Most of them are household names. https://bit.ly/2lV02hb
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In the first six months of 2019, Huel spent $22m (ÂŁ17.9m) on more than 400 unique creative executions on the social platform. These ads generated 2.5 billion impressions and were targeted at men, users of phones with Googleâs Android operating system and people from London.
Why targeted at men? Bit sexist there Huel. Especially as the Vegan Society stats state that 63% of vegans in the UK are female. Are you assuming there are fewer busy female professionals who want the convenience of Huel?
Also on the city front, Bristol is the city with the highest percentage of vegans followed by Edinburgh, Manchester and then London.
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I donât work for Huel.
Huel spends their advertising money based on evidence on where it would be most effective. Men are known to be striving towards efficiency, hence Huel is something that would definitely suit them.
Huel is designed for everyone, but clearly appeals to men more.
Vegan Society stats state that 63% of vegans in the UK are female
And vegans make up a minuscule portion of society, plus the report from last year shows that most vegans do not remain on a vegan diet long term. Hence it makes no sense for Huel to target vegans.
Are you assuming there are fewer busy female professionals who want the convenience of Huel?
That is a very safe assumption.
What wonderfully lazy sexist stereotyping. Care to provide one single jot of evidence for either of those statements? Or are you just being deliberately insulting?
Incidentally it would appear that women are more âefficientâ at successfully managing their food intake given the latest figures for obesity in the UK show that 67.2% of men are obese vs. 61.5% of women. So maybe we arenât in fact known for eating cake. Possibly women are more aware of what constitutes a balanced, nutritionally complete diet. Or possibly all sweeping generalisations like this are bullshit. 
Why?
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I donât disagree.
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Vegans make up a growing percentage of the population, but yes it is a small percentage. I suspect you are correct that Huel doesnât spend most of their budget on targetting that market (and nor would I despite being vegan), but I reckon some will go that way as vegans are quite good at promoting vegan products via social media so why not spend some advertising budget on getting others to do much of your work? I know many vegans who have been vegan for over a decade, and quite a few, like myself over two; I am not naive enough to think that everyone will stick to the regime, especially those that incorrectly link veganism with diet. Veganism is purely the desire not to use or abuse animals for any purpose, nothing more, nothing less.
Huel is still a niche product, but like it or not the majority of users are currently male, and it is the sort of product that does appeal to men. It is also a product that is linked by many to weight loss. That was not the original aim of Huel, but I suspect the majority of women that use Huel products use it for weight loss, but then again many men use if for the same reason. The data says it targets London, again many Huel users donât live in the capital, but it is a good place to target for busy professionals.
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Just seems a bit shortsighted not to be targeting 51% of your potential user base. Especially as current usage is so heavily skewed (65% vs 35%) according to the only data I could find online for male vs. female Huel customers.
I agree it makes sense to target large cities to hit the stated target market of 25-45 year old busy professionals but was surprised it was London only.
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Is it possible that Huel have set the parameters of their adverts in such a way that Facebook shows them to more men than women, rather than Huel consciously targeting men specifically?
For example, I run an amdram group and our adverts focus on certain key words/likes - and it just so happens that our adverts typically reach women, especially 35-50 (iirc) year old women, without us trying to target that specific age group.
Could be the same thing happening here.
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Entirely possible Iâm sure. The article I was quoting from stated that they were targeting men, people with Android OS phones and people from London which implies it was a deliberate profiling rather than keyword based but who knows?
Would be interesting to get some feedback from the Huel team.
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To be fair, the only females I know who use Huel are on this forum and my girlfriend who reluctantly drinks RTD.
I donât know any other females who use, or intend to use Huel. Thatâs across three nationwide offices with ~500 employees each, two gyms and a couple of friendship groups.
In the same âbubbleâ, especially at my gyms and offices, I can think of about 10 guys who can be seen chugging away daily and wearing their Huel tees to the gym.
What this says is beyond me and to be honest, I couldnât care less. Worth chipping in though for the folk who are interested.
Iâm not really sure where these numbers have come from, theyâre way off, so is most of their information. Of course we donât ignore 51% of the population.
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Interesting to hear. Itâs the other way around for me. I know of 3 other women that use Huel in my work circle. The only man who did tried it and decided he didnât like it. He did order Berry though 
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We didnât target 2.5 billion impressions at just men. That would be ludicrous. The stats are largely wrong.
We target ads in a number of different ways, we absolutely do test different audiences (men/women;ages;interests etc). Ads that work (i.e. generate clicks/sales etc) will get pushed out further, whereas ads that donât work will get taken down and rethought/retested.
Some valid points here about who is currently buying Huel. There is a skew towards men, based on past surveys and youâre welcome to postulate why that is? Huel is, clearly, suitable for everyone so why are more men than women buying Huel and what can we do to close that gap further?
Being vegan is actually not representative of most our customers, I think thatâs great as well because it shows that Huel can help those that arenât vegan to choose more plant-based food in their diet and thus have a much bigger impact on the environment.
This is true also if you let Facebook choose the audience. Facebook will optimise the audience based on who the advert is working with, and push it out to more accounts it believes to be similar.
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This is definitely one of the biggest strengths and Huel and fundamentally, one of those which benefit the environment the most.
Like it or not, veganism is associated with activism and being part of a movement and in some cases, anarchy. Most of the population hate that. We get enough politics in the news every day, so the view I hear most is âkeep your politics off my plateâ.
Stories like these:
Just add to the view that vegans are typically people with too much money, too much time and too little to worry about finding a vent for the need to be part of something. Check out /r/vegan on Reddit for example.
If someone can come along and present a product that hits the whole market, tells you the facts with no bias or politics and makes you healthier while reducing your impact on the planet, then thatâs brilliant.
The exact same thing happened with Feminism, whereby a small minority turn an absolutely brilliant movement from a logical, peaceful and sensible opinion into a monster whereby non-conformists are automatically the enemy. Man-spreading anyone?
Vegans often say âJust let me eat what I wantâ, when all the rest of the population wants is the same respectâŚ
Interestingly the same applies to me: My wife uses it, but that was due to my influence/advertising of the product. My sister uses it (she is a fitness trainer; I talked to her about the products and she ordered itâŚannoyingly she didnât tell me so didnât get the referral fee, she just said one dayâŚIâve been using Huel on your recommendation; her (male) partner also uses Huel products, and they both love it.
A female friend of mine locally uses it, not through anything I said but via a FB ad. I met up for a coffee one day and she mentioned it in passing; she commutes on the train to London, works in Harley St., for a few hours and commutes home, and finds it an easy and efficient way to eat on the way to and at work.
Another female friend of mine (not locally) also drinks Huel regularly; she works in her own shop and it means she can just drink it in quiet periods throughout the day. Contrary to what I said in an earlier post none of these women use it for weight loss, but for convenience. So they are all long term (over a year), regular Huel consumers. Another local female friend of mine was interested. I gave her some various boosts and premix flavours, but after a week or two she gave up, as she didnât get on with it. None of these apart from the last one are vegan; my friend who commutes is vegetarian. The others are omnivores.
I have promoted Huel on various vegan forums and know that people male and female have bought it; I donât keep tally of whether male or female or whether they continue long term. I suspect a lot of people try it and donât rebuy it. Itâs still a relatively niche product.
As I work from home I donât get to meet many people to thrust my positive opinion of Huel on.
With Facebook advertising, you can drill down and target specific targetted audiences, or go with a more general audience. Itâs not always easy to get it right, in fact, if anyone from Huel would like to give me pointers to make it work (I donât have that sort of budget LOL) please feel free.
With regards to global vegan population, yes I agree that it is predominantly growing in Europe, USA etc. and not in the East, but the data pertained to UK, not worldwide trends so I still stand by my comments on that.
As a long term vegan I can assure you that the last thing vegans get from the majority of the population, is a respect of their ethical choices. There are plenty of pro- and anti- vegan viewpoints on Reddit. Youâve just cherry picked.
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I once saw a vegan be sarcastic to a swan. Checkmate!
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There is nothing wrong with that. As a vegan I believe all creatures should be treated as equals. You may have noticed I am sarcastic to a lot of humans. Swans should be afforded the same level of interaction. Whatâs good for the goose is good for the cob.
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Itâs like my favourite joke.
At last my nan went vegan last week after 86 years of being an omnivore. Her funeral is next Tuesday.
I live in rural North Yorkshire and have been receiving Huel adverts on my social media daily for around four years! I finally caved in one day and clicked the link from an Instagram advert, been using Huel on & off since
I usually ignore all social media advertising but for some reason the Huel advert sparked an interest inside me, glad it did
Iâm also a middle aged male, non vegan non city dweller, so expect I donât fit the target demographic
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