Work / Solar Foods
Solar Foods
Making food out of thin air feel like food.
- Client
- Solar Foods
- Project
- Brand narrative, product brand launch and global launch strategy
- Year
- 2021–2023
- Sector
- Food technology
- My role
- Product narrative · Product brand launch · Launch strategy
- Themes
- Sustainability, Technology, Future systems, Transformation
- Sheet
- 02
I developed the product narrative for Solein, helping turn a microbial protein grown from carbon dioxide and electricity into a food brand people could imagine eating. The work took Solein from scientific breakthrough to culinary proposition and helped prepare the world for an entirely new way of producing food.
01 System
A breakthrough that needed another layer of meaning
Solar Foods had created something that challenged familiar assumptions about where food comes from. Solein is a protein-rich ingredient produced through microbial fermentation using carbon dioxide, hydrogen and electricity. Its production can operate independently of conventional agriculture, weather and arable land.
That scientific story was extraordinary. Commercialisation demanded another layer of meaning. Food companies, investors, regulators, chefs and consumers needed to imagine Solein as something that could belong in actual food.
02 Story
From the science pages to the culinary pages
Avidly had worked with Solar Foods since 2017 on its vision, mission, messaging and brand strategy. In 2021, we helped launch Solein as a product brand. My particular contribution was its product narrative.
The science provided enormous news value: a protein produced using air and electricity, with no dependence on photosynthesis or traditional farming. The brand needed to make the outcome as compelling as the method.
So the narrative put food at the centre. Solein could become part of familiar dishes, recipes and eating experiences. Its versatility became a way of helping audiences picture a future that otherwise sounded like science fiction.
From the science pages to the culinary pages.
03 Society
A world ready for a new ingredient
Solein was also an unusual B2B branding problem. The immediate audiences included food manufacturers, investors, regulators, decision-makers and opinion leaders. The brand had to create familiarity and desirability years before mass-market products could appear.
The wider communications platform built a simple idea around a complicated technology: food out of thin air. The objective was a world ready to welcome the new ingredient.
04
Taste of the Future
Solein received its first novel-food regulatory approval in Singapore in September 2022, and Singapore became the launch market for the first official Solein tasting on 25 May 2023. The launch was built around two ideas: “Taste of the Future” and “The Unchained Food Chain.”
The experience used food itself to tell the story. Dishes connected problems in the existing food system, including land degradation, water use, deforestation, overfishing and biodiversity loss, with a future in which food production could place far less pressure on those systems. Solein appeared throughout the menu, so the proposition could be experienced through sight, smell, texture and taste.
05
What happened next
These are Solar Foods’ own milestones, which followed the strategy. They show the idea becoming real.
On 15 June 2023, the Singapore restaurant Fico introduced a Solein Chocolate Gelato, making Solein available to consumers for the first time. Solar Foods opened Factory 01 in April 2024, bringing production to commercial scale. Solein received self-affirmed GRAS status in the United States in September 2024 and launched there in November.
Selected artefacts
- My role
I developed the Solein product narrative, as part of Avidly’s product brand launch and global launch strategy.
- What we created
- Product narrative
- Product brand launch
- Global launch strategy
- Recognition
- 2022 SABRE Awards EMEA: Winner, Chemicals & Industrials, “Solein, the most revolutionary protein in the world”.
- 2022 EMEA IN2 SABRE Awards: Certificate of Excellence, Best in Brand Narratives.
