Why Most Startups Don't 'Get' Press (1)
"I can't tell you how many times we've met with early-stage companies, and they start by telling us their big vision. They say, 'This is what we're about and what we want to change.' But when we ask them what they actually do, they can't tell us. If you can't answer that question, don't do anything else until you can. Nothing else matters." Recommended Articledei This Is What Impactful Engineering Leadership Looks Like This is Brooke Hammerling, unfiltered. Her company Brew MediaRelations match-makes young companies with journalists, influencers and anyone else who can help propel them to stardom. Today, her roster includes Wordpress, Charity:Water, Wealthfront, Oracle and About.me — all known for bold, creative communications strategies. She also happened to make the cover of The New York Times' Sunday business section a few years ago as the poster woman for doing tech PR differently. When it comes to whether startups need help in this area, she has a somewhat subversive opinion: they don't. Even while at Brew, she's helped hash out PR plans for a number of entrepreneurs who can't afford full-time agencies or in-house support. And she's got a playbook of tactics for those who want to do it on their own. When To Go It Alone No matter how many PR agencies or freelance consultants say otherwise, a small startup can pull off a solid media relations strategy without shelling out for help, Hammerling says. In fact, there are only three reasons an early-stage company should consider retaining the services of a firm:
It's entering a crowded market. “They need to be able to show why they're better, why they're above the fray,” she says. It's a very disruptive company. “If it's really going to change huge things, like health care, then they need to get out there ahead fast.” There's a legacy CEO involved who has history with the press. “Even if the company isn't ready for primetime, there will be a lot of attention.” If none of these three are true, then relax. "Everybody else should focus that budget on development of the product and building a team internally." You Are Your Message & Your Message Is Everything When Hammerling takes on a new client, the first thing she does is separate the key members of the team, including the investors. Then she fires questions at them about the product: “What are you? Why are you? Who are you? What problem are you solving and how are you solving it? Why should people care right now?” The idea is to hear what all of them say — where are the differences? Where are the overlaps? What do the people who care most about the company's success think it is? This is how a narrative is born.
This was Hammerling's approach with GroupMe, the mobile messaging startup bought by Skype in 2011. “It's a great example because they were entering a very crowded space, but it wasn't chat and it wasn't just texting — we didn't even want to call it an app,” she says. “Instead, we called it a ‘messaging service' and talked about it in the context of a story: the frustration everyone feels when they can't communicate with a whole group of friends at a music festival or a party. We were able to really differentiate them as a new way for friends to talk to each other.”
A startup can use this strategy without a communications team. “You can come up with your own ideas and compare notes, and develop it together. You might end up somewhere you didn't predict.” She highlights Uber, not a Brew client, as an expert example of intentional branding. “They offer themselves as a technology company — not a car service. That's a very specific message that tells you something about who they are and what they do.” PR isn't about hits and it isn't about placement. It's about focusing your voice. It's about finding your place in the market. The good thing about separating stakeholders is that everyone will give correct answers to the questions being asked — their delivery will just be different. “It's not like there's one perfect answer. Everyone will be right. This just gives you the opportunity to say, oh I like how this one person said that, or how so-and-so explained this concept. You can see who phrased things succinctly and who has a better grasp of the longer narrative. Then you can combine the best.”
The next step is to build what she calls a messaging document, starting with your most succinct, resonant messaging at the top — maybe it's just one sentence — “It's what you want to say at cocktail parties,” she says. Below that, you can dive a little deeper with the three key messages you'd want to share with reporters about the specific problem your company is solving. Under that, you can get more detailed. Then make sure everyone has a copy.
“PR isn't about hits, it isn't about placement — it isn't ‘You pay us and we'll get you a clip here or a mention on that blog.' And it isn't about a first-day bump that gets no traction,” Hammerling says. “It's about focusing your voice. It's about finding your place in the market.” Developing messaging that resonates can be especially hard for complex technical and enterprise companies. As one of the first PR people working with NetSuite in 2003, Hammerling knows better than most. “We were talking about data systems and software as a service before the cloud was a thing, and no one understood,” she says. “We had to simplify it down and not tell the whole story. NetSuite does a lot of things, but I needed to tell just that one main thing.”
