The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2023
Vow grows world's first mammoth meatball from extinct DNA — Epica 2023 GP
Vow grows a woolly mammoth meatball from resurrected DNA to sell cultured meat — 12.8B media reach, 3,200 mentions, Epica 2023 Innovation Grand Prix.
Vow
What it had to solve
Vow, an Australian cultured-meat startup, could grow meat from animal cells, but the category was unfamiliar to consumers and regulators were cautious. It needed a way to make food grown in a lab feel exciting rather than synthetic.
How it works
In March 2023, Australian cultured-meat startup Vow unveiled the world's first meatball made from the DNA of a woolly mammoth at NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam. Scientists assembled the genome from publicly available mammoth data, filled missing pieces with genes from its closest living relative, the African elephant, and grew the cells in a lab from sheep cells — a one-off prototype never meant to be eaten.
The idea was to make people excited about food grown from cells, not to sell a mammoth dinner. Co-founder Tim Noakesmith described the extinct animal as a symbol of loss caused by climate change, turned into a symbol of a more exciting future for food. The meatball was glazed for its journey from Sydney, then slow-baked and finished with a blow torch for the reveal — witnesses said it smelled like another Vow prototype made from crocodile.
Created with Wunderman Thompson Benelux (now VML), the launch captured global attention: within two weeks it reached 12.8 billion media impressions, drew 3,200 press mentions and over a billion Twitter impressions, with coverage from the BBC, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and US late-night television. In December 2023 the project won the Epica Awards Innovation Grand Prix, an award voted by journalists worldwide.
Why it lands
- An extinct animal is the ultimate conversation starter: a mammoth on the menu is impossible to ignore, so the debate becomes about the future of food.
- The meatball made an abstract technology physical and even odorous, giving global media a story rather than a press release.
- It framed cultured meat as exciting progress instead of a synthetic substitute, borrowing the mammoth as a symbol of loss turned into hope.
- Real science sat behind the spectacle — mammoth DNA, elephant filler, sheep cells — so the stunt had substance, not just shock.
- It gave Vow a measurable launch: 12.8 billion media reach and 3,200 mentions within two weeks.
What it did
Within two weeks the stunt reached 12.8 billion media impressions with 3,200 press mentions and over 1 billion Twitter impressions, from the BBC and The Guardian to US late-night TV; it won the Epica 2023 Innovation Grand Prix.
What you can take
To push an unfamiliar technology mainstream, don't explain the process — make the impossible tangible; a product people can picture turns a scientific argument into a story the world wants to share.
Since then
The meatball stayed a one-off: never tasted, never planned for production. The campaign put Vow's cultivated-meat ambitions in front of consumers and regulators as it pushed toward its first commercial product, cultivated Japanese quail for Singapore — then the only country to have approved cell-based meat. Vow kept building its business while the meatball became a landmark food-tech PR stunt, still used by VML as a flagship science-to-storytelling case.
Sources
- Mammoth Meatball — VML case study
- Elephant in the dining room: Startup makes mammoth meatball
- 2023 Results: The Big Prizes
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