The Rise PR Blog

Good tech PR - Wazoku launch

31 October 2011

This is the latest in an occasional series of posts that highlight examples of what I consider to be good tech pr. Whilst this definitely isn't my most modest moment ever (this particular piece of good tech pr is a Rise PR campaign), i do think we did some great work with the recent launch of idea management start-up Wazoku.

Idea (or innovation) management is software that helps companies to capture, discuss and evaluate employee ideas. It is much more established in the US but is a relatively new concept here in the UK. So this lack of awareness of the market Wazoku operates in, combined with the fairly limited opportunities in UK start-up PR compared with the US, made for a challenging brief. So we decided that offering the launch as an exclusive would make the best impact with Wazoku’s target audience (large SMEs) and managed to secure the Financial Times on that basis.

This led to a series of new business leads for Wazoku, which was hugely rewarding given that PR often has to justify the value it brings. It also created a ripple effect that led to coverage in HR Zone which we built on by pitching interviews and securing further hits in The Next Web and GigaOM, amongst others. The final part of the media programme concentrated on positioning Wazoku as a thought leader in the UK idea / innovation management space, which involved an article placement programme, with articles pitched to SMEWeb and Fresh Business Thinking.

Throughout my tech PR career I have always done a lot of analyst relations and believe it to be an integral part of a communications programme. The Wazoku launch was no different and we arranged briefings with the two leading analyst organisations in idea management –Gartner and Forrester – putting in place the foundations for a productive on-going relationship with both analysts.

I try to avoid AEV and opportunities to see type measurements (who doesn’t?) but this just felt like a really strong campaign – good press coverage leading to new business enquiries, clear thought leadership and market understanding demonstrated, relationships built with key media and analysts and overall a successful UK start-up successfully launched.