Midday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Kertna Tharmaraja watches her laptop screen as numbers climb. A video of a piglet squealing with joy, enjoying fresh air, now sits at 2.6 million views. Her phone buzzes: Lena Dhammaraks, texting from Bangkok. “Are you seeing this?” The post’s shares have hit 200,000, each one a small act of connection, passing hand to hand a message of compassion for animals raised for food, like a secret that changes everything.

This is the new physics of cultural change—not classroom lessons or dry PSAs, but a piglet’s happiness traveling at the speed of bandwidth through Asian consciousness. Where a series of David Attenborough documentaries could gradually shift the consciousness of a generation of Britons, and where America’s long-running “Click It or Ticket” seatbelt ad campaign could, over the course of years, turn safety into second nature, widespread increases in concern and caring can now happen in days instead of years on the back of millions of swipes and shares.

As leaders of Lever Foundation’s Communications team, Kertna and Lena have been building out the engine for driving just such a transformation in how the next generation across Asia views healthy eating, farm animal well-being, and food sustainability. The duo and their colleagues are on track to generate over a billion impressions across Asia this year—enough to fill every phone screen in Jakarta twenty times over, to wallpaper Seoul in pixels, to reach more minds in a month than most NGOs touch in a lifetime. The pair has also developed and scaled Planti.ai, Asia’s first AI-powered guide to help consumers across Asia make healthy, sustainable food choices.

But the paths that led them here were winding, and their ability to have this level of impact was far from inevitable.

The Architects of Attention

Before the billion impressions, before the viral pigs, there were two women following separate rivers toward the same ocean.

Kertna’s river began with words. Her finance degree gathering dust, she joined a Melbourne social impact ad agency working on campaigns to help people make small daily pivots like recycling correctly and checking their smoke alarms. But it was Malaysia’s “Katakan Tak Nak” (Say No To Cigarettes) anti-smoking campaign that showed her what great marketing and repetition could build. Years after the campaign ended, people still quote the phrase, passing it between generations like inherited wisdom.

Back in Malaysia, she bounced between ethical fashion startups and conventional advertising, searching for something that mattered. The moment came in 2021: she’d won a pitch for a Malaysian plant-based foods brand, sold the vision, and prepared the strategy. Then her agency killed it—too difficult, they said, too much behavior change required. She resigned within weeks, instead joining Lever Foundation to work on the bold food system communications missing in a region still inclined to treat sustainability as an import rather than a local necessity.

Lena’s river ran through images. Art was her first language, the way she made sense of chaos. She’d wanted to be a veterinarian until she realized she spoke better through design than science. Following a Language and Culture program at Chulalongkorn University (one of Thailand’s most prestigious universities), and working in luxury brand management in the Swiss Alps, she landed on Four Seasons Bangkok’s opening team. There she learned how desire gets manufactured: the perfect angle of light on water, typography that whispers wealth, stories that make people ache for experiences they’ve never had.

But beauty without purpose left her hollow. Through agencies and hotel brands, she perfected her craft while her passion starved. Then her boyfriend found a job posting for a role at Lever Foundation, reading it aloud to her like poetry: “Care about animals? Check. Love social media? Check. Want to change the world? Check. This job was written for you.” She applied that night, finally finding the right role where her creative talent could meet her childhood dream of helping creatures who couldn’t help themselves.

The Impression Machine

Together, the pair have step by step built out the impression machine to rapidly spread awareness and positive behavior change across East Asia. Not by transplanting foreign food philosophies into Asia, but by helping Asian food culture examine itself and evolve from within.

The architecture of their digital content campaign is deliberate. Four pillars hold the structure: environment (forests becoming feedlots), animals (suffering made visible), health (from heart disease to clear skin), and, crucially, food that looks like what people already love. Each piece of content is translated and adapted by local staff across Greater China, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia for maximum reach.

In their catchy social media posts, Kertna, Lena, and the rest of the Communications team translate peer-reviewed journal findings into street language, transform factory farming footage into watchable motivators for change, and translate the idea of change into flavors that taste like home.

The approach: test organically first. No ad spend, just truth released into the wild to see if it survives. When something resonates, scale it with precision targeting. A Malaysian post about a viral baby elephant killed on a highway, the mother and baby were forced onto roads because deforestation for agriculture destroyed their habitat. A Philippines post about coronary disease featuring local dishes dripping with pork fat. Each is designed not just to inform but to lodge in memory, to become the thing people think about at the market, at dinner, in the moment of choice.

The Questions About Awareness

A twenty-something in Quezon City sees a post on coronary disease. She thinks of her family history—diabetes, hypertension, hearts giving out too young. She wants to eat differently but doesn’t know where to start. She types a question: “But what do I cook instead?”

This is the gap Planti.ai fills. Live now across Asia, Planti is AI trained on actual Asian food cultures, built with the help of nutritionists from each country who understand that Korean temple food differs from Thai Buddhist cuisine, that halal requirements shape options differently than Hindu vegetarianism.

Planti.ai’s interface doesn’t look like advocacy. Clean lines, bold colors, the aesthetic of wellness apps and beauty platforms—young Asian women smiling over colorful bowls, sleek graphics promising energy and glow-ups. This isn’t deception but recognition: people trust what feels familiar, aspirational, within reach. Planti.ai’s offer: free live calls and chat with an intelligent, well-trained AI to answer all questions, from “Where can I buy tempeh in Ho Chi Minh City?” to “How do I make my grandmother’s recipe without pork?” to “Is plant protein really complete?”

Tools to transform whatever’s in your refrigerator into craveable, healthy, localized recipes—mushroom sisig, tempeh rendang, vegetable bibimbap. A restaurant finder to recommend eateries based on your location and to spotlight plant-based menu items at popular chains. Shopping links that connect directly to Lazada and Shopee—Asia’s equivalents of Amazon—removing any friction point between intention and action.

The site and AI tool pair with a ten-week pledge program that draws from addiction cessation research, weight loss psychology, and habit formation science to support people in the first two months of building healthy, sustainable eating habits. Weekly emails in local languages, featuring celebrities who’ve reduced meat, restaurants to try this weekend, and scripts for what to say when your aunt insists meat is needed at every meal for strength. The program’s approach is not preaching but accompaniment, walking alongside people as they navigate positive change.

Racing the Clock

Late afternoon in Southeast Asia. Kertna in Kuala Lumpur, Lena in Bangkok. A Slack huddle hums as they work together in the popular design platform Canva, adjusting a video side by side—tweaking fonts, trimming clips, debating tone. Each frame is carefully calibrated: not so shocking that people look away, not so soft that they keep scrolling.

Together, video by video and ad by ad, they search for the persuasive leverage point marketers dream of: to make change look better than the status quo. Make it beautiful, local, and achievable. Use the same tools that sell cosmetics and phones to sell health, compassion, and environmental conscientiousness. The format matters less than the function: answering questions, removing barriers, and making eating more plant-based foods as natural as breathing.

They study Instagram’s engagement algorithms, Facebook’s retention patterns. Not to manipulate but to compete—because their content shares space with everything else demanding attention on five billion Asian smartphone screens.

The piglet in their viral video doesn’t know it’s become a symbol, doesn’t know its joy has traveled through circuits and servers to lodge in millions of minds like a song you can’t stop humming. But this is how culture changes now—not through grand declarations but through perfectly timed posts that slip past defenses, algorithms that learn what moves people, patient work that turns awareness into action. One impression at a time, one question at a time, one meal at a time, racing against tomorrow while building it today.