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š "Back to the Origins" - Julius Palm from followfood on transparency and the challenge to become mainstream
63 Plays1 year ago
Julius Palm is the Deputy Managing Director and Head of Strategy & Brand at the sustainable food brand followfood. He is largely responsible for the brand development and restructuring of the last five years.
During his studies at Zeppelin University, he was already researching the question of the good life and the sustainability of modern societies. Today, he is putting this into practice and working with followfood to solve socio-ecological problems through a business model. The goal: regenerative entrepreneurship. Julius was also recently honored with the title Green CMO of the Year by a German magazine.
About the FutureStrategies podcast and your host:
Iām Florian Schleicher, a marketing strategist. I help brands gain clarity, spark momentum, and turn strategy into something that actually moves people. In 2022, I started my marketing studio FUTURESTRATEGIES. to do exactly that. I currently work with corporate clients from 11 countries.
If you want more, check out my FutureStrategies newsletter ā weekly inspiration on marketing, strategy and sustainability.
And if somethingās blocking your brand from doing its best work, letās talk.
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Transcript
Journey to Regenerative Entrepreneurship
00:00:00
Speaker
We're trying to establish this way from sustainability to regenerative, and we are on the way to getting to know our vision of a regenerative entrepreneurship better because we have to find ways that doing the right thing is the most profitable one. Welcome to Future Strategies. I'm your host, Florian Schleicher.
00:00:22
Speaker
And this show is my gift to you. In honest conversations with inspiring marketing leaders, we explore how marketing and strategies can achieve sustainable growth. If you would like to apply this to your own projects, that's exactly what I do as a strategist, coach, and workshop facilitator. I'm here to help you build the marketing of your futures.
Introduction to Follow Food
00:00:50
Speaker
So let's jump right into it.
00:00:55
Speaker
Joining me today is Julius Peim. He is the deputy managing director and head of strategy and brand at the sustainable food brand Follow Food. He is largely responsible for the brand development and restructuring of the last five years. During his studies at Zeppelin University, he was already researching the question of the good life and sustainability in modern societies.
00:01:19
Speaker
Today, he is putting this into practice and working with Follow Food to solve socio-ecological problems through a business model. The goal regenerative entrepreneurship. Judas was also recently honored with the title Green CMO of the Year by a German magazine.
00:01:36
Speaker
I'm so happy to have this conversation with you today, Julius. Welcome. Thank you for the invitation. Nice to be here. So let me start by saying that I absolutely love your products. I buy them on a regular basis, especially the fish. Quality is amazing. The taste is great. And they are a great example for a sustainable food brand. For those of our listeners who don't know Follow Food, what is the company all about?
00:02:02
Speaker
We are a sustainable food brand in Germany. We are selling our products in the retail here in Germany. So we are POS, point of sale brand, retailer brand. We started 2007 with Followfish, the first sustainable fish company and our innovation of the tracking code. We invented back then the tracking code for the food system so that you can track your product back to the origin.
From Fish to Food: A Broader Vision
00:02:28
Speaker
Where it's coming from how was the fish caught how is the how the vegetables farmed how do they come here and so on so forth and this evolved a bit over the last fifteen years now we called follow food because we realize that our vision doesn't really end with fish because everything has to do with everything so everything.
