Introducing the cultured meat market leader

UPSIDE Foods, formerly known as Memphis Meats, is the leading U.S. cultivated meat company. UPSIDE Foods uses a cell culture to grow animal protein, rather than slaughter animals. UPSIDE Foods is moving rapidly toward commercialization of their first consumer product, chicken. 

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Challenge

When UPSIDE Foods was founded in 2015 under the name Memphis Meats, there were no other cultivated meat companies in the world and the concept of lab-grown meat was considered close to science fiction. Now, with dozens of companies in the market and regulatory approval for cultured meat quickly approaching, UPSIDE Foods urgently needed to rebrand as a global consumer company with real products ready for market.  

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Strategy

Mission North devised an integrated campaign to announce the UPSIDE Foods brand and introduce the world to the company’s first consumer product: chicken. To guarantee that the rebrand would be newsworthy to top-tier business, investor and trade press, we included a slew of additional business milestones as part of  the announcement. These milestones included  the news that the UPSIDE Foods team had broken ground on a world-first cultivated meat production plant and that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, had personally invested in the company. To drum up consumer excitement for UPSIDE Chicken and to truly bring the product to life, Mission North distributed droolworthy product photos across social media. And lastly, we leveraged influencer and investor Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, to champion that cultured meat is here and quickly approaching consumers’ plates by personally sharing the rebranding news on Twitter. 

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Impact

Through top-tier media coverage, influencers such as Richard Branson and unique visual assets following the brand's new highly visual identity, the UPSIDE Foods brand was catapulted into people's feeds. Headline stories ran in a variety of outlets, from online stories in Bloomberg to broadcast segments on Yahoo! Finance. UPSIDE Foods was praised for their new brand, and consumer excitement began to develop for company’s first product, chicken, which will hit the market as soon as regulatory approval is granted. 

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In total, the team secured 34 articles on the rebrand and briefed 17 priority media contacts on the news, including Forbes, NPR and The Wall Street Journal. Following the rebrand, digital mentions were up 22% and 200 unique voices joined the UPSIDE Foods conversation across social media platforms. Most importantly, that excitement, engagement and traffic has not returned back to pre-announcement levels. Instead, it continues to grow.