Microbiome startup Seed Health hires its first CMO to scale from cult favorite to household name

• Seed Health hired Anisha Raghavan as its first chief marketing officer.
• The microbiome science company sells pre- and probiotics and has a slew of celebrity backers.
• Raghavan is tasked with growing the company's brand awareness and expanding its product mix.

Buzzy microbiome startup Seed Health is paving the way for its next stage of growth.

Seed Health has appointed consumer marketing veteran Anisha Raghavan as its first-ever chief marketing officer, the company exclusively told CMO Insider.

Raghavan said in an interview that she intends to grow Seed's retail presence, product mix, and brand awareness.

"Our awareness is much lower than our potential, and so that's a huge opportunity," Raghavan said.

Founded in 2016, Seed Health is a microbiome science company that sells pre- and probiotics to support gut, skin, immune, and overall body health. The company, which roots its marketing in clinical trials and peer-reviewed scientific research, has raised around $40 million in funding to date. Its investors include The Craftory, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and high-profile Hollywood figures such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz, Karlie Kloss, and Jessica Biel.

Launched as a direct-to-consumer brand, its supplements are now available in Target and Amazon. The company said it has grown revenue by more than 500% over the past three years; it didn't share an overall figure.

Raghavan said she plans to apply her consumer marketing experience to scale the Seed Health brand. Her career spans running multibillion-dollar brands at PepsiCo and Unilever, as well as bringing the No7 beauty brand to North America from the UK for Walgreens Boots Alliance. She most recently served as CMO of Heyday Skincare.

"Health consumers are very well informed today, but they're also very overwhelmed" by misinformation and the sheer number of products on the market, Raghavan said. "It's our job as a trusted brand to help educate them rather than just persuade them."

Part of Raghavan's plan involves elevating Seed Health's advertising buys with "unexpected partnerships" or interactive elements like quizzes.

She wants to build on Seed Health's previous marketing in this vein, such as its 2019 "Give a Shit" campaign in partnership with the health app Auggi, which encouraged consumers to upload photos of their stools to build a crowdsourced database to help track bowel conditions.

Influencers will also form a key part of Raghavan's marketing strategy. Every creator who works with the company must first pass a test on gut health science as part of its Seed University program.

"I'm very focused on quality over quantity," when it comes to creators, Raghavan said.

She added that she's looking to work with influencers who are "able to tell a credible science story because they have that same commitment to the scientific rigor that we do."

Patti Williams, associate professor of marketing at Wharton, told CMO Insider that Raghavan's hire signals Seed Health has recognized the marketing challenge in scaling from the trendy — but niche — space of gut microbiome products into wellness more broadly.

It's a sector packed with established brands that are arguably better at storytelling than Seed Health, which has largely led on its science-based messaging, she added.

"They're trying to go from a premium niche market to more of a mass market at a premium price," Williams said. "This hire to me speaks to growth and their ambition and a recognition that they need more expertise in marketing than they have had."