Huel
Performance Creative Strategy
Speculative case study
Quick Overview
Huel already has strong awareness around convenient nutrition. My goal was to identify creative opportunities that weren’t being fully explored in its existing advertising and turn them into three distinct, testable social-first concepts.
The challenge was to move beyond simply communicating convenience and nutrition, and instead make Huel feel more personally relevant, desirable and credible across different use cases.
My approach: audit Huel’s existing paid creative, research audience behaviours, objections and language, identify strategic gaps, and develop three creative hypotheses, each addressing a different audience, problem, or barrier to purchase.
The three directions:
Everyday convenience - Reframe Huel’s convenience around the real moments when people are too busy or mentally drained to plan, prepare or think about food.
Taste scepticism - Address one of the biggest barriers to trial by showing a genuinely sceptical creator discovering that convenience and nutrition don't have to mean compromising on taste.
Broader relevance - Show different people using Huel for completely different reasons, challenging the idea that there is one typical Huel customer.
Each concept was built around a distinct hypothesis, with clear metrics defined for what would confirm or challenge it once in market.
Spec client:
Huel
Role:
Creative audit, research, strategy, ideation, briefing, scripting, evaluation.
Date:
3th of September 2026
Project Breakdown –
Project Breakdown –
01. Paid Creative Audit
Before developing any ideas I audited Huel’s existing creative to understand what the brand was already saying, which audiences and formats dominated, and where the creative territory felt less explored. I reviewed 20 Meta ads from the Meta Ad Library, including 10 most recent video ads, 5 longest-active video ads and 5 longest-active stills. I also reviewed 15 recent organic TikTok posts. For each I noted the hook, creative angle, format, audience and recurring messaging.
Key findings
Problem-led hooks dominate paid creative. 47.4% of the Meta sample opened by identifying a problem, most commonly lack of time, meal prep, hunger, unhealthy lunches or food fatigue.
UGC is the dominant paid video format. 47.4% of the Meta sample used UGC, with podcast-style content accounting for another 10.5%. Personal stories and relatable routines are therefore a major part of how Huel communicates its proposition.
Convenience is the strongest creative territory. 36.8% of the sample primarily focused on saving time or removing friction from eating well, followed by weight loss at 15.8% and nutrition/health at 10.5%.
The paid audience skews towards a young, busy, health-conscious male archetype. Male-led creative was particularly prominent in the video sample, often placing Huel in contexts involving work, commuting, productivity, fitness or being on the go.
Functional benefits are heavily repeated. Protein, fibre, vitamins, calories, price and preparation time appear consistently across the paid creative, giving Huel a clear rational proposition but creating limited variation in the core messaging.
Female-led creative tends to focus more heavily on the product. The female-led ads in the sample frequently centred on flavour discovery, unboxing, product features and preparation, while male-led creative more often used a problem, personal experience or lifestyle tension as the entry point.
Long-running creative reinforces the same core promise. The recurring formula is essentially: busy or tired → Huel removes the effort → eat well and keep moving.
Organic TikTok takes a noticeably different approach. The 15-post sample was dominated by highly produced product content, ASMR, food styling, animation, AI, comedy, documentary and behind-the-scenes storytelling rather than conventional performance hooks or UGC.
Paid vs. organic creative therefore occupy different roles. Meta is primarily functional and conversion-led, while TikTok places greater emphasis on brand personality, product desirability, cultural relevance and visual experimentation.
Hook breakdown: Problem 47.4%, personal experience 15.8%, outcome 10.5%, comparison 5.3%, product introduction 5.3%, objection 5.3%, curiosity 5.3%, story 5.3%.
Format breakdown: UGC 47.4%, static 26.3%, product-led/demo 10.5%, podcast 10.5%, celebrity/talking head 5.3%.
Primary creative angle breakdown: Convenience/time-saving 36.8%, weight loss 15.8%, nutrition/health 10.5%, flavour/product discovery 10.5%, price/nutrition 5.3%, flavour/taste 5.3%, convenience/price 5.3%, breakfast/convenience 5.3%, calorie control 5.3%.
Creator split across ads with identifiable creators: 57.1% male, 42.9% female.
