Beyond Meat adds pictures of dead animals to packaging, sales surge

Beyond Meats surprised the package design world last month when they revealed their surprisingly macabre new look.

According to brand manager Collin Guerre, the new labels—which contain graphic imagery of deceased animals alongside catchy headlines like “Piggy go squealy!” and “DIE, CHICKENS, DIE!”—demonstrate just how counterintuitive package design can be.

“Who saw this coming, right? But we really try to be innovative over here at Beyond Meat, and during one of our most recent brainstorms, someone brought up the idea of really playing to our meat-eating consumers’ blood-thirsty nature. We took that idea as far as it could go, and this is where it lead us.”

Guerre continued, “It’s the cigarette packaging approach, but in reverse, right? So, you know how cigarettes have to have graphic images of really disgusting diseased lungs and stuff as a way to deter smoking? This is the opposite. We show our meat-loving consumers what’s NOT going to happen when they purchase our product, and then reverse psychology does the rest.”

BYND’s stock price is up 30% over the course of the last month since the packaging innovation hit shelves.