00:02:48
Speaker
is organized in a circle. And we realized that if we want to be the most sustainable fish brand, we have to look into farming because all of the fertilizers and pesticides are washed by water into the ocean and leads to decorating
00:03:04
Speaker
oceans and leads to dying fish stocks and we realize that we can't only look into how is the fish caught by hand or by the most sustainable fish management system if we don't look into farming and evolving into a major food company
00:03:26
Speaker
we won't solve the problem and we won't stick to our vision of being part of the solution and being a beacon for how it can be done. And that's why we evolved to follow food and are now selling over 200 products in Germany and Austria and Switzerland and from frozen fish over frozen pizza to beverages to you name it. And the concept is always the same. It's the most sustainable product
00:03:54
Speaker
in the category and traceable to the origin, like the most transparent food company is the goal. Yeah, I love that. And also that your decisions were driven by your vision. I wrote the other week in a newsletter on why it is so important to have a great vision and I still remember
00:04:11
Speaker
working for Too Good to Go, our vision was we dream of a planet with no food waste. And this gave us a great direction because for every decision we had to take, we were able to look back at the vision and say, does it help us to achieve this planet with no food waste? Yeah, that's totally true. That's totally true. Because there's a German saying, I don't know how to put it in English, but
00:04:32
Speaker
Do what you're good in, like don't try things you're not used to, don't try things you're not good in and you started with fish, so stick to fish. Don't do anything else because
Visionary Alignment and Expansion Challenges
00:04:44
Speaker
let the others do the things they know about and do what you know about.
00:04:48
Speaker
And they always thought that we are losing ourselves in this broadening division and doing more and more products, which were vegan products, no fish products. And I always was so secure in this move because.
00:05:03
Speaker
I realized, yeah, it comes from our dedication to our vision and we know why we're doing it. We're not doing it because we want to earn more money and we realized that the brand is working that good that we have to do it with every other product too. We realized that if we want to achieve what we were trying to achieve with this vision of back then follow fish, we have to do these steps. Otherwise, we're not credible. It's not a credible solution.
00:05:31
Speaker
and we offer and we have to do this and I realized that often when I said this people were like oh yeah okay makes totally sense. And what's the vision at the moment that you have as a company?
Integrating Nature into Business
00:05:43
Speaker
We're trying to establish this way from sustainability to regenerative and we are on the way to getting to know our vision of a regenerative entrepreneurship better because nobody knows
00:05:56
Speaker
what it's going to look like yet. We know how it could look in farming, and that's where we focus on regenerative agriculture, ecological, regenerative ecological agriculture. That's important because it's the next step from organic agriculture, I think, and it's a step without pesticides. It's important to say here. And that's where we look in farming. And from there, we try to take this vision into entrepreneurship, to build up an entrepreneurship
00:06:26
Speaker
which really tries to achieve things where we never thought that it's possible. By producing stuff, we enrich ecosystems, we build up biodiversity, we build up the soil fertility, to build up the ecosystem while working with it and cooperate with it and try to mimic nature's processes into a productive system for us, for humanity, for our food system.
00:06:55
Speaker
And that's what we try to achieve, to put this into an entrepreneurship level. Not only staying on a farm level, but to build up an entrepreneurship which is more than just keeping things as they are, sustainable, but evolving into how can we regenerate the system. Because if we look into
00:07:15
Speaker
the most important scheme of sustainable science, sustainability science, that's the planetary boundaries. And if we see what's happening, it's okay, we are breaking every boundary of the planetary boundaries and we have to regenerate them. And if we look who is really driver of these, like breaking the boundaries,
00:07:38
Speaker
It's the food system. If we look not only into climate change, CO2 and stuff, if we look into biodiversity, phosphor, nitrogen, and stuff like that, and we see that farming, also water, is one of the most, the food system is one of the most important drivers. 70%, 80% of biodiversity loss is linked to food system.
00:08:03
Speaker
80% of the fresh water is used in food systems. So it's the major thing to do to transform food systems. And if we then look, what are the solutions? Back to your question, regenerative is one of the most important models we have to look in because it's the only system, food systems, the only system which can regenerate
00:08:26
Speaker
planetary boundaries. And that's what we need to do. And so that's why we try to look into it and to establish a way to do it in business. I find that so fascinating. And also, I've read that there are planetary boundaries. So seven out of nine are already crossed. And we still operate or most businesses operate on a limitless growth paradigm. Yeah, that's true.
00:08:48
Speaker
So I really love the way you're framing this, that you have to do more, that you have to give back also. But let's start a little bit sooner because your products already have a huge market share. Like in the organic pizza segment in Germany, you have been a market leader, I think since 2018, and you have a 45% market share in the organic retail trade.