02. Customer and Competitive Research
Objective: Understand what Huel customers need, why they buy, what prevents purchase, and how competitors position meal replacements.
I combined Huel’s paid and organic creative audit, customer sentiment from Reddit discussions, and creative and positioning research across three relevant competitors: Soylent, Yfood and Jimmy Joy.
Customer research focused on motivations, desired outcomes, objections and barriers to adoption. Competitor research focused on positioning, audiences, messaging and dominant creative territories.
Customer Research
Primary motivation: Convenience. The strongest recurring need is removing the effort of planning, preparing or finding food, particularly during busy workdays, commuting, travel and other situations where eating well becomes difficult.
Desired outcomes: Consumers want to stay nourished, full and healthy without adding more effort to their routine. Nutrition becomes particularly valuable when it solves a practical problem rather than simply being a product benefit.
Key audience tension: People want to eat better without having to completely change their lifestyle. The opportunity is to position convenience as an enabler of the life they already want, rather than a compromise on food or health.
Main objection: Taste. Across the category, convenience and nutrition drive positive sentiment, while taste, texture and whether a meal replacement actually feels like food are recurring sources of scepticism.
Audience opportunity: Meal replacements extend beyond the traditional fitness audience. Use cases include busy professionals, fitness, weight management, gaming, commuting, travel and simply avoiding unhealthy meals.
Competitive Landscape
Soylent owns science-backed nutrition. Its clean, clinical branding and educational content focus on nutritional credibility, particularly for vegan and vegetarian consumers.
Yfood owns youthful convenience and taste. Its creative targets a more urban, Gen Z audience and combines functional benefits with creator-style content, humour and taste-led messaging, often directly addressing scepticism around meal replacements.
Jimmy Joy owns playful, accessible nutrition. Its cartoon-led branding, humour, unconventional hooks and affordability make the functional category feel more casual and approachable.
The category is therefore crowded around the same functional claims. Protein, fibre, vitamins, minerals, fullness, convenience and affordability appear consistently across competitors, making these benefits difficult for Huel to own alone.
Huel’s current position: Convenient, nutritionally complete food for busy, goal-oriented consumers, with paid creative heavily centred around productivity, time-saving and functional benefits.
Strategic gap: Competitors demonstrate distinct emotional and cultural territories that Huel’s performance creative explores less heavily. There is an opportunity to combine Huel’s strong functional proof with greater personality, taste appeal, emotional relevance and identity-led storytelling.
03. Key Insights and Creative Opportunities
The research pointed toward one overarching strategic direction: expand Huel from a functional convenience solution into a more culturally relevant food choice, while retaining the clear nutritional and practical benefits that make the product easy to understand.
Three specific opportunities stood out
1. Huel has strong functional proof, but convenience is becoming category language.
Huel’s strongest and longest-running creative repeatedly connects being busy, tired or short on time with a simple solution: eat well without the planning, cooking or cleanup. This is clearly relevant, but competitors such as Yfood and Jimmy Joy communicate many of the same benefits. Convenience, protein, nutrition and fullness are becoming category expectations rather than distinctive reasons to choose Huel.
Creative opportunity: Keep functional proof at the core, but build stronger stories around the people, behaviours and cultural moments that make Huel useful.
2. Huel’s paid creative solves problems, while its organic content shows more personality.
Paid creative is heavily problem-led and conversion-focused, while Huel’s organic content is much more experimental, humorous, visually distinctive and culturally aware. This creates a clear opportunity to bring some of that personality into performance creative without sacrificing clarity or direct-response structure.
Creative opportunity: Develop performance concepts that combine a clear problem or benefit with humour, cultural references, visual experimentation and stronger brand personality.
3. Taste and “is this actually food?” are important barriers that deserve more attention.
Customer and competitor research repeatedly surfaced scepticism around taste, texture and whether meal replacements can genuinely satisfy. Huel’s creative often proves nutritional value, price and preparation time, but gives less attention to overcoming the emotional barrier of choosing Huel over conventional food. Competitors such as Yfood directly address this scepticism through taste-led creator content and reactions.
Creative opportunity: Make taste, fullness and the experience of eating Huel more tangible through genuine reactions, taste tests, comparisons and creator-led demonstrations.
