Public Relations 101 or should we say 104
By
Thank you 104 West.
Obviously we had a need for someone to connect us with media in our local market as we launched on October 22nd 2009. I’d worked at some public relations firms earlier in my career and reached out to them for help. They were either too big for us or didn’t have capacity to help our little start up.
Thankfully, I