Dinner With Goop

Campaign • Client: Ajinomoto • Creative direction, copywriting

Here’s the thing about MSG (monosodium glutamate)

Despite plenty of scientific evidence proving its safety, it’s gotten a bad rap thanks to decades of xenophobic misinformation.

And now, the clean-eating community has incorrectly labeled MSG as “unclean”. Their source? The world’s most influential clean-eater of all, Oscar-winning actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow. Yes, that Gwyneth.

For years, her platform has spread fear and misinformation about MSG to our target audience. So when Ajinomoto, the largest producer of MSG, asked us to help disrupt this false narrative, we knew leveraging GP’s unparalleled star power was key.

But despite our best efforts to meet, she didn’t respond.

So we had a wild idea:

What if we could make her the influencer of our campaign—without her actually participating?

It started with a video

The one to the left specifically.

In it, actress-comedian Jenny Yang publicly invited Gwyneth to a friendly, fact-based discussion about MSG over a delicious, umami-filled dinner prepared by Instagram-favorite chef Saeng Douangdara.

To build some hype, we launched paid ads targeting Goop staffers, made a site debunking “clean eating” myths, and whipped up a whole tasting menu with popular food creators that we also turned into cooking content on social.

Then we debunked a ton of common myths about MSG.

Stuff like this 👉

And that 👇

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As for our dinner…

We chose a venue just steps away from Goop HQ, saved a seat for our guest of honor, and stacked the rest with members of the media. As expected, Gwyneth didn’t show, but her absence only fueled the media storm as countless headlines called out Goop’s unscientific policies, while overwhelming support from consumers flooded the internet.

Our campaign’s unstoppable momentum around this conversation finally urged Goop to take action: all over their site, articles were quietly updated, and incorrect claims were revised—or simply disappeared.

By the end, we had tracked a massive change in consumer perception around MSG, with an increase of 30.9 million Americans who are fine with the ingredient’s inclusion in foods.