CASE STUDY
Mineral
Helping a stealth-mode X project “graduate” into a stand-alone Alphabet company
Brand Building | Content & Production | Experience Strategy & Planning | Site UX/UI Design & Systems | Site Development
Challenge
To discover more about the magic of Mineral, visit their website.
Mineral is developing artificial intelligence that can transform agricultural data into understanding to increase the resilience of the planet’s food production systems. Founded in 2017 as a bet within Alphabet’s X, the “moonshot factory,” Mineral had a planet-sized ambition and the technology and talent to get there. What they needed was a partner to help them craft the market presence needed to launch — and grow — as a stand-alone company.
Mineral chose Prophet as its end-to-end partner to launch a brand to represent Alphabet’s commitment to sustainable agriculture. In January 2023, Mineral successfully “graduated” as a stand-alone company and is already making an impact on the food system humankind needs to survive.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. If humanity doesn’t change how we produce food, by 2050, feeding the population will clear most of the world’s remaining forests and push the earth’s temperature past its 1.5°C warming limit. But innovating farming practices to be more resilient and ensuring our planet can provide for lifetimes to come is complex. The diversity of the ag value chain and its industry practices have not been data-rich nor shared across silos — let alone globally — for the last century. The agriculture industry is at a juncture where data-informed decision-making is required to innovate key efforts like traceability and demand forecasting.
“Mineral’s ambition is not about adding technology to agriculture. It’s about helping adapt the agriculture system to a changing climate and switch to a more sustainable path. We’re doing so by leveraging AI to deeply understand the plant world and unlock the possibilities of embracing complexity.” – Elliott Grant, Chief Executive Officer, Mineral
In addition to a strong brand, to show up in the world as an independent Alphabet company, Mineral needed a modern marketing organization to drive momentum and set the stage for commercial success. Prophet helped Mineral leadership drive a stake in the ground — navigating through the foundational commercial realities of launching a business.
“Prophet helped us lay the brand foundation to mature from experimentation to commercialization and share with the world who Mineral really is. Prophet quickly diagnosed our brand needs, our in-market ambition, and the road that would get us there. They not only asked the right questions about our go-to-market approach, they also weren’t afraid to iterate with us; Prophet felt like an extension of our team.” – Elliott Grant
Solutions
Prophet kicked off in March 2022 with a “graduation” checklist, which included building the business, brand, and marketing foundations to define, position, and externalize themselves to partners across the ag value chain and the world:
- Developing a thoughtful business strategy and visual and verbal brand, rooted in research, to uncover key industry and customer insights to determine how best to position Mineral in the AgTech space.
- Externalizing the brand, mission, and vision on internal and external channels, including Alphabet-internal announcements and spotlights at high-profile events.
- Identifying and integrating the tech stack required to stand-up, design, and operationalize owned digital channels as they scale.
“There are nuances of being an Alphabet company. Prophet took a true partnership approach to helping us navigate our launch strategy and execution, which required flexibility and a willingness to take feedback and adapt to our needs. After only a few weeks, the Prophet team had a firm grasp of who we were and who we aspired to be. They cleared the way for us and were patient every step of the way.”
Megan Fallon, Marketing Lead, Mineral
Throughout the partnership, Mineral realized they would need so much more to achieve their goals, which included:
- Co-developing and co-authoring a rich pipeline of content with various business area leaders to continuously position Mineral as a reputable thought leader in ag.
- Building muscles across the full commercial spectrum (e.g., developing multi-purpose sales materials for marketing teams and business development teams).
- Supporting product teams with market-facing customer knowledge to inform portfolio strategy and feature development decisions.
“Prophet has shown aptitude not only for delivering brand and marketing assets, but also for helping our teams build the muscles required to grow and run the commercial side of our business.”
Megan Fallon
Results
Together, we crafted a business and brand identity that embraces the complexity of our agriculture ecosystems and showcases how Mineral’s breakthrough technology can create a more sustainable and productive food production system for our future.
Beyond graduation, Mineral continues to work with Prophet in its first year: prioritizing joint product-commercial goals, executing in-market activations, co-authoring content strategy (including thought leadership), conducting market-back research, and enhancing website features — all in close partnership with teams on the ground to reflect pivots as the company tests, learns, and grows.
Impact
+7k
impressions in the first 24 hours
10
press articles published on graduation day alone
+7%
engagement rate on first post