment analysis, as opposed to ‘Did it convert?’” TV and the future of the brand Seed has also been creating its first TV spots, running on connected TV, that focus more on the products while retaining an artful vibe. “It’s been [an] interesting balancing act—this spectrum of pure brand and pure emotional hook on the one hand, and then conversion, sales, performance stuff on the other,” Fulford said. “We’re obviously a business, and we need to sell products. But this is a little bit more artful, a little bit more emotive.” Katz and Fulford said the brand will continue to evolve—Fulford has been leading ongoing discussions about refreshing the brand identity—and the solid foundation of merging science, education, environmentalism and creativity is what allows Seed to explore new expressions of its brand. “Brands also can’t be too precious in how they show up in the world,” said Fulford. “People want realness and honesty and authenticity. I believe that kind of unpolished rawness is going to be something we will showcase more and more with brand moving forward.” “People deeply care about who they buy things from. And we deeply care about science and communication and education,” said Katz. “That perception of our brand contributes not just to our sales today—it’s what gives us the permission to expand and do more. There’s something to be said for giving people a more pleasant experience than a sales pitch. We have a beautiful road map that goes way beyond where we are today.” Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here

Behind probiotic brand Seed’s ad approach, from a celebrity TikTok to Times Square nature videos

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