Perfect Day

Realizing the best possible future for food—and maybe saving the planet.

The work

Perfect Day uses fermentation technology to and recreate our favorite dairy foods with almost no impact to Earth or animals. Their groundbreaking technology will make a meaningful impact on the future of the world—but as a science-first organization, they needed a brand that shows how a beautifully optimistic future is possible because of their breakthroughs. They engaged Zeus Jones to help stake out a new category, bring their science to life, create a brand, and bring it into the world.

Our roles

Category and Consumer Insights
Category Creation
Brand Strategy
Brand Identity
Creative Activation
Digital Design and Development

The Opportunity

Imagining a kinder future of food.

Earth-first food and technology brands have changed how people eat in a shockingly short time. As climate-conscious alternatives captured consumer attention and affection—from engineered not-meats to alt milks to entire meal replacements—dairy remained a stubborn holdout. Milk, cheese, butter, and ice cream are emotional foods, and no matter how good oat milk can be in its own right, it isn’t a total replacement for the real thing. With consumers becoming more receptive to engineered foods, Perfect Day had a critical opportunity to enter the market as a food brand of the future.

Perfect Day’s precision fermentation technology puts an end to the need to settle for alternative anything. It uses a DNA sequence of cow whey protein to rapidly produce dairy products at scale—all without the climate impact and cruelty of animal production. Real milk, without the cow. Their proteins could become the crucial ingredient that allows food producers across the industry to massively reduce their impact on the Earth. These innovations led to a critical insight: Change the process, not the foods.

Our Approach

Bringing out the optimism in the challenge.

Perfect Day wasn’t simply a new brand; it represented a new category that was being created. An initial task was translating their emerging science into emotional concepts that would resonate with people. We created a range of territories and emotions, from imagination to collective action to mind-blown futurism, to explore what might feel right for the brand. We arrived at a core theme of optimism: the belief that the future will be better, despite the challenges that stand in the way.

In today’s general air of climate doom, optimism would be a radical idea that Perfect Day’s technology could uniquely deliver—a future where we can keep eating the foods we love, without substitutes, and still do good by the planet and animals. We developed a strategic vision—strengthening the food system, not disrupting it—and mission, which would galvanize the brand team to action.

“What was previously impersonal and tech-focused gave way to something much more urgent and optimistic. The new brand expression paints an evocative, inevitable vision of the future.”

Alex Register, Designer at Zeus Jones

The Outcome

A sunny brand to lead a brighter tomorrow.

The optimism and hope that Perfect Day’s technology brings to the world became the core expression of the brand. It came to life in language choices, and key design elements like “the glow”: a soft, warm, and energizing field that is threaded throughout the brand. It represents sunrise and a new day, reframing the potential of their technology to feel human and urgent, yet optimistic and hopeful.

As we solidified the brand foundations, we moved into creative platform development for both consumer-facing messaging and a wider cultural campaign. We brought it all to life with a brand-new website and accompanying script for an anthem video to share the new message of hopeful optimism, in addition to roadmapping activations that would bring the brand to life in the years to come.

As one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2021 and World Changing Ideas of 2022, Perfect Day is at an exciting moment: The spotlight is on. And with a beautiful, optimistic brand that showcases the strength of their science, they’re ready to feed a kinder tomorrow.