VTT got huge international media visibility for its expertise in cellular agriculture when we launched news about producing coffee in our laboratory last year. Marketing Finland awarded VTT and communications agency San Francisco 1st prize in the category of B2B launching at the Finnish Comms Awards gala on 26 October 2022. Special thanks to Heiko Rischer and VTT's coffee team for contributing to the communications project!
At VTT, we launched a campaign in 2021 to promote VTT CellularFood services related to cellular agriculture in the media and through various marketing channels. Our goal was to increase VTT's recognition as an expert in cellular agriculture and to promote the research team’s sales.
The world has not yet fully recognized the enormous potential of new food production methods. At VTT, we strive to bring the possibilities of cellular agriculture and the development projects of VTT to the public. From our cellular agriculture projects, we chose the coffee project for the campaign: researchers had grown coffee leaf cells in a bioreactor and succeeded in making coffee from it. We chose San Francisco Agency to be our partner of the communications project.
Media attention exceeded all expectations, both quantitatively and qualitatively. There have been more than 700 media hits since the publication date of 15 September 2021, and the news has been published in 76 countries. The leader of the coffee project, VTT's Team Manager Heiko Rischer, has given dozens of interviews to the media and several TV crews have visited our laboratory.
We managed to get a considerable amount of positive media attention not only for VTT's coffee project, but also for VTT's cellular agriculture research and service expertise. Together with our own marketing efforts, the communications project has produced leads that have led to contracts related to other plants as well.
Thanks to the campaign, a few companies have already started a commercial project with us. Therefore, we believe that the campaign had a positive impact on the possibilities of cellular agriculture among the food industry.
At San Francisco's suggestion, we participated together in Marketing Finland's competition, which culminated in winning the Finnish Comms Awards’ B2B launch category on 26 October 2022 in Helsinki.
Press release on 15 September, 2021: Sustainable coffee grown in Finland – the land that drinks the most coffee per capita produces its first tasty cup with cellular agriculture
