How Planted Translated Category Entry Point Insights Into Brand Strategy

Planted, a Swiss-based FoodTech company, was founded in 2019 with the mission to create meat alternatives that rival animal-sourced proteins – with no additives, better sustainability, and more efficient food production methods. Through their proprietary bio-structuring approach, they harvest plant proteins (such as pea, soy, and sunflower) to process, form, ferment, cut, marinate, and package up for sale. Planted uses only natural ingredients throughout their process – a key differentiator within the plant-based meat market. 

As the plant-based alternative category continues to scale, companies like Planted are left to balance rapid innovation with quality, ethics, and competitive positioning. Using quantilope as an end-to-end solution to fuel these business decisions with real consumer insights, Planted has uncovered perhaps the most actionable insights of all: Category Entry Points (CEPs). 

“CEPs are very differentiating and valuable for both established and new brands. When you understand CEPs, you know how to enter the market and how to invite consumers into the category."

- Joanna Katharina Lazar, CMO at Planted

The challenge of global growth: Physical vs. Mental Availability

Brand growth is one of the biggest focuses (and frustrations) for brands. To retain current customers and effectively reach new ones, a brand has to constantly evolve. To fuel this necessary growth, many brands turn to market research for consumer insights that will help them make confident business decisions. 

However, today’s marketers and insights leaders are faced with a major problem: traditional market research is slow, costly, and doesn’t always yield actionable insights. Knowing the limitations of traditional brand tracking research, Planted knew they needed a different and modernized approach to stand out in their space. To grow their global brand quickly and efficiently, Planted recognized that having their brand available on the shelves (Physical Availability) isn't enough if consumers aren’t thinking of their brand in relevant buying situations (Mental Availability). 

To track Mental Availability over time, Planted adopted quantilope’s automated Better Brand Health Tracking solution: an approach from Professor Jenni Romaniuk’s work at the prestigious Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science (EBI). Not only is the approach scientifically-backed, it’s also fully automated so Planted gains quick competitive context about the plant-based meat industry while also monitoring specific, focused occasions that they can build into their branding efforts (e.g., "To try something new", "As a source of protein", or "As a quick and easy meal").

Planted’s strategic playbook

Working with quantilope's Consumer Intelligence Platform, Planted began their BBHT approach in three key phases: 

1. Identify relevant CEPs for their target markets (leveraging quantilope’s Single Implicit Association Test to capture implicit reaction times)
2. Quantify the influence of each CEP and evaluate whitespaces 
3. Execute on strategic CEPs by developing new messaging and communication tactics

Despite being able to track many CEPs within a BBHT study, Planted prioritized by greatest impact. They chose six CEPs to focus on in the long-term and two CEPs to focus on within the next year:

• Eat something that tastes like meat 

• For BBQ

By strategically selecting which CEPs to focus on, Planted ensures their marketing budget drives the maximum return on investment and solidifies their position in consumers' minds for the most critical moments. Every piece of creative, from digital ads to in-store displays, is centered around their chosen CEPs. This vital link between deep consumer understanding and impactful creative execution is what separates market leaders from competing brands. 

The result: A blueprint for sustainable global growth

Planted’s commitment to a data-driven, CEP-focused strategy paid off dramatically. By moving past simple demographic targeting and focusing on the underlying triggers of purchase behavior, they achieved:

• Rapid, sustainable global growth: Efficient expansion into new markets by understanding local CEP nuances.
• Optimal resource allocation: Brand positioning efforts, brand communications, and product developments are now hyper-focused on CEPs as the moments that drove actual conversions. 
• Industry recognition: Cementing their status as an innovator in the FoodTech space as a 2025 'Top 5 Global GreenTech Company' by Time Magazine and Statista. 

This Planted success story is a powerful reminder for every global brand across any industry: in the race for market share, the most important space to occupy is not the shelf  – it's in consumers' minds. By diligently identifying and marketing around the moments that truly matter, brands can build the Mental Availability and Mental Advantages necessary to thrive in any competitive category.

In the words of Planted’s CMO: 

“The more CEPs you credibly own, the more memory structures you create and activate in purchase situations, the more you sell.”

To learn more about Planted's successful use of CEPs, check out our on-demand webinar or get in touch below!