00:09:12
Speaker
in Germany. How
Strategies for Growth and Challenges
00:09:14
Speaker
did you get there? Because at the beginning, yes, you have all those visions, but you still need to do the work actually to get you there to be able to give back and to invest back into nature. So what enabled you and follow food to get there in terms of strategy and in terms of marketing also? That's a good question. I think we try to combine
00:09:36
Speaker
our visions with a professional business style. So we try to really do a good, like doing a really, really good job, not only in sustainable ways, like sustainability impact vision way, also in doing the groundwork of trying to build up a brand in the food sector. And I think that's linked because in the end we realized
00:10:01
Speaker
with building up really trustworthy and modern brand in a part ways like old sector where pioneers were still market leaders back in the days which were brands from the 70s and 80s and branding was also not the most modern
00:10:22
Speaker
It was a trustworthy one because it was pioneering brand building but I think this was also linked to our success in the market and our fast success because we build up a modern brand and linked it to the story which was back then only known with the like a bid.
00:10:41
Speaker
Niche old brands and and we started in a sector which is really really rare it's the frozen sector and which was dominated by big players not very popular and it I think yeah it was momentum.
00:10:57
Speaker
kind of and all of these things I just told were like really linked together and then we did really good business I think. We were really good, had really good sellers in the company and good marketers. I really like this because basically you are now growing and you're also growing in terms of segments that you're in but you started in a niche and I think that's one big takeaway because if you would have started with
00:11:20
Speaker
The offering that you have now, it would have been probably impossible. So maybe it's about this start small, but think big and third step do the work. I think there is often no shortcut or no secret recipe you can use, but you actually have to just do it. Yeah. And we do 20 years now and the recognition is coming.
00:11:39
Speaker
in the last five years really and still we have a lot of work to do and still this process of getting out of the niche, we're far from being finished with it because it's still such a small segment we're in, a small sector we're in.
00:11:58
Speaker
The organic economy is still really, really small. It's under 10% which depends on the product you're looking in. For me, it's not the big success story in this way because we're not finished at all. We have to do so much more. But yeah, I think you're right. We wouldn't have...
00:12:16
Speaker
We wouldn't have been able to do what we did if we hadn't started with a small concept, with a really tight, logical concept of follow fish, sustainable fish brand transparency in the frozen sector, which were not highly competitive. And in the beginning, everybody told us, don't do pizza. It won't work. And now we're for the organic pizza market leader in Germany.
00:12:39
Speaker
And with other products, the same. After pizza, we said, okay, now they get that we can do other things. But no, they again said, oh, no, no, no, don't do this and that because you won't be successful.
00:12:51
Speaker
And that's what we're trying to do to get step by step to really evolve this vision in every kind of food sector we try to change or transform. Yeah. You also mentioned something that you're not there yet. So I would be super curious on what are the challenges that you have at the moment and where do you also as head of strategy?
00:13:14
Speaker
I know you don't want to call yourself Chief Marketing Officer, I've read that, but what is your main thing that you focus on at the moment to set up for the future and for the future of food? It's not that I don't want to call myself Chief Marketing Officer, but I think I'm not what the term means.
00:13:34
Speaker
Because i'm not this classical like creative communication guy i'm more sustainability guy who tries to communicate stuff maybe that's the future of being a cmo i don't know but. That's what i trying to do and i think that's one of the biggest challenge.
00:13:51
Speaker
too because trying to communicate so complex things, systems, models in a daily product is one of the biggest challenge at all. And I think we're not as good as we want to be because still we are really depending on people who buy us which are really interested in sustainability and buying good stuff. And what we're trying to achieve is
00:14:18
Speaker
also reaching people who are not experts or passionate about sustainability, who just want to buy food and want to have a good conscience with it. And I think that's really, really hard because that's a challenge we're facing the next year is because we, yeah, we could just stick with the, I don't know, 2 million, 2 and a half million, 3 million people in Germany who are
00:14:43
Speaker
interested in trying to buy other products but the goal has to be in order to change something and to really being future proof as society to get mainstream with what we do or others who are having the same vision as us.
