Our Challenge:

Bearch Inc., a mobile app developer based in Austin, Texas, needed a rapid turn-around on a scalable PR campaign. The company, which had developed an anonymous photo-sharing app for college students called Unseen, approached us just prior to closing a $2.1 million Angel funding round. With two weeks to plan, our job was to devise a strategy that would help the company create awareness in the technology press for the funding, while at the same time increasing buzz on college campuses to drive downloads.

Our Solution:

Working closely with the Unseen founders, we devised a two-pronged strategy addressing the need for publicity in both the high tech media and college campus news.

We performed a number of tasks in rapid succession to ensure the announcement would go out in time for the funding:

  • Wrote a press release announcing the funding and describing the Unseen app
  • Created a custom media list comprised of tech media and college campus newspapers
  • Negotiated news embargo with a blogger at TechCrunch to give that publication the first shot at scooping the announcement the same day the wire went live
  • Developed a secondary pitch around the launch of Unseen at campuses across the U.S.

Last, we established communication protocols with the CEO and his internal marketing team to ensure every press inquiry was addressed in a timely manner.

Our Results:

We negotiated coverage in close to 20 publications in a 60-day period. Our two-market approach was successful at raising Unseen’s brand awareness, media inquiries, and downloads across the tech and college campus markets. The app grew from just over 50 campuses being served to over 200 campuses in just three months.

Some of the media outlets in we secured coverage on the client’s behalf:

  • TechCrunch
  • USA Today
  • NBC News
  • Vice
  • iDigital Times
  • Campus media in close to 15 schools across the U.S.

Later in our engagement with Unseen we continued garnering high-profile media mentions, some of which included app upgrade announcements as well as trending news story pegs tied to racism, security holes in anonymous apps, and parental concerns regarding use of anonymous apps. Some of these media placements included:

  • VentureBeat
  • Huffington Post
  • USA Today
  • The Daily Dot