Daily Buzz: An “Impossible” Path to Leadership

It’s been hard to ignore the rise of meat analogues of late, which have evolved from sleepy corners of the grocery store to buzzed-about parts of the fast-food menu.

(Just yesterday, KFC announced it was getting in on the game  (opens in a new tab) with Beyond Meat.)

But beyond surprisingly exacting veggie burgers, companies like Impossible Foods have created unexpected entrepreneurs—whose passion for their corporate missions has led them into leadership roles they didn’t expect to see themselves in.

One of those people is Pat Brown, a biochemistry professor who in another life created a nonprofit  (opens in a new tab) that reinvented academic publishing for the internet age. According to a new profile in Inc.  (opens in a new tab), he didn’t see himself becoming a founder and leader once again, but the passion for his mission led him to create Impossible Foods, where he serves as CEO.

“I couldn’t have imagined myself doing this,” Brown told the magazine. “But the most powerful, subversive tool on earth is the free market. If you can take a problem and figure out a solution that involves making consumers happier, you’re unstoppable.”

Brown’s story highlights the way that some leaders don’t seek a spot in the executive suite—but because of passion for a broader mission, it finds them.

And now you can find the fruit of Brown’s passion at your closest Burger King.

TikTok Won’t Stop

I get it. You don’t know what TikTok is and you don’t really want to know. But we’re in marketing, so we need to know what it is. I went ahead and did some research for you. You’re welcome. https://t.co/ZgISTBjYn0  (opens in a new tab) #marketing  (opens in a new tab) #socialmedia  (opens in a new tab) #tech  (opens in a new tab) #assnchat  (opens in a new tab) pic.twitter.com/eydsEyFDBa  (opens in a new tab)

— wessovis (@wessovis) August 27, 2019  (opens in a new tab)

It feels like it’s been a while since we had a social network that went over every old person’s head, doesn’t it? Well, the rise of TikTok has definitely changed that.

Fortunately, there are folks out there willing to explain TikTok to people who aren’t in marketer-preferred demographics. Beyond our own Tim Ebner, who wrote about it in May, there’s this guide  (opens in a new tab) from VP Demand Creation Services’ Wes Sovis, who lays out that whether you should care about something like this comes down to your audience.

“[K]eep in mind that if your target audience is over 24 years old, you’re likely better off investing more time and resources into Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter; at least for the time being, anyway,” he writes.

Other Links of Note

Checklists for days. The Event Manager Blog has more than a dozen separate event-planning checklists  (opens in a new tab) that might come in handy for your annual meeting.

Chromebooks for the enterprise? The Google-owned platform is gaining some business cred thanks to Dell  (opens in a new tab), which retrofitted two of its business-minded Windows machines for Chrome OS.

This CMSWire headline really says it all: “When it Comes to Customer Data, Don’t Be a Creep  (opens in a new tab).”

An Impossible Burger surrounded by veggies. (Alexander Farnsworth/iStock/Getty Images Plus)