Case Study: New Agency Creation, Sporesight.
How do you ride the shroom boom — without selling your soul?
Jess was deep in the mycelial underground.
Strategist. Cultural researcher. Futurist.
But how do you turn an obsession into a category-defining business?
Jess has a decade of experience in marketing insight. She’s explored the edgiest of cultural trends and human behaviour, all over the world.
She also loves mushrooms. Like, REALLY loves mushrooms.
From self-funded ethnographic trips across sub saharan Africa to meet with growers, to her writing and podcasting. She’s gone all-in on exploring every part of the product, the community and the culture, way beyond what’s currently discussed in the mainstream.
She absolutely wanted to build a business around this passion, but she needed help to land a killer positioning that would be commercially fire, as well as giving her a business with room for growth.
The Challenge:
The mushroom industry is booming; brands are clambering to capitalise and the industry is predicted to be worth $136bn in eight years.
Mushrooms the product, are the obvious part of this, but it was the CULTURE of mushrooms and what they can teach us about new ways of being in the world, that really lit a fire in Jess.
Uniqueness is a killer ingredient for a powerful business, but it also needed to be beautifully rooted in a clear business need.
The APPROACH:
We went deep into mushroom culture to pull out the key, most thought-provoking themes.
We played with possible use-cases for this work. The who, the what and the why… and although this would be a category of one vibe, we explored the existing industry we would be anchored in.
We obsessed over the assets we could build in the business to take ownership over this space and to protect her IP.
The POSITIONING:
What?
🌱 A futures company, powered by Nature.
🌀 Using mushroom systems to rethink how we work, lead + design.
🔥 Consumer-facing mission: “Future's Company, here to unfuck the world.”
The RESULT:
A brand no one else could own.
A strategic playbook that’ll scale beyond her.
And one very excited founder.
➡️ Check out @sporessight
🔥 Visuals by @maybedesignstudio
⚡ Strategy by @thewildonesstrategy
THE STRATEGY:
The business model will make this real and commercial.
🍄 Immersive consultancy model - Three specifically designed “trips” that combine immersive learning, with clear strategic value.
🍄 IP-led assets with long-term value - a signature way of thinking, a collective of expert voices and an internal data engine.
🍄 ‘Mush-Code’. An internal code of ethics to guide every move.
THE RESULTS - IN JESS’S WORDS
As a strategist who’s spent a career helping brands to shape their positionings, I never realised how hard it would be to articulate my own. Emma is brilliant. She has helped me to shape my business proposition; mainly, by really listening. She ‘gets’ me, is genuinely passionate about my idea and has been able to refine my ramblings into a succinct, radical and exciting thing that I can’t wait to release to the world. I’d highly recommend working with her!