4. Huel can speak to a broader lifestyle than the traditional fitness audience.
The creative audit showed a strong presence of young male, health and fitness-oriented audiences in paid creative, while the wider research revealed use cases spanning work, commuting, gaming, travel, weight management and simply avoiding an unhealthy meal. This suggests an opportunity to expand the audience without losing Huel’s existing performance positioning.
Creative opportunity: Build audience-specific creative around different forms of “I don’t have time for food”, showing how Huel fits into real lifestyles rather than treating nutrition as primarily a fitness goal.
Strategic takeaways
Differentiation: Move beyond category-wide claims like protein, vitamins and convenience by giving the product more personality and cultural relevance.
Proof: Continue using strong functional benefits, but add more tangible proof around taste, fullness and the actual experience of using Huel.
Expansion: Position Huel as a practical food solution for different lifestyles, not only young, health-conscious men.
04. Ideation
Rather than generating a large volume of ideas, I developed three deliberately distinct concepts, each addressing a different audience, tension or creative problem identified through the research. The hooks deliberately use language and recurring phrases found in the audience and creative research, rather than relying solely on generic performance copy. This keeps the concepts grounded in how Huel's audience actually describes their problems, objections and desired outcomes.
1. Food for people who don't have time for food
Strategic opportunity: Huel already owns a strong convenience proposition, but much of the category communicates the same promise: save time, get protein, get your nutrients and keep moving. The opportunity is to make convenience feel more personally relevant by focusing on the real situations that make eating well difficult.
Creative angle: Huel isn't asking you to reorganise your life around food. It's food that works around your life.
The underlying tension: I want to eat well and stay on track, but I don't have the time or energy to plan, prepare and cook another meal.
Hooks
Relatable observation: “Some days, figuring out what to eat feels like another job.”
Personal confession: “Honestly, when I'm busy, food is usually the first thing I stop thinking about.”
Narrative: A creator moves through a genuinely busy day where food repeatedly becomes another task to solve. Meetings, commuting, training or travel leave little time or energy for cooking. Huel removes the preparation and decision-making without turning healthy eating into another project.
Execution: Creator-led social content built around a real day rather than a staged product testimonial. Fast, observational and native to TikTok and Meta, with Huel naturally integrated into the situations where time pressure actually occurs.
2. It doesn't have to be a compromise
Strategic opportunity: Customer and competitor research repeatedly surfaced taste as an important barrier. Convenience and nutrition are strong reasons to consider Huel, but scepticism around taste can prevent people from making the switch. Competitors are already addressing this directly, creating an opportunity for Huel to make the taste experience more central to performance creative.
Creative angle: The convenient choice doesn't have to feel like a compromise. Huel can be quick, nutritious and something you actually enjoy eating.
The underlying tension: I want something quick and nutritious, but I'm worried it won't taste good, feel satisfying or feel like real food.
Hooks
Personal scepticism: “The first thing I was worried about with Huel? The taste.”
Contrarian thought: “Fast food, but actually good for you? I was sceptical.”
Narrative: A creator starts from genuine scepticism about Huel. They try a product or flavour without being given a polished sales pitch and react honestly to the taste. The nutritional and convenience benefits then reinforce a product that has already passed the more important test: would I actually choose this again?
Execution: Creator-led taste test and reaction content. Minimal scripting, genuine reactions and close-up food shots. The content should feel closer to discovering or reviewing a food product than watching a traditional meal-replacement advertisement.
3. What kind of Huel person are you?
Strategic opportunity: Huel's paid creative is concentrated around a relatively consistent audience and problem, while the wider research showed people using meal replacements for work, fitness, travel, weight management and avoiding unhealthy meals. The opportunity is to broaden Huel's relevance without changing what the product does.
Creative angle: There isn't one type of Huel user. People choose Huel because it solves different problems in different parts of their lives.
The underlying tension: I want an easier way to eat well, but my reason for needing convenience is personal to my lifestyle.
Hooks
Relatable observation: “Some people use Huel after the gym. I just can't be bothered to cook.”
Personal realisation: “I never thought I'd be a Huel person. Here's why I am.”
Narrative: Multiple people explain the specific role Huel plays in their lives. One uses it between meetings, another after training, another while travelling, another because they don't want to cook, another because they want an easy way to stay on track. The product stays consistent while the reasons for choosing it change.
Execution: A hybrid of street interview, creator content and fast-cut social storytelling. Each person gets a short, distinct moment rather than a single polished testimonial. The environments and personalities should feel genuinely different, reinforcing the idea that Huel fits into existing lifestyles rather than prescribing one.
Why these three
The concepts were selected because they test three different strategic directions rather than simply three different executions.
01 asks: Can Huel make convenience feel more personally relevant?
02 asks: Can Huel overcome a key emotional barrier by making taste and satisfaction more tangible?
03 asks: Can Huel broaden its audience by showing the different reasons people actually choose the product?
Together, they create a clear strategic progression: make the existing benefit more relevant, overcome a key objection, broaden the audience.
05. Briefing & Scripting
1. Food for people who don't have time for food
Creative Brief
Objective: Make Huel’s convenience proposition feel more personally relevant by showing how it fits into the moments when people are too busy to plan, prepare or think about food.
Audience: Primary - busy professionals and people with demanding schedules who struggle to consistently find time or energy to prepare meals. Secondary - people who regularly skip or compromise on meals when life gets busy.
Key message: You can eat well without making food another task to organise.
Tone: Relatable, honest, observational and social-native.
Format: 35 to 40-second creator-led social video following a genuinely busy day.
Script:
0:00 to 0:04 - Creator moving through a busy morning, checking their phone and calendar while getting ready.
Dialogue: “I don't know what it is, but when I'm busy, I just completely forget to eat.”
0:04 to 0:09 - Quick cuts of emails, meetings, commuting or other parts of the creator’s day.
Dialogue: “I'll look at the time and it would be two o'clock and I've had nothing.”
0:09 to 0:14 - Creator checks the time and realises they haven't eaten. Opens the fridge or looks at their kitchen, then closes it again.
Dialogue: “And by that point I'm definitely not cooking.”
0:14 to 0:19 - Creator reaches for Huel and prepares it quickly.
Dialogue: “On days like this, Huel is exactly what I need.”
0:19 to 0:25 - Close-up of Huel being prepared, followed by the creator eating or drinking it while continuing with their day.
Audio: Natural preparation sounds and environment.
0:25 to 0:30 - Creator back at work, commuting or moving between activities with Huel naturally integrated into the day.
Dialogue: “It takes like two minutes, and that's basically it.”
0:30 to 0:35 - Creator continues their day, now fed and focused.
Dialogue: “I don't have to think about what I'm making or when I'm going to eat.”
0:35 to 0:40 - Creator grabs Huel before heading out / final product moment.
Dialogue: “Which, on days like this, is honestly ideal.”
Production direction: The creator should genuinely have a busy lifestyle where finding time to plan and prepare meals can be difficult. The production should feel like an authentic day rather than a staged “busy person” montage, using natural environments such as home, work and commuting. Creator-led footage should be combined with close-up product shots and observational moments.
Deliverables: One 35 to 40-second hero video, multiple hook variations for testing, short-form cutdowns based on the strongest moments from the hero.
2. It doesn't have to be a compromise
Creative Brief
Objective: Address taste as a key barrier to trying Huel by showing that convenience and nutrition don't have to come at the expense of taste or enjoyment.
Audience: Primary - people who are curious about Huel but are sceptical about how it tastes. Secondary - people who want convenient and nutritious food but associate those benefits with bland, artificial or unsatisfying meals.
Key message: Huel can be quick, nutritious and something you actually enjoy eating.
Tone: Honest, curious, playful, sceptical and social-native.
Format: 35 to 40-second creator-led taste test and reaction video.
Script:
0:00 to 0:04 - Creator holds a Huel product/flavour and looks sceptically at the camera.
Dialogue: “The first thing I was worried about with Huel? The taste.”
0:04 to 0:09 - Creator opens the product and prepares it, with close-up shots of the food.
Dialogue: “I mean, it seems too good to be true, doesn't it?”
0:09 to 0:14 - Creator takes their first bite/sip. Hold on the reaction rather than immediately cutting away.
Audio: Natural reaction and product sounds.
0:14 to 0:19 - Creator reacts honestly to the taste.
