We were tasked with handling general PR to boost brand awareness and position POWERUP as a leader in the RC and drone space. Our primary focus was the company’s Kickstarter shipping announcement & retail launch for their third core product, a FPV paper airplane drone with live streaming camera. Secondary to that was to get continued exposure of the two earlier products via Christmas gift guide roundups, and manage POWERUP’s CES presence.

Before working with us, POWERUP already had a slew of media coverage for their three core products. Because the FPV product already had a lot of (digital) ink online from their crowdfunding campaign, the real test was finding ways to encourage outlets to write about the product again.

By analyzing coverage in the category, we identified new, relevant leads. We piqued interest through the coordination of more than 50 shipped beta units to journalists, reviewers, YouTubers and more to test the demo the tech firsthand.

The timeless and quirky nature of the app-controlled paper airplanes proved to be compelling and media relevant, regardless of the time of year.

In 7 months we generated over 123 total media placements. These came in monster sized tech outlets like Engadget, Digital Trends and BGR. We also secured placements in important media in other categories including AdWeek, National Geographic, USA Today and Popular Mechanics.

The video centric outlets, who have become a critical segment for consumer technology products in the last two years, responded very favorably to PowerUp. We secured placements in LADBible and the Daily Dot which resulted in over 1.7M and 2.6M views, respectively, and drove significant sales.

There is a lot of cynicism surrounding crowdfunding as a result of many pie-in-the-sky projects that were unable to deliver on their promises. With humble roots and a great idea, POWERUP is a testament to the power of the Kickstarter platform to help bring creative projects to life. The key factors in taking a company from the Kickstarter stage to being a real brand with a retail presence are marketing and PR. We’re glad to have helped POWERUP at a critical stage in its development.