00:14:59
Speaker
to really get into mainstream.
Conveying Sustainability to Mainstream Audiences
00:15:00
Speaker
And that's the biggest challenge we're facing right now. And that's somehow a wild strategy because I think others would like on the only economy wise, you would stay low and try to keep things together and try to get you over the next years. But we realized that we, yeah, that's not what we trying to achieve in this. And if we get broke in the in between on trying to save something, yeah, so be it, then it wasn't us to change it.
00:15:28
Speaker
But we have to reach the highest level because otherwise we won't make it at all. Yeah, I think that's a huge challenge and also you are very gifted in the position that you are that you already have the organic market share. Yeah, that's true. And now pushing into the mainstream and I would be curious on what your take is on
00:15:49
Speaker
what's important for a mainstream target audience. Because I just read an article on bringing sustainability without talking about sustainability. For example, Tesla, you can think of Elon Musk, whatever you want. But what they did is they shifted the market to a more sustainable, not sustainable, but more sustainable method of transportation. And they never communicated about sustainability.
00:16:16
Speaker
And I think there are a couple of brands out there who actually do change. And I still remember from our Too Good to Go times, we had this big sustainable mission. But in the end, we said, we don't care why our partners join in or why our customers use us. Because as long as they do, they have a positive impact. So what's your take on how important is the focus on sustainability in communicating with the mainstream audience?
00:16:45
Speaker
It's a tough question because I'm not a communication expert, but what I realized over the last years is, I don't know whether it's the same word in English, a Trojan horse. I think more and more in that kind of way. Tesla is a good example. They built a really, really high price luxury car, which is really comfortable. They solved the solution of charging it by making it more and more convenient.
00:17:13
Speaker
And they just made a good product and I think that's what we have to do in food systems too. We just have to make a good product because if they don't taste good, the sustainable part has no worth. So I think, yeah, you're right. We have to focus on really on good products, on ticking the boxes of what customers want.
00:17:33
Speaker
But I think sustainability will be part of this need permit. It will be part of the needs of customers, but it's not that they have to inform themselves or they have to be experts. It's just that they want to know that the company they're buying from,
00:17:51
Speaker
Sticking to their responsibility of being safe due to planetary health and stuff like that.
Soil Saver Initiative and Regenerative Agriculture
00:17:58
Speaker
So if we try to communicate this in a kind of way that we like being a stylish brand with has product which tastes good and you don't have to worry about anything we are taking.
00:18:11
Speaker
the responsibility you want us to see that we're taking it. And that's like kind of a Trojan horse because you just see this beautiful horse and in the belly of the horse is biggest sustainability project on earth kind of way.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, sustainability is not at the forefront of why the mainstream consumer buys stuff. They buy because they want something that tastes great. As you said, they want something that is attractive in terms of price and they want an item they can trust in in terms of food safety. And if you say, hey, we're all that and also we're sustainable,
00:18:51
Speaker
I think that's a good approach to go to the mainstream. Yulius, I have one more big topic I want to talk with you about, which is the Soil Saver Initiative. So you started this in 2019, where every product that is sold automatically contributes financially to a fund that supports organic farmers.
00:19:11
Speaker
And in a lot of ways, this reminded me about an initiative we did with the good to go, which was called often good after 10% of all food waste comes from a misunderstanding of date labels. So we work together with producers, put our label on their packaging, educating consumers that you can, you can smell it, you can look at it and you can taste it before you throw it away. And why it reminds me is because it also this often good after campaign, it had no direct business impact.
00:19:40
Speaker
We did not sell any more bags and we did not save per se any more bags, but it all was aligned with our vision, which is the planet with no food waste. So I would be curious on how this Soil Saver initiative came together for you guys. Why you came up with it is probably because of the vision, but how did you also say, okay, we really need to do this and invest money into it, even if it doesn't show a direct impact at first? Yeah.
00:20:08
Speaker
It was in 2017 or 18 when I joined the company full-time after my studies. And during my studies, I got to know the concept of permaculture and was really hooked and amazed by what I'm experiencing there.