Dialogue: “Okay... I was not expecting that.”
0:19 to 0:24 - Creator takes another bite/sip, with close-up product and texture shots.
Dialogue: “That’s actually really good.”
0:24 to 0:29 - Creator continues eating/drinking naturally.
Dialogue: “And I can have this in a couple of minutes without having to cook anything.”
0:29 to 0:34 - Creator shows the product while continuing to eat/drink.
Dialogue: “I could actually see myself choosing this because I like it, not just because it's convenient.”
0:34 to 0:38 - Creator takes another bite/sip.
Dialogue: “Honestly, I’d actually have this again.”
0:38 to 0:40 - Final product shot.
Production direction: The creator should begin genuinely sceptical about the taste rather than presenting Huel positively from the start. The first reaction should feel spontaneous and unscripted, with close-up food shots that make the taste and texture tangible. The production should feel closer to a genuine food review or discovery video than a traditional meal-replacement advertisement.
Deliverables: One 35 to 40-second hero video, multiple hook variations for testing, short-form cutdowns based on the strongest reaction moments from the hero.
3. What kind of Huel person are you?
Creative Brief
Objective: Broaden Huel's perceived audience by showing that people use Huel for different reasons, not just fitness or nutrition.
Audience: Primary: People who don't currently see themselves as a typical Huel user. Secondary: Existing or potential Huel customers with different lifestyle needs, including busy professionals, travellers, people who dislike cooking and people with active routines.
Key message: There isn't one type of Huel person. Huel fits into different lifestyles for different reasons.
Tone: Relatable, varied, authentic, observational and social-native.
Format: 35 to 40-second creator-led social video featuring multiple people and different use cases.
Script:
0:00 to 0:04 - Fast cuts between 3 different people in different environments.
Dialogue: “Some people use Huel after the gym. I just can't be bothered to cook.”
0:04 to 0:08 - Cut to another creator at their desk between meetings.
Dialogue: “For me, it's mostly when I'm working and don't have time to make lunch.”
0:08 to 0:12 - Cut to someone packing for a trip or at an airport.
Dialogue: “I started having it when I was travelling, because finding something decent to eat wasn't always easy.”
0:12 to 0:16 - Cut to another creator after training / leaving the gym.
Dialogue: “I have it after training when I know I'm going to be hungry.”
0:16 to 0:21 - Quick cuts between the different people preparing or drinking Huel in their own environments. Natural product sounds and environmental audio.
0:21 to 0:26 - Cut back to the first creator, now doing something else in their day.
Dialogue: “I mean, if I'm not cooking, this is probably what I'll have.”
0:26 to 0:31 - Cut to the second creator at their desk, taking another sip while working.
Dialogue: “Especially when I've got back-to-back meetings.”
0:31 to 0:36 - Cut to the gym-focused creator leaving the gym with their Huel.
Dialogue: “I know I'll want something after this, so I just bring one with me.”
0:36 to 0:40 - Creator looks at the camera, smiles or laughs slightly.
Dialogue: “And that's me sorted.”
Fade out naturally.
Production direction: Cast genuinely different people with noticeably different lifestyles, environments and reasons for using Huel. Avoid making everyone look like the same stereotypical fitness-focused Huel customer. Each person should feel like they're explaining a genuine habit rather than delivering a testimonial. Keep the editing fast and varied, with natural environments, minimal staging and authentic reactions. The final moment should feel spontaneous and human rather than like a traditional advertising sign-off.
Deliverables: One 35 to 40-second hero video, multiple opening hook variations, individual creator cutdowns and short-form edits built around different use cases.
06. Evaluation
Because this is a spec project there are no real campaign results to report. Instead, I defined what I would expect each concept to achieve, how I would evaluate it, and how the results would inform the next iteration.
1. Food for people who don't have time for food
Hypothesis: If Huel can make convenience feel personally relevant by showing it solving real moments of time pressure, busy people should engage more strongly because the product is presented as a solution to an everyday problem rather than simply as convenient nutrition.
What I would look for:
Hook performance: Compare the two opening hooks to determine whether the relatable observation or personal confession creates stronger initial attention.
Thumbstop and 3-second view rate: Whether the busy-day setup is strong enough to stop people from scrolling.
Hold rate: Whether viewers stay once the creator moves from the problem into the Huel solution.
CTR: Whether the convenience proposition creates enough interest to explore Huel further.
CPA and conversion rate: Whether the convenience story translates into meaningful commercial behaviour.
What the data could tell me:
Strong attention plus weak retention: The busy-life premise creates initial relevance, but the story isn't sustaining it. I would introduce Huel or the specific problem earlier.
Strong retention plus weak CTR: People relate to the situation but aren't sufficiently motivated by the product solution. I would strengthen the product benefit or make the payoff more tangible.
Strong CTR plus weak conversion: The creative creates interest, but there may be a disconnect between the promise in the ad and the landing page, offer or product expectations.
Strong conversion: This would support the hypothesis that framing Huel around specific moments of everyday friction can make its convenience proposition more compelling.
Next iteration: Test different forms of time pressure, such as work, commuting, travel and lack of energy to cook, while keeping the underlying convenience hypothesis intact.
2. It doesn't have to be a compromise
Hypothesis: If Huel directly addresses taste scepticism through a genuine first reaction, sceptical audiences should engage more strongly because seeing someone discover that Huel actually tastes good can be more persuasive than simply claiming it does.
What I would look for:
Hook performance: Compare the scepticism-led hooks to see which creates stronger initial curiosity.
Thumbstop and 3-second view rate: Whether the taste objection is strong enough to stop people from scrolling.
Hold rate: Whether viewers stay long enough to see the first taste reaction and its payoff.
Reaction quality: Comments, shares and saves can indicate whether viewers are surprised by or identifying with the taste experience.
CTR: Whether the positive reaction creates enough curiosity to explore Huel.
CPA and conversion rate: Whether overcoming taste scepticism translates into purchase behaviour.
What the data could tell me:
Strong hook plus weak retention: The taste objection creates curiosity, but the setup takes too long to reach the actual reaction. I would shorten the preparation and get to the taste test faster.
Strong retention plus weak CTR: People enjoy watching the reaction, but the product isn't creating enough motivation to investigate further. I would strengthen the connection between the taste experience and the wider product proposition.
Strong engagement plus weak conversion: The reaction is entertaining and relatable, but entertainment may not be enough to overcome remaining purchase objections. I would investigate whether taste, price, product format or other barriers are responsible.
Strong conversion: This would support the hypothesis that addressing taste scepticism through real product experience can reduce a meaningful barrier to trial.
Next iteration: Test different flavours, different creator profiles and different levels of initial scepticism, while keeping the core taste-objection hypothesis intact.
3. What kind of Huel person are you?
Hypothesis: If Huel is shown being used by people with genuinely different lifestyles and motivations, audiences who don't identify with the typical Huel customer should find the product more personally relevant because they can recognise their own reason for using it.
What I would look for:
Hook performance: Compare different opening use cases to see which creates the strongest initial relevance.
Thumbstop and 3-second view rate: Whether the unexpected variety of users is enough to interrupt scrolling.
Hold rate: Whether viewers continue watching as new people and use cases are introduced.
Engagement quality: Comments, shares and saves can indicate whether people are recognising themselves in one of the different use cases.
CTR: Whether broader relevance translates into enough interest to explore Huel.
CPA and conversion rate: Whether expanding the perceived audience also expands meaningful commercial behaviour.
What the data could tell me:
Strong attention plus weak retention: The variety creates curiosity, but the montage isn't sustaining interest. I would reduce the number of use cases and give the strongest one more room to develop.
Strong retention plus weak CTR: People enjoy seeing the different lifestyles but aren't connecting that relevance to a reason to try Huel. I would strengthen the product moments within each individual story.
Strong engagement plus strong CTR but weak conversion: The broader positioning is creating interest, but another purchase barrier may still be preventing conversion. I would investigate which audience segments are clicking versus actually buying.
Strong conversion: This would support the hypothesis that broadening the representation of Huel users can make the product relevant to audiences who don't currently see themselves as a Huel customer.
Next iteration: Identify which use cases generate the strongest combination of engagement and conversion, then develop those into dedicated creative territories rather than treating all use cases equally.
Research -
Ideation -
Briefing –
Production -
Evaluation -