Case Studies in Tech PR: Cloudflare, Brex, Gusto & More
INSIGHT
For Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1, we targeted privacy-conscious consumers who nevertheless were not able to secure their mobile phones. Gaining traction for an enterprise company among consumer audiences doesn’t mean you shy away from your roots. Instead, you should lean into them.
IMAGINATION
Focus on the story, not on the specifics of the product, but the more significant issue at play — protecting people’s privacy from the group still able to spy on your internet browsing: Internet Service Providers.
INFLUENCE
Started with industry influencers with a more technical background to gain credibility and expanded to more consumer and mainstream groups. From the initial launch to the release of the mobile app later that year, 1.1.1.1 was covered in 350+ stories ranging from The Verge and Fast Company to Forbes and Fortune as well as Lifehacker, CBS This Morning, Daily Dot, and Gizmodo.
INSPIRATION
Educate consumers directly on how Internet browsing works and how 1.1.1.1 protects consumer privacy for free. The launch resulted in more than one million downloads in less than three months.
INSIGHT
In order to speak to a person, rather than a company, we targeted “founders at startups” to connect to our specific demographics instead of focusing on the broader landscape of “tech companies.”
IMAGINATION
Empathizing with every founder’s desire to grow fast, we positioned Brex as a trusted peer and crafted a narrative showing Brex as a fintech disruptor taking down entrenched players to benefit fellow entrepreneurs.
INFLUENCE
We staggered our fintech disruptor story throughout the year to create multiple opportunities to showcase how Brex was taking on Goliath while releasing new information, content, and kicking off an event series along the way. This campaign culminated in top tier media coverage from WSJ and NYT, multiple byline opportunities in TechCrunch and other founder-focused media, public OOH campaigns across San Francisco, and the launch of a podcast and blog series aimed at helping founders learn from each other.
INSPIRATION
Established a platform for the CEO Henrique Dubugras to connect with founders and own the conversation of immigrant entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. Hosted a series of events to help startup founders learn how to develop new products, successfully close venture rounds, and hire better talent.
INSIGHT
During the 2016 presidential election, we analyzed constituent groups, and identified the social-savvy, share-happy millennial vote as the top newsmaker.
IMAGINATION
Leveraging SurveyMonkey’s in-house research team, we built a national campaign targeting millennials centered around an engaging, real-time interactive electoral map. Anyone could become a pollster by cutting polling results state-by-state and toggling views by age, sex, income, race, education, gender, and even generation.
INFLUENCE
We developed profiles for top spokespeople around election forecasts and voter insights, and shared snackable data broadly while aligning with influential voices on Twitter and Instagram. Amidst a busy media cycle, we saw over 170 original articles and segments for a total of 1.2+ billion impressions, including MIC., PopSugar, Bustle, Seventeen, USA Today, Newsweek, The Atlantic.
INSPIRATION
SurveyMonkey became the brand with a pulse on the election’s biggest issues. The electoral map achieved virality with 10M+ social impressions including notable shares from Snoop Dogg, Bill Nye, January Jones, Jessica Chastain, Elizabeth Banks, Nate Silver, and more.
INSIGHT
Among the different audiences that use Furbo, we zeroed in on single millennials for the holidays--younger people who love their dogs, but feel anxious about leaving them at home during the travel season.
IMAGINATION
Create viral content, such as Santa’s Naughty List of most barking breeds, paired it with a media relations program that targeted reporters that were dog moms themselves, and finished it off with a program for gift guides, influencers, and features in consumer media.
INFLUENCE
Between Black Friday and New Year’s 2018, we secured over 500 pieces of individual coverage, including national broadcast features on CBS Sunday Morning and Telemundo, as well as writeups in Buzzfeed that hit the top of Apple News.
INSPIRATION
We used Furbo’s data and product features to show dog moms that they don’t have to sacrifice their social life in order to be a good dog parent, all the while giving Furbo credibility to reach new audiences through their data on dog behavior.
INSIGHT
Aligning with Doctor On Demand's mission to make healthcare more accessible, we zeroed in on the women who are juggling a million things at once and might be neglecting their own health by prioritizing others above themselves.
IMAGINATION
It seems obvious, but based on our research it needs to be said: women can't take care of others until they take care of themselves. Our campaign, “Live Life Well,” championed mental and physical health for new moms, working women, and anyone who might be tempted to neglect their own health in the midst of juggling a million priorities.
INFLUENCE
We secured over 200 pieces of earned coverage including online publications such as Today.com, TIME, Bustle, Huffington Post, Parents, Romper, Elite Daily in less than six months. We also booked 22 broadcast hits reaching 14M+ viewers, driving home the message that mothers need self-care too.
INSPIRATION
The peak season for Doctor on Demand is winter during cold and flu season. Our challenge was to develop a cadence of content and news to highlight Doctor on Demand during the off-season and attract new users.
INSIGHT
Become the champion of small businesses across the country and expand our audience and tech coverage beyond Silicon Valley.
IMAGINATION
Showing small businesses we would go the “Extra Mile” for them by having the CEO go on a two-week road trip traveling in an RV to visit customers in 10 local markets and recognize their contributions to their communities.