00:20:28
Speaker
researched a lot about permaculture and visited all the leading projects and realized that linking it with my work at Follow Food, we had to do something here. And our founder also, we had talks where we just say, okay, what can we do as a brand for bringing up this great concept? And what can be our role in it? And we try to understand what
00:20:54
Speaker
could be our contribution to establishing more and more this regenerative thinking of permaculture. And we realized that we can't deal with doing the work farming wise because we're experts in something else. We're experts in buildings.
00:21:11
Speaker
supply chains and sustainable supply chains. But we realized, okay, we can help with money because it's a really big money issue to transform a farm into a regenerative business. And it takes years and years and years because you're working with nature and nature is sometimes really fast, but also sometimes really, really slow. But we can give some kind of know-how education stuff by
00:21:37
Speaker
getting experts on regenerative agriculture to farmers who want to establish regenerative farming at their farm. So that's where we start and we say, okay, how can we do that? And how can we link this to our business that our businesses
00:21:52
Speaker
ultimately contributing to this concept. And that was the founding idea of this initiative. And I'm still trying to evolve something which is a business link in this initiative, because at the moment, we're paying a lot of money each year, 150,000 euros to 200,000 euros, which is a lot for us, which we just do because we think it's right to do. And at the moment, there's no return on investment at all.
00:22:20
Speaker
But I think we have to do it because otherwise in the system we live in it and working in this business economy system, we have to find ways that doing the right thing is the most profitable one. So I still trying to figure out how to really get this initiative into kind of a really economical business kind of way because at the end it would be the perfect way if we fund
00:22:45
Speaker
farmers, they're selling their products to us. We're doing a product out of it, selling it to the customers, getting money for it. And this money gets, part of this money gets back to the farmers doing what they do better than people before. So I think if this would work out like this, it would be a perfect business model because we can establish regenerative agriculture. The farmers get the money they want. We have a story to tell. We have a vision to tell to the people.
00:23:13
Speaker
there's a unique selling point for the products in the market and still we are earning enough money to get the circle running. I love that and also like when you mentioned the term permaculture, it reminded me I was on vacation this year in Sri Lanka visiting some tea plantations.
00:23:31
Speaker
Tea is unfortunately a rather dirty business but we visited an organic tea plantation and what they have set up there was amazing because first they pay fair wages which is one super important part for the local population and second they don't use fertilizers.
00:23:49
Speaker
So they had to come up with something and what they told us is they plant some orange trees in between the tea plants and then the monkeys come eat the orange and then the monkeys leave something which is a natural fertilizer and I love this idea of how nature really can work to bring all the benefits to the table and I think it's so important that we also educate people about this because
00:24:17
Speaker
I wasn't aware of this. There are natural things we can do to have the same harvest level. Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And that's what I'm stoked like every time I'm hearing from a project or I'm at a farm and seeing what is possible because, and it's not our genius mind, it's the ingenuity of nature we're experiencing here. And it's also a know-how we lost and
00:24:43
Speaker
are so looking forward to get this know-how back because they realize the know-how they learned. What they learned is not the solution for what problems they're facing out there and that's so amazing. I experienced so many examples like you just told because there's so many cooperative
00:25:04
Speaker
levels and examples in nature and in farms. And that's what was really mind blowing. And also mind shifting for me is that this narrative of nature is a battle and every like every animal is your enemy. That cooperation is much more common in nature than
00:25:24
Speaker
than competition and that farmers realize it if they're trying to experiencing with new combinations, which every standard conventional farming teacher or professor would tell you, don't do that, it won't work. Yeah, maybe it won't work with your fertilizers and your pesticides, but if you give it time and over time, nature will adapt and like take back the power it had
00:25:53
Speaker
and will offer you much more abundance of really fresh and good products and a much more resilient
Marketing and Sustainability
00:26:00
Speaker
system. Because we realize if you put diversity into a system also on a farm level, it's so much more resilient. There are examples which had a loss of revenue doing this. They just
00:26:14
Speaker
shifted their revenue model into much diverse ways. And that's so amazing. That's truly fascinating. Before we come to the three final questions, I would also like to ask you, do you have any questions for me? Yes. Why are you doing what you do? What are you aiming for? And what's your, what do you think is your part, your contribution on this whole sustainable transformation process we are?
