Upbeat

On-demand PR campaigns

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On-demand PR campaigns

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Upbeat (formerly PRX) is a next-generation, software-powered PR agency

Launch tags:Web App•Public Relations•Tech

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Render Sandboxes: a computer for every agentGive every agent its own machine. Starts in under a second

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What I Know Best - Bhaskar Roy (Chief Product Officer at PlayPhone)

ok, i know @rrhoover will tag me on here to tease me so I'll save him the trouble :P i'm pretty adamantly against folks trying to "hack" PR like it's a machine-generated ad campaign (i've worked on both sides so know it all thoroughly), but will keep an eye on this one as it seems to more closely resemble how PR should be done than a lot of other "hacks," and uses tech the right way (kudos). that said, not sure a 20-min call with a rep is gonna be enough, esp if you have an non-consumer product as they're trickier to not only understand but then explain to a journo in one short email. (the number of reps who truly have no idea what their client does and just copy-paste vague paragraphs of marketing-speak is astounding.) also, what if you want PR that isn't tied to a straightforward piece of news like a launch or funding announcement? that is not something you can nail with this formula -- convincing a reporter to write a "profile" or some sort of trend piece is way more of a crap shoot than shooting 10 emails about an embargoed launch announcement, if you catch my drift. also, curious how you're viewing your relationship with the reporters themselves. i'm well aware we're perceived as a commodity, there to realize your wishes for glory and fame (and puff pieces) but this is a business of relationships. so, can i get myself removed from the database? can i request to never hear about a company if i so wish? also, there's a lot behind the scenes that software won't pick up on -- e.g. yes i wrote a VR story but no it's not bc i like VR, it's for another reason that your didn't pick up on bc it's more subtle than just a tech category, so how do you account for this in your system? just thought i'd share some thoughts. (ps: great Medium post on immigration, @rickyyean!)

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11yr ago

VentureBeat Insight

Echoing everything @imkialikethecar said. As usual, she got to this before me. ;)

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11yr ago

Ditto on questions @imkialikethecar raises (it's the chronic marketing strategist in me) but data geek is loving @rickyyean comment below re: learning about reporters' preferences. That is disruptive and a key value of the best agencies.

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@imkialikethecar @rrhoover Very, very good comments Kia. So many thoughts. So good. We are interested in the longer term game so while you can just get everyone's emails and spam, we definitely don't do that and we watch for that. Yes, as a reporter you get to say stop pitching me. Yes, you also get to tell us the reason behind why you don't want this story (e.g. no time or you write about tech but only M&A, not app launches). We try to learn all that. It IS tough to learn about a company and the specific story in 20 minutes, so we allow the company to correct our understanding of the story after the call. We are also leaning towards relatively simple stories for now (e.g. launches). Ultimately, reporters need to trust us and find value in our service in addition to just getting pitches, which they already do get a ton. We are working towards that. Thank you for the comments. Oh, and thanks liking my post ☺️

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11yr ago

Book Your Sales

@imkialikethecar @rrhoover @rickyyean Yeah this is my thought too. PR is hard and really does boil down to relationships. The crew at publicize.co have been about the most innovative I've seen so far (worked with them on a project so have some ideas about how they work.) Interested in seeing where this goes.

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11yr ago

Where can I find an iPhone 7?

@imkialikethecar @rrhoover @rickyyean 💯 i worked with someone who tried to approach PR like this before and it was the single worst investment decision i made for our company, because sure they got us _some_ coverage but it didn't translate into measurable results at all. which is always what it comes down to.

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

Thank you @alexisohanian for hunting us! Hey Product Hunt, I’m Ricky, Co-Founder of PRX, along with @dtran320. We’re excited to launch PRX exclusively to Product Hunt. Some exclusive deals just for this community of makers - 1) $400 PR (20% off) and 2) Free PR for the top tech product hunted every day. Most makers and founders are either priced out or over-served by traditional PR agencies. Some of you might have experience hiring AND firing PR firms because of unsatisfactory results and high costs. We’re solving this problem by bringing the cost down through software automation of some of the most cumbersome tasks. Additionally, we’re building a PR service from the ground-up with technology in today's environment, so we have the opportunity to tackle the problem in more innovative ways. The experience for you is simple. Sign up and tell us your story, if we accept you, you'll do a 20-minute call with us and that’s it. Our agents will craft your story, match it with the right reporters, and go to bat for you pitching and coordinating the logistics. Even when it fails, you’ll get feedback from us that will certainly help you with your next story, and you can choose to get a sponsored post. We’re early and this is our first small reveal, so the experience might not be as smooth as we’d like. Thanks for understanding and we really appreciate your feedback along the way!

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11yr ago

Pitch Drone

@rickyyean Congrats to you and @dtran320 on the launch. The PR industry suffers a severe technology deficit, so it's great to see more people building tools to help founders/makers.

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11yr ago

@rickyyean "Free PR for the top tech product hunted every day." is a pretty cool deal

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@_jacksmith @rickyyean Ricky's co-founder here. Thanks for the kind words Jack— as someone who’s really tuned into the community, we’d love your thoughts/help on how we can best help it. We've had some friends successfully launch on ProductHunt and not know how to follow it up to keep the buzz going. We thought this could be a good way to start the conversation about how to best combine social media and communities like ProductHunt with traditional media to tell founders/products' stories.