INFLUENCE
Generated both national and local press coverage (24 regional hits and 4+ national stories) resulting in 104M+ impressions. Secured wins in USA Today, Business Insider, San Francisco Chronicle, Entrepreneur, CNBC, and more.
INSPIRATION
Drove customer engagement through social media, doubled followers on Instagram, created meaningful content for the SMB community and spread awareness for Gusto in the heartland.
INSIGHT
Engage directly with local neighborhoods and the concerns of the businesses impacted by sidewalk delivery robots to reveal the humanity behind a robotics company.
IMAGINATION
Craft a story and launch plan that positioned Marble as the “friendly neighborhood robot” with launch stories from local small businesses and restaurants. Unlike robots piloted remotely from outside of the city, Marble was based in San Francisco, and their executives walked the streets with the robots to meet the community.
INFLUENCE
Even against headwinds, media coverage of Marble has been broadly positive, and for the launch, we secured 58 pieces of original content, almost entirely in target top-tier business (Wall Street Journal, Fortune,) technology (WIRED, TechCrunch,) and San Francisco publications (SF Chronicle, KQED.)
INSPIRATION
Our neighborly message was reflected across the media, and when San Francisco was considering banning sidewalk robots, their neighborly message shone through and Marble was able to secure an exemption, unlike their out-of-town competitors.
INSIGHT
Southeast Asia is the hottest technology market with more than 400 million internet users making it the fastest-growing digital economy. Xendit’s world-class payments platform and local expertise in SEA are enabling companies to access Southeast Asia’s digital economy and the larger global economy.
IMAGINATION
Make Xendit the Stripe of Southeast Asia and lean into their regionalize to scale, localize to win strategy.
INFLUENCE
Generated international and national press coverage resulting in 200M+ impressions. Secured wins in Bloomberg, Reuters, Fortune, Fobes, Business Insider, TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, CNBC, and more.
INSPIRATION
Established a platform for the co-founders to connect with startups, SMEs, and the larger conversation about Southeast Asia. Launched the Xendit Index, Hawker Hackers podcast to help startup founders learn how to develop new products, successfully close venture rounds, and hire better talent.
Turning Outcomes into Acquisition
INSIGHT
As generative AI flooded the customer service market with well-funded competitors, Forethought needed to shift the conversation beyond AI features. The opportunity was to own the business outcomes narrative and become the company proving enterprise AI delivers measurable value.
IMAGINATION
We transformed Forethought's $1B in cumulative customer ROI into an industry-defining proof point, reframing it as evidence that enterprise AI had moved from experimentation to business impact. This positioned co-founder Deon Nicholas as a leading voice on AI ROI, earning marquee visibility including Bloomberg, CNBC Fortt Knox, and a follow-on Wall Street Journal mention.
INFLUENCE
By the time Zendesk announced its acquisition, Forethought had become synonymous with AI-driven value creation. We activated a coordinated Tier 1 media strategy that generated more than 45 pieces of coverage, including New York Times DealBook, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Fortune, and The Information, positioning the acquisition as validation of Forethought's market leadership.
INSPIRATION
Acquisitions don't create great brands—they validate them. By establishing Forethought as the company defining enterprise AI outcomes before the deal was announced, we helped create the credibility and momentum that made Forethought’s acquisition feel inevitable.
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Owning the compute economy
INSIGHT
Parasail entered a compute market crowded with legacy cloud giants and a new wave of neocloud startups all fighting for attention. Standing out meant proving scale and impact and reshaping how the industry understood Parasail's place in the AI compute landscape.
IMAGINATION
We created a new category for Parasail, the AI Deployment Network, positioning its aggregated compute model as a way to make deploying AI as simple as using a CDN. To cement the company's scale in reporters' minds, we surfaced one compelling data point: Parasail's on-demand compute network is larger than Oracle's entire fleet.
INFLUENCE
The category-defining approach drove 11 original stories and 23 total pieces of coverage across VC/startup, tech/AI, and trade audiences, including feature stories in TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE, The Next Platform, and Data Center Dynamics, mentions in Axios, Fortune, and The Information, and additional briefings with Reuters and AIwire.
INSPIRATION
Messaging pull-through landed at 75%, cementing the AI Deployment Network as a category of Parasail's own making and establishing the company as a serious contender in the AI compute economy.
INSIGHT
Launching into an AI landscape under intense industry scrutiny, Oumi needed messaging sharp enough to cut through the noise: clear on its mission, and unmistakably different from every other company making noise about openness.
IMAGINATION
We built Oumi's launch around a single idea, unconditionally open AI, positioning the moment as AI's Linux moment. Embargoed media outreach was paired with direct digital engagement across Discord, Reddit, podcasts, and newsletters, backed by a branded launch video and a CEO-authored think piece.
INFLUENCE
The strategy landed 53 earned media hits in the first week, including placements in VentureBeat, SiliconANGLE, The Next Platform, coverage across top AI newsletters, and multiple podcast opportunities, including Eye on AI, a top AI podcast, with organic support from leading AI voices carrying the story further on social.
INSPIRATION
Oumi's repo became the top trending project on GitHub for three consecutive days, earning 7.7K stars in its first month. The open-source message resonated so strongly that it earned Oumi an AMA invite on r/MachineLearning, a community of roughly 3 million members.