00:26:36
Speaker
doing in this society or trying to achieve. Okay. That's a big topic. So I worked for McDonald's and I had my dark past. And what I did then is I traveled to Australia. It took some months off to just explore. And I was fascinated by nature, by the amazing environments, by the animal life. And I still remember driving through endless roads in Australia. It's just like a hundred kilometers straight and there is nature left
00:27:05
Speaker
and right, but there were also plastic bottles and soda cans and garbage bags just lying around. And I was like, why do we do this? Why does humanity do that? And then we also visited the most gorgeous beaches, but we were not able to go into the water because there were poisonous jellyfish. And in Australia, it's not just poisonous, it's best case you end up in intensive care. Worst case, you just die on the spot.
00:27:32
Speaker
And I was like, okay, why are there so many jellyfish? And they are coming closer because the weather gets warmer, the ocean gets warmer, and they are drawn to the coast. And this was for me the breaking point when I said, okay, I've learned a lot at all these amazing organizations, but now I want to use it for something good.
00:27:50
Speaker
So that's why I then started at Greenpeace, why I started to go. And now having my business, there are several things. So for the podcast, for example, my goal is really to give those amazing ideas and companies a stage because I think we need to talk more about the
00:28:08
Speaker
brands who are already doing great progress, because then we can inspire others to also take action. When I was studying, we were learning about BMW Unilever, and those were the best practices we learned from at university.
00:28:24
Speaker
This was 15 plus years ago. I think it's important to educate future leaders on brands that drive a sustainable revolution and a shift, and still they are able to work and make a profit. Because if people see, hey, that also works.
00:28:42
Speaker
and it can still be an amazing company, then we might inspire other companies, other people to do the same thing. And that's for me also, when I do my workshops with my clients, when I do my sessions where I consult companies on how to bring marketing and sustainability together in a new strategy, it's the same thing. I think business and also marketing can be a force for good. In the past decades, we have not used it as that.
00:29:12
Speaker
But marketing, for example, I'm a hardcore marketing guy and marketing has this superpower of influencing people.
00:29:20
Speaker
And we can use that for good or we can sell burgers. And I think this is really what drives me is I want to give back and share what I've learned so that companies can move ahead and that they can be part of a sustainable transformation. Nice. Nice. Makes sense. Makes sense. And great that you did this experiencing by experiencing nature, which may shift in your orientation business-wise.
00:29:47
Speaker
A lot of people think should experience the power of nature. I think they would act differently in their normal life. Yeah, I think we're just so disconnected oftentimes from nature because we're living in our cities like you live in Hamburg, I live in Vienna. It's just concrete all around us. And we are not really in contact anymore with nature. We just go to the supermarket, we buy something, we take it home. There is also no connection to food anymore. We have the same thing with the good to go.
00:30:15
Speaker
People were throwing away food. They were not thinking about it. And nobody felt good about it. But it was just, yeah, that's how it is. And we were like, is it really? Does it really have to be this way? Or can it be another way? Yeah. And I think one of that's one of the biggest problems we're facing at the last year is that we don't feel the consequences of our action.
Urban Life and Nature Disconnection
00:30:37
Speaker
Yes not directly and they're so stretched over the years the consequences that we don't link it to what we do in our daily lives and that we don't know that farmers out there are telling me like i don't know why the people in the cities on panic and at the moment because i don't know what i can contribute.
00:30:55
Speaker
to their lives with fresh food in the next 20 years. Obviously, I won't in the next 50, but even the next 10 to 15 years, I'm not sure whether I can provide fresh food. And they are facing like they are experiencing firsthand with their own business, but also with their body and their senses, what it means
00:31:16
Speaker
to what our societal action and systems means out there and i think if we can contribute like or if we can experience this more and more not in a dystopian kind of depression way of seeing how bad it is but having these little moments you talked about where you can see wow.