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11yr ago

Swap Ideas

@rickyyean sounds like a good idea. Are you doing qualitative outreach and follow up or blasting reporters?

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11yr ago

@rickyyean @dtran320 Well done!

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11yr ago

Zengo wallet

what kind of return do you commit to? what s your track record in getting coverage so far using this approach?

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@ourielohayon hey Ouriel - track record-wise, in addition to having placed stories on all the logos on our site, we can also count National Journal, Genome Web, ArtNews, Engadget, etc. We don't guarantee coverage at this point, but we do guarantee a sponsored post upon failure if that fits with your agenda. When we fail, we also will give you a ton of feedback from journalists, so we can make the story better next time around.

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11yr ago

Zengo wallet

@rickyyean do you get those logos because of your effort or because the company had some other PR efforts at the same time? my question was more what type of coverage do you manage to get? tier 1 pubs?

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@ourielohayon currently almost all of our clients are only doing PR through us, so we can pretty confidently attribute that it's due to our efforts. No guarantees on tiers, we've seen both large and small pubs. We've had dedicated articles as well as mentions in trend pieces, no guarantees there either.

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11yr ago

Attribute

Hey guys! Looks great! Just wanted to know more about the coffee cube guys and their story? We currently run an e-commerce based nutrients startup (trying to get rid of the crap on supplement shelves in the supermarket) and I'd be really interested to know if you're positioned to deal in PR for physical products? I know Product Hunt is particularly app-oriented but I'd love to hear from you all the same.

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@srbryers Hey Seb, great question! We worked with Go Cubes when they were just launching their Indiegogo-- did you see Geoff's comment below? https://www.producthunt.com/tech... We'd love to see if we're a good fit for your needs. Are you shipping the nutrients or taking pre-orders? We've found that with physical products, and especially food/supplements, the journalists who are excited about it want to try it out before writing. Beyond that, it'd depend a lot on your goals-- feel free to reach out!

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11yr ago

Attribute

@dtran320 Hey David - yeah it looks like that went quite well. We're shipping the products already - got a really special one coming up though and we want to hype it as much as possible. A real game-changer I reckon. Yeah we've found that with journos you do need to send the product through - though they usually have to be both interested in the product and have the editorial autonomy to write about a product that they themselves like. I guess I'm just curious how you vet those kinds of people; I can only imagine it's quite difficult to do - and I wanted to weigh the benefits of doing it ourselves vs. doing the launch in combination with a PR company like yours. Looks like a great product by the way!!

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@srbryers @dtran320 Hey Seb. Yeah - you'd need to ship it to them if they're interested, and even after that, they may not choose to cover it. Journalists that cover these things get sent products all the time. With nutritional supplements, it'd be tough to notice how its differentiated. If you think that's the case I'd try to come up with another angle.

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11yr ago

Teevox

I was one of their early customers. They organized a half hour call with their PR specialist. We went over my story and figured out the angle to pitch journalists. I filled out a brief form covering the background of the company and that was it. In a few days, I started getting emails requesting interviews. I got contacted by a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Within 10 minutes, we were on the phone talking about my launch. I ended up with two articles from mainstream publications that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. $500 seemed like a reasonable price to me. Rather than getting a PR firm with a regular retainer, I liked the idea of getting a shot of PR each time I have a launch or a newsworthy story

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11yr ago

@jiggityk This is exactly what I was looking for in this comment thread. Thanks for this.

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11yr ago

@jiggityk thank you for the detailed overview on your experience.

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11yr ago

Hey guys, how would you describe the effectiveness of your service vs something like PR Web at a similar price point that will push your press release out on the wire to thousands of editorial publications and journalists. Do you feel like your edge is using a network of relationships and direct targeting vs spraying can create a signifcant initial advantage? We're spinning out a highly beloved feature of our orginal product into a stand alone app and planning to launch before Vday so this quite timely as a potential solution (although I am inherently skeptical given we've made poor choices and felt the burn using PR in the past).

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@callmethebear Hey Adam, thanks for the question. When we were figuring a lot of it out, we made press releases. We learned that it's really an outdated model and other than agreements to syndicate / re-print the releases, no one else is really looking at them. Our edge is targeting and an efficient and software-assisted workflow. Vday will be competitive, and it's right to be wary of PR. Give us a shot - fill out the sign up form and we can evaluate your story and get back to you about next steps.

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11yr ago

@rickyyean ok cool, I'll bite. Filled out the sign up form about Sniffer and I guess we'll go from there. thanks Ricky

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11yr ago

@rickyyean and @dtran320 I'm curious how you would think about a company that has already launched, and isn't consumer facing? We found that traditional PR firms were not a good fit precisely because we didn't fit in the boxes that they were used to (enterprise vs mobile developer vs devops) so even the PR firm knowing who to pitch was tough.

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11yr ago

Flow Club

Maker

@johnpjoseph @dtran320 Hey John - that might be a vestige of the times when PR firms use broad categories to figure out who to pitch to. The idea of "beats" is pretty outdated to us given the current speed of content creation and varying interests of today's journalists. Of course, difficult-to-explain ideas are still difficult, but you can let us take a stab at it if you think you have a good, timely story.

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11yr ago

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