Earned
Media Still
Moves the
Needle.
When It's
Done
Right.

Classic PR is the pursuit of earned media coverage in outlets that have genuine audience trust and reach. Earned means you did not pay for it. It means a journalist, editor, or reviewer decided independently that your product, story, or perspective was worth covering.

In consumer technology, earned media typically takes several forms. There are product reviews, where a publication evaluates the product and gives an editorial opinion. There are gift guide and roundup placements, where commerce editors compile best-of lists and include your product. There are feature stories, where a journalist uses your company or product to illustrate a broader trend. There are executive profiles and funding announcements. There are niche community outlets, which often carry disproportionate influence with specific buyer segments.

Each of these formats requires a different approach. A pitch that works for a product review is not the pitch you send to a trend features editor. Knowing the difference, and knowing the specific journalists who cover your category and what they actually care about, is the core competency.

Before we begin media outreach for any client, we do significant research.

We audit the media landscape in the relevant category to understand what stories have been told, what angles have been overused, and where the genuine white space is. We look at which journalists and outlets have covered competitors, and more importantly, how they have covered them and what they have said they wish they could cover. We map the timing of editorial cycles, gifting guides, and award programs that are relevant to the category.

We also do client-specific research before finalising strategy. This means understanding the product deeply, including its actual weaknesses and the objections a sceptical journalist might raise. It means knowing the competitive context well enough to articulate genuine differentiation. It means understanding the business goals so that the media strategy is built around what actually matters, whether that is investor credibility, consumer awareness, retail expansion, or direct sales.

With Keychron, this research-first approach drove a multi-year strategy that consistently found new angles in a category with a finite pool of relevant media. Because we understood the media environment intimately, we were able to run 2–4 product launches per month without exhausting our relationships or repeating ourselves. Over a four-year mandate, we drove over 1,000 tier-one media placements, placing Keychron in the NYT, CNN, Forbes, TechCrunch, Wirecutter, and hundreds more outlets.

We run classic PR mandates as a coherent campaign, not a series of disconnected pitches.

It all starts with the narrative. As discussed in our brand narrative work, a clear story is what makes media coverage possible at the scale that moves business outcomes. Journalists are not doing you a favour when they cover your product. They are serving their readers. Any campaign has to start from a blend of that perspective and client business interests.

From there we develop a media strategy that maps targets, angles, timing, and formats. We build a target list that includes the obvious tier-one outlets but also the niche, high-influence publications that often drive disproportionate results in specific categories. In the e-bike space, for example, some of the most commercially significant coverage comes from outlets that a general audience has never heard of. The same is true in mechanical keyboards, fitness tech, and smart home products.

We pitch. We follow up. We build and maintain relationships with journalists over time rather than treating each interaction as a transaction. We manage the logistics of product loans, review units, and press events. When clients have events or trade shows, we handle pre-event strategy, on-site press management, and post-event amplification.

Every placement is tracked against the metrics that matter to the specific client. Citation rate, key message presence in media, share of voice, citations on AI and others. Unlike a lot of agencies, we do not send clip reports and call it accountability.

A significant portion of our client work involves technology companies entering the United States from outside it. This is a specific challenge that general PR expertise does not automatically address.

US media have their own sensibility about what makes a technology story interesting. They are not particularly moved by the fact that a product sold well in Israel, China, Korea, Germany, or anywhere else. They care about whether it is relevant to their readers, whether the founders can tell a compelling story, and whether the product does what it claims. International brands that arrive in the US with a good product but a poorly adapted narrative tend to find media doors harder to open than they expected.

We have spent years building media relationships across the categories we work in, and we understand what US journalists need to write a story. We also understand how to adapt positioning developed in other markets for American audiences without losing the brand's essential identity.

Urevo, a fitness tech giant in Xiaomi Group, came to us with exactly this challenge. They had strong Amazon sales in the US but minimal brand recognition and some scepticism from media about their Chinese origins. We repositioned the brand around accessibility and practicality, built a broad outreach campaign across mainstream, fitness, and commerce media, and drove over 100 tier-one placements in 10 months. The ROI on media placements tied to direct sales was 9.5x.

Classic PR is the right investment for technology companies that are building for the long term in the US market. It is particularly valuable at two moments: when you are establishing a brand for the first time in the US, and when you are in a growth phase and need to build the kind of credibility that accelerates retail expansion, fundraising, AI presence and, ultimately, category leadership.

We work across technology sectors, with particular depth in consumer electronics, smart hardware, fitness and wellness tech, micromobility, AI-powered consumer platforms, robotics, and design-led lifestyle technology. We also work with B2B technology companies that need to build credibility with a specific professional audience.

If your goal is a single launch spike, we can do that. If your goal is building durable brand equity over a multi-year period, that is where we are most effective.

Keychron: 1,000-plus tier-one placements over four years. The NYT listed two Keychron products in its seven best mechanical keyboards in the world. CNN named the Q1 the best overall mechanical keyboard of 2022. Revenue grew from a few million to over $100M annually due in part to our work.

HoverAir: 500-plus placements across tech, mainstream, and sports media over two years. Coverage included The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, CNET, TechRadar, and IEEE Spectrum. Share of voice against DJI grew from under 1% to 56% during key launch periods.

Velotric: 240-plus placements across tech, mainstream, sports, and commerce media. Forbes named the Thunder 1 the best overall e-bike for 2023. The company raised $12.5M in venture funding and expanded retail to over 100 stores.

Urevo: 100-plus tier-one placements in 10 months. Coverage on the Today Show, Forbes (six articles in the month before Prime Day alone), ZDNet, CNET, Runner's World, and dozens more. As a result the company saw record Amazon Prime Day sales.