CASE STUDY - Scope of Work
April 2021

Overview:

Press & Media Report

Windy City Mushroom began their foray into public relations at one of the most uncertain and tumultuous times in recent memory. The global pandemic was just the start of what has turned out to be a marathon of economic challenges and pivoting business models.

In early 2020 when Exclusive PR was introduced to Guy Furman to present a PR strategy, our plan was to promote to high-end Chicago fine dining restaurants. That all changed in March of last year when those restaurants were suddenly closed with no reopening in sight. With a factory full of product that was going to keep growing regardless of what's happening to the outside world, we needed to find a way to get the word out about the company and help Guy find an immediate new recipient for hundreds of pounds of mushrooms. In doing so, we were able to connect with food banks in the city and gain TV press coverage of the donation.

As the year progressed, we expanded the scope of our strategy to include business/start-up press, cooking segments & chef partnerships, green growing/ag news, and direct-to-consumer/local outreach. This led to a TV segment featuring the mushrooms in the kitchen, Guy's participation in Chicago and national entrepreneurial write-ups, articles in agricultural outlets, and features in hyper-local publications that promoted the new storefront.

Article & Segments:

GrowerTalks
Foraging New Paths
Featuring: Guy Furman
4/01/21

CS Chicago
20 Top Innovative Chicagoans
Featuring: Guy Furman
4/01/21

Nectafy
How local food producers can sell organic food online
Featuring: Guy Furman 1/07/21

Press and Media Report:

Block Club Chicago
West Side Shroomery Brings Specialty Mushrooms To Chicago’s Food Scene
Featuring: Guy Furman
12/17/20

Chicago Reader
Bow before our future fungal overlords
Featuring: Guy Furman
12/15/20

Chicago Reader
Full Circle Fungi makes like a mushroom and cooperates
Featuring: Guy Furman
12/08/20

Time Out Chicago
Windy City Mushroom
Featuring: Guy Furman
12/02/20

Chicago Health
Briefs: Mushrooms with Benefits
Featuring: Guy Furman
9/14/20

Tasty Trade
Who Opens a Mushroom Farm in the Middle of Chicago?
Featuring: Guy Furman
9/08/20

Chicago Food Magazine
Windy City Mushroom Invites Mushroom Enthusiasts to Submit Slogan Ideas
Featuring: Guy Furman
9/04/20

AgriNews
Gourmet mushroom varieties grown in Chicago
Featuring: Guy Furman
8/21/20

MarketWatch
Not all COVID small-business stories end badly — sales sprouted at this very vertical Chicago mushroom grower
Featuring: Guy Furman
8/18/20

IdeaMensch
Founder of Windy City Mushroom
Featuring: Guy Furman
7/28/20

Fox 32
Delicious summertime recipes with Windy City Mushroom
Featuring: Adrian Castellanos
7/19/20

ABC 7
Windy City Mushroom Donates 500 pounds of gourmet mushrooms to those in need during COVID-19 in Chicago
Featuring: Guy Furman
3/27/20

Fox 32
Windy City Mushroom's 500 Pound Donation
Featuring: Guy Furman
3/27/20

WTTW 11
Had Enough of Canned Goods? Local Growers Team Up to Bring Farmers Market to Your Door
Featuring: Guy Furman
3/27/20

Key Audience Matrics:

For the outlets with publicly available audience information, please see below for figures that detail each publications' reach. The metrics are in daily, weekly or monthly breakouts or in the outlets' Unique Visitors Per Month format for large websites. Data is current as of March 16, 2021.

Social Media Report:

Instagram

7 Day Metrics

Accounts Reached: 315
Total-Content Interactions: 18

30 Day Metrics

Accounts Reached: 956
Total-Content Interactions: 360

Account Interaction

In addition to posting, we have also engaged with other pages and utilized guerilla tactics to attract people to the page, which includes liking, commenting, and following other accounts that would be advantageous to Windy City Mushroom, watching stories, and identifying prospects by way of learning who is interacting with our competition.

Direct Messaging

We have actively been fielding DMs that we managed and have materialized in sales as well as the Totto Market deal. Our team has also been messaging with someone writing a cookbook that is interested in talking to Guy. Ultimately, the management of this messaging has been significant. Our outreach has also caught the attention of Alinea's executive chef to the degree he asked about picking up mushrooms, but we are unsure if that has materialized offline