00:31:36
Speaker
fascinating what nature can do and how fast, and I think that's one of the most underrated possibilities we have, how fast nature can rebuild, regenerate systems. And if we're really using this power, I think we have the biggest solution in our hands and that is doing food systems regeneratively. And if we do that, I think we will see in the next 10 years how amazing the
00:32:04
Speaker
the consequences are because we can see how fast things can change if we let nature do its thing because nature knows best. I think that's almost like a perfect ending, but I still have three more questions. So I would like your very short point of view on them. So first is, what is good marketing to you in three words? Good marketing in three words is authentic, future-proof, or driven, and passionate.
00:32:31
Speaker
I love that. I especially love the authenticity. And I think a lot of brands struggle with this because they are used to their perfect polished images out there. And what people actually want is they want to see the real brand. They want to see the real you. I think that's super important. Yeah. And maybe I would add or change one word to transparent. I think that's maybe one of the biggest.
00:32:51
Speaker
Most important marketing skills we have to achieve all marketing tools we have to use at the moment because otherwise we are not trustworthy in a sustainable kind of way. Second question, what is the future of marketing? I think the future of marketing is changing from nudging and influencing people for anything.
00:33:13
Speaker
Which brings money, but back to really doing responsible marketing and or back to, I don't know whether it existed back in the days, but doing responsible marketing means having a responsibility as marketers and feeling this responsibility for what people do out there, how people act, what people buy is the responsibility of marketers.
Book Recommendation and Personal Insights
00:33:35
Speaker
And I think that should be.
00:33:36
Speaker
in every, I don't know, codex or real book or, or, or science book or whatever. I love that. The third question is a bit of a personal one. So what book have you recently read that you would like to recommend here? Wow. There is actually one from Nikolaj Schulz. Nikolaj with a, with a J at the end. He's, he's Danish and he is, he was a colleague or
00:34:01
Speaker
in the beginning, an employee of Kouno Latour, one of the biggest and most important social scientists. He wrote a lot about like integrating nature into our human kind of thinking and realizing that we are part of nature and not the other way around. And Nikolai wrote a book recently, which is a great project because he tried to
00:34:27
Speaker
share his philosophy, his philosophical thoughts on climate change and how it changes societies in our way. We interact and feel ourselves in this whole world on a philosophical level. And it's really complex in between, but in the end, it's a private story about facing climate change and facing
00:34:49
Speaker
the consequences and what it like, what is, what does it to us, our mindset and our perception of what it means to be a human being. And it's a short book, I think 150 pages or something like that. And it's maybe one of the, for me, one of the most important books of the last year is because I read this book and I felt understood. And I saw that somebody like is really putting into words what, what many of us are feeling at the moment, I think.
00:35:18
Speaker
So the book is called Land sickness by Nikolai Schultz. Definitely goes on my reading list. Thanks for sharing that. All right, Julius, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your insights. It has truly been very inspiring hearing your story, the story of follow food and what you're doing and.
00:35:36
Speaker
I am super optimistic now knowing that there are capable people working on changing the food industry and I can't wait to see you engage with the mainstream and get them also to use a more sustainable food product. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for your hope.
00:35:57
Speaker
That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you have enjoyed this episode, please give me a rating and a review. This means the world to me, as I really pour my heart into the production and the interviews with those brilliant minds. If you are looking for an easy way to learn strategic marketing, check out the Simple and Sustainable Marketing Academy, where I share the basics of strategic and sustainable marketing in an online life setting.
00:36:26
Speaker
You can also sign up to my inspiring newsletter, where I deliver valuable thoughts to your inbox on how to achieve sustainable growth. I promise you will like it. And if you want to get in touch and find out more about me and my projects, just have a look at the links in the show notes or find me on Instagram and LinkedIn at Florian Schleicher. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to sharing more with you in the next episode.