Scenario: The client, a software developer, asked Rocket Science to launch a new product in only two weeks — prompted by the discovery that a key competitor was about to announce their product. The compressed time schedule meant that we were forced to launch before we had a stable evaluation copy to demo, or a customer that we were allowed to announce. To complicate matters further, Rocket Science was just starting the process of taking over the account from a previous PR agency.

Approach: Rocket Science quickly assessed the marketplace and worked with the client to articulate the product’s differentiation. We pre-briefed the top-tier analysts in less than a week, and secured several press references. Lacking referenceable customers, but wanting to score in-depth media coverage nonetheless, we created several versions of “exclusive” stories by mixing different beta users, analyst references and product graphics, and pitched them to different weekly magazines and on-line press.

Result: Our efforts were repaid in seven very positive articles all hitting right at launch — including an exclusive feature story in PC Week. These articles were followed by four more positive stories hitting later in the week. In addition, two of the analysts soon wrote favorable opinion pieces about the product and its unique architecture. And our client’s director of marketing paid Rocket Science the ultimate complement by noting that 80% of their sales leads were directly attributable to our PR effort.