The Future of Protein from the First World to South Africa at WPP Stream
“I’m here to talk about farting,” I announced on stage to 300 founders, media, and digital professionals from the the UK, Europe, and Africa. “Specifically, cow farting.”
“But really,” I told the crowd at December’s WPP Stream Africa conference, “I want to talk about seaweed, how it’s helping cows to fart less, and its incredible potential as the future of protein.”
If Stream were a normal conference, I would’ve delivered a talk on community building because of my role as community director at Summit, or perhaps yet another talk about the future of content marketing drawing from my agency days. But Stream isn’t a normal conference, in fact, it’s an unconference — and what I love about this format is that it encourages the brightest and most talented people who come as attendees to share their passions and skills that lie beyond their normal day jobs.
Stream is about bringing together a unique set of attendees who are prepared to pitch in and build the experience together — which is why I also taught a 7am yoga class (even though I’m not a regular teacher) and why we drove our 1964 refurbished Vespa ice cream side car from Cape Town to Stellenbosch to serve my partner and fellow attendee Yann Rey’s new brand of ice cream — called Life Unframed — during the Midnight Madness Cooking session. Unsurprisingly, the vegan matcha, raspberry coconut, turmeric latte, and dirty sea salt chocolate flavors were a huge hit.
The next day, we played with flying drones, green screens, holographic photobooths, and drank coffee in a cone. We debated what’s considered cheating in a world with virtual reality sex after playing in our own worlds making virtual ice cream cones.
We then attended a talk by the head of digital at a fast food brand — where we grilled, or rather deep fried the speaker on corporate responsibility in a world that is trying to fight obesity and end factory farming. We were met with hot debate and told that “we were missing the point” because people are poor and hungry and they need to spend a minimum amount of cash for a maximum amount of calories to “feed the gut”. The fast food brand said they are targeting customers who do not care about where the food is from or if it is healthy for them; their target consumers care about feeding themselves and their children quickly and efficiently. It was a hard and shortsighted truth to swallow but segued seamlessly into my talk on the future of protein.
In the USA, our company Beyond the Shoreline is working with executive chef Will Horowitz and the nonprofit Greenwave to create delicious products like kelp jerky and kelp sausages. All of our products are free from common allergens like gluten and dairy, and we’re planning to sell to moms at Whole Foods as well as through online channels to healthy snackers and casual vegans. We are creating protein-rich, plant-based products that taste as delicious as meat, putting us in a category with extremely well-funded startups like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. All while also supporting the future of regenerative ocean farming — a new industry that will transform our current understanding of eating sustainably.
The crowd — about 35 high-ranking communications strategists and execs from WPP agencies — was stoked on the concept, and so I asked for their help and ideas around communicating such a new and disruptive product to the market.
Interestingly, South Africa is home to hundreds of edible species of seaweed and currently harvests wild kelp for use in fertilizers, supplements, and beauty products. In a country where biltong is a major food group, surely our kelp jerky could be a hit? The conversation became more relative and interesting when we started exploring the potential of bringing Greenwave’s ocean farming methods and our healthy plant-based protein mission to a country with over 30% unemployment and a large population of people who can’t afford to eat, let alone afford to eat healthy. Could we train the unemployed to be responsible ocean stewards? Could kelp protein meals replace buckets of KFC?
It was then that I started to wrestle with the fact that many business ideas I think are innovative in the USA are primarily solving for first world problems. Beyond the Shoreline is a mission-focused business in the developed world, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But could there be a mission beyond our current mission?
This line of self-questioning is why we attend conferences today, and to meet new people and expand our current ways of thinking. It’s why I work for Summit and it’s why I traveled for 24 hours from New York to Cape Town to attend WPP Stream Africa (well, and for the vegan chocolate ice cream at Unframed).
Greenwave’s ocean farms can grow incredible amounts of food in small areas — about 25 tons of greens and 250,000 shellfish per acre in five months. If you were to create a network of these ocean farms totaling the size of Washington state, you could feed the planet every day.
So while we are currently focused on the U.S., and creating delicious products there, my mind is also now on how we can create worldwide impact in the years to come. We have an incredible opportunity to grow food the right way, provide better jobs, help to restore our ecosystem, and inevitably, feed the planet.
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