Impossible Foods hires Apple alum Steve Turner to lead marketing

Impossible Foods has hired former Apple creative leader Steve Turner as chief experience officer. 

In the newly created role, Turner is reporting directly to Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown. Turner is working remotely from Los Angeles. 

Turner is in charge of building brand awareness, accelerating the global consumer movement to a sustainable food system and recruiting top-tier talent. He is also a member of the company’s senior executive team and the leader of marketing at the company, said Impossible Foods chief communications officer Rachel Konrad. 

Turner was not immediately available for comment. 

In 2017, Turner cofounded Sublime, a 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 Apple’s Media Arts Lab.

Earlier in his career, Turner was a creative director at Nike and art director for Adidas.

Last week, Impossible Foods launched its first national advertising campaign for the Impossible Burger. The advertisements say that Impossible Burger, which contains no animal ingredients, is “meat for meat lovers — made from plants.”

It has also named boutique firm Mighty as its US PR agency partner. Allison+Partners, which previously handled that work, is continuing to help the brand with social media and celebrity influencer relations.

Impossible Foods, which is looking for a new global headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area, has doubled its headcount in the past year and plans to hire hundreds more employees throughout 2021. The company 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. 

One year ago, the Impossible Burger was sold in 148 grocery stores and 20,000 restaurants in the U.S. Now, the burger is in more than 20,000 grocery stores and 30,000 restaurants across the country.