Recommended Articledei The Story Behind How Pocket Hit 20M Users with 20 People Some tough love was required. “They had this very very long-winded messaging on what they were doing by explaining the SaaS model of the financial data of ERP and blah blah blah — and I just told them, the mainstream business press doesn't know this world yet, and they don't care,” she says. “We filtered it down to this: ‘the future is software as a service: a business that will enable companies to manage the data that is important to them online, and share it across platforms with many people.' We had to get people to understand how and why it would relate to them. All it took was taking out the jargon and simplifying it so that people could imagine themselves using it.”
Drawing analogies is a rookie crutch. Saying “It's like Twitter, only for dog-sitters” can be instructive, but it also takes away from your brand. The better thing to do is to boil your message down to its core, and then layer in other dimensions and functionality little by little. “You may do 25 things and that's amazing, but what's that key thing you do? You have to make sure that's crystal clear. Tell the story around that then layer in the rest later. If you try to pack it all into one announcement or a press release, you'll lose your audience.” Hammerling points to WealthFront — a Brew client — as one startup doing a good job of turning a complex concept into a single idea. “It's taking technology, and using it for financial planning — a function that you normally go to humans for. They really had to hone in on a message so that all kinds of people would feel good using it.” You can see it in everything down to their tagline: “We manage your investments for you.” It's not about technology or business. It's about the personal ‘we' taking care of something for ‘you.' This is a hard pill for some founders to swallow. Here they've spent all this time building a multi-faceted product and they want to talk about all of its capabilities. But this is almost always a mistake, she says. “It's hard to tell founders this kind of thing — it's like telling them their child isn't ready for an honors class yet. They want to fast-forward.” But she's seen it end badly too many times. Hammerling cites photo sharing app Color as a prime — and commonly used — example. It burst onto the scene in 2011, having raised a whopping $41 million in its first round of funding. Its shocking success seemed clear as the company made the rounds with the media — but the app's actual functionality was not. “Nobody knew what the app did or what to expect once they downloaded it. Because of the money, people were expecting something great, and it just wasn't there.” Color's demise was slow and quiet. If she had been the one handling the company's PR, Hammerling says she wouldn't have let the money dictate the strategy. “Of course they couldn't keep the funding quiet — too many people were involved and it was an absurd amount. But I wouldn't have tried to do a full court press around the product at the same time,” she says. Prepping for Launch Needless to say, Hammerling has seen a lot of missteps like this and more. She's had startups come to her three days before their scheduled launch asking for a turnkey media strategy. Of course, there's no such thing, she says. A solid media plan needs a runway of three to six months. “Even if you have a couple weeks and marketing material, that's not enough. It's not going to be effective and it's going to look fake.” When a company does this — and plenty still do — Hammerling says nine times out of 10 a launch will get botched, and they never get another shot at it. Like creating messaging, preparing for an effective launch starts with a list of questions — all designed to suss out your real motivations for doing PR:
Do you just want a lot of attention early on?
Is the goal to attract a ton of users? Customers?
Is the announcement more about recruiting top talent?
Do you want to raise more capital or VC interest?
The answers to these questions will shape your approach and your story. For the most part, different goals mean you go after different outlets. If you're trying to hire great engineers, you want to get on Reddit, Hacker News, or the blogs engineers you want are reading. If you're trying to get in front of investors, figure out what they read, and pitch those publications. Also, the more transparent you are about your goals, the more likely you are to achieve them, Hammerling says. “Stick with your one basic, overarching message, you just need to tweak it a little bit for each audience.” Sounds simple, but there are some caveats.
Avoid timing your launch with a funding announcement. Again, Color is a useful example. “If you need to announce funding, try to separate it as much as you can from your product. Absolutely don't lead with it.” A large round raises expectations, a small one lowers them. The amount of money can all too easily convince people what they should expect from your company and how likely it is to succeed. The product should have a chance to stand on its own.
On top of this, a surprising number of companies choose to launch before their product is ready at all. “It's a head scratcher, but I've seen so many startups determined to stick to their timelines that they'll unveil something before it works. Then all of the bad press and feedback sets them back six months or more,” Hammerling says. “You have to be patient. If you have to pull a plug, pull the marketing plug. Nobody's setting those deadlines but you.” Getting on the Media's Radar Once you have your plan, it's all about placement. How do you get attention in the deafening echo chamber of today's technology news cycle? As Hammerling puts it — unsurprisingly — it's all about relationships. And you don't need to be a communications pro to make them. The obvious rules apply: be smart, pay attention, and don't be rude. But there's a bevy of other hacks for getting noticed.
