Impossible Foods Furthers Brand Awareness With New Hire
Plant-based company Impossible Foods has added Steve Turner to its senior executive team in the newly created role of chief experience officer, putting him in charge of building brand awareness and accelerating the global consumer movement to a sustainable food system.
As both an internal employee and a consultant, Turner has helped guide the creative work for some of the world's most innovative companies, including Apple, Adidas, Apeel, Beautycounter, Bird, Lululemon, Samsung, Quiet, Nike and the BBC.
In 2017, Turner founded Sublime, a strategic creative consulting firm that advises CEOs, CMOs and other executives. Before that, he spent 11 years at Apple, where he rose to global executive creative director for the company's Media Arts Lab. He worked with Steve Jobs and helped launch Apple's stream of disruptive new technologies, among them iPod+iTunes, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Music.
The U.K. native has also worked with Jimmy Iovine at Beats and Phil Knight at Nike.
“Steve Turner was the best of an exceptionally talented group of all-star candidates to take Impossible to the next level of brand love and recognition,” said Dr. Pat Brown, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, which is based in California’s Silicon Valley. “Steve stood out for his unusually broad range of experiences across the technology, entertainment, sports and health industries, in both the United States and Europe. I’m positive he will help transform Impossible Foods into the world’s most beloved brand.”
In his new role, Turner will report directly to Brown.
“Impossible Foods is solving the existential threats of global warming and biodiversity collapse,” Turner said. “The moment I discovered the company’s inspiring mission, I wanted to be a part of it. The team at Impossible Foods is truly making the Impossible possible.”
Turner’s hire comes a week after Impossible Foods’ debut of its first national ad campaign “We Are Meat.” The campaign includes broadcast and cable spots that claim the Impossible Burger is "meat for meat lovers — made from plants."
Turner is the latest executive to join Redwood City, California-based Impossible Foods as it builds its leadership team.
As part of its effort to double its number of its scientists in 2021, Impossible Foods welcomed former Vanderbilt University Biochemistry Department Chair Dr. John D. York, Ph.D., as chief science officer in January. Under York’s leadership, Impossible Foods is rapidly expanding its food technology platform and investing in basic research and innovative capabilities to accelerate next-generation products.
The company has doubled its headcount in the past year and plans to hire hundreds more employees throughout 2021.
The maker of plant-based meat and dairy products has raised approximately $1.5 billion since its founding in 2011, including $700 million in two rounds this year, which it will use to fund the expansion of its technology platform and teams around the world.
