A MEATY CHALLENGE…

Meat production is a leading contributor to global warming. Livestock contribute between 15% and 19% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Alternatives deliver emission reduction at scale.

…WITH A SOLUTION THAT WASN’T FAMOUS

Cultured meat is a strong alternative, but it wasn’t approved for consumption anywhere except Singapore, which had stopped selling due to lack of attention. No-one could try it, no-one really talked about it.

WHAT ISN’T RENOWNED, DOESN’T GET REGULATED

Without regulatory approval, cultured meat wouldn’t fulfil its potential. For “novel” food categories, regulators prioritise areas that can demonstrate fertile ground for new food technologies to land.

Regulators don’t go looking for what sounds interesting. They examine new methods that have sown the seeds of public attention.

SO VOW FACED A COMPOUNDED CHALLENGE

No ability to properly taste test, unable to sell any product, and a lot of funding to raise…Vow vowed to transform cultured meat by making it a hot-bed issue that would demand attention and legislation.

THE ANSWER WAS TO CREATE FAME ON FAST-FORWARD.

The answer wasn’t cultured meat, but fame.

Fame to create the public awareness to get regulators interested, that would in time enable actual product launches.

The Mammoth Meatball is a meatball made entirely out of cultured meat of the extinct mythical creature, the woolly mammoth. Starting from genomic data of the mammoth, we filled in the missing gaps in data with African Elephant DNA. And grew 20 billion cells containing this DNA. This combined the mammoth, considered to be a symbol of loss, with the wholesome, familiar meatball – creating a symbol of hope of a more sustainable food future, using the world’s oldest available data set to create a truly novel food.

The launch of the Mammoth Meatball propelled Vow Foods and the wider cultured meat industry forward. By igniting a groundswell of fame that triggered governments into regulatory approvals.

FAME AS A STRATEGY meant adopting Vow’s approach of being “deliberately different”: not pretending to be animal meat but building renown for cultured meat itself.

A SERIES OF WORKSHOPS WITH VOW’S TEAM LED TO OUR INSIGHT:

To take cultured meat out of the lab and into real life, we’d need to balance the innovative with the familiar.

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WE COLLABORATED ON A JOURNEY THROUGH SCIENCE AND SNACKS

T-Rex burger, Dodo Nuggets…working with Vow’s scientists, we considered them all, balancing fame potential with available genetic information. The T-Rex and the Dodo couldn’t deliver, but (due to its cellular make-up) the Mammoth could.

SO THE MIGHTY MAMMOTH MET THE HUMBLE MEATBALL TO DELIVER ON OUR INSIGHT

Everyone knows meatballs. They’re familiar, homely, safe. From USA to Australia to Singapore, while we make them differently, meatballs are a thing. Everyone also knows Mammoths, the intriguing woolly behemoth that’s extinct. Or so we thought…

The creative impact of the Mammoth Meatball activation came from combining meatball wholesomeness, scientific integrity and mammoth intrigue – together delivering fame.

Phase 1: Launch. After three years of research and technological innovation, the Mammoth Meatball was unveiled in Science Museum Nemo in Amsterdam. Alongside global press there were bioengineers, representatives of the wider cultured meat industry and regulators so the launch that sparked a global discussion – led by VOW.

Phase 2: Making it Mammoth. We created a detailed PR plan engineered to fuel the discussion about our unique meatball and make sure the world would be intrigued by this solution. Mammoth Meatball went everywhere, from the science pages to SXSW. It was discussed in global news outlets, dinner tables and classrooms. The fact that no-one could taste it was a PR dream, not a pitfall, further whipping up demand. All this created fertile ground for regulatory approval.

MAMMOTH MEATBALL DROVE RIPPLES OF IMPACT from the public, to regulators, to industry.

RIPPLE ONE: PIQUE PUBLIC INTEREST

A meatball you couldn’t eat? That helped not hindered fame, with Mammoth Meatball earning 13 billion Media Impressions and $120m in Media value.

The unique combination of meatball and mammoth created global cultural power from This Morning to SXSW to peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Mammoth Meatball increased willingness to try cultured meat by a…mammoth 95.7%.

RIPPLE TWO: DRIVE REGULATORY ACTION

Since the launch of the Mammoth Meatball, approval for cultured meat has increased from one market to seven giving regulatory approval for the production, tasting or sale of cultured meat. Vow had its first commercial product launch in Singapore in April 2024. See info deck for how approvals unfolded.

By creating a groundswell of fame, The Mammoth Meatball accelerated regulatory approvals everywhere, and changed an industry. Possibly even a future.