Case Study: pre-seed startups wants to drive sales, funding and general awareness - aka "the usual."
What do we have to work with: not much. We can announce initial funding, but it's super small and there's no paying customers, yet, only pilots and a blue ribbon VC backing the venture. There's certainly a trend to explain and a $20B+market to boast about, but that's not enough validation for any sane reporter to stake their reputation to a potentially vapor-ware-level storyline to get themselves fired over or at least, slapped on the wrist severals times.
Initial strategy: announce funding via an exclusive and validate venture with hopeful, future leaning quotes from pilot customers. Unfortunately we're in that chicken/egg stage, customer doesn't want to go there, so we're back to square one.
Brainstorm: we do have a local brick-and-mortar store that we're using as a test-bed for our tech. Let's go for it while we're killing time waiting for the first customer to be quoted in the funding release.
Tactics: create a punchy pitch, find relevant reporters and work towards a grand opening news day to create urgency and timelines.
Example pitch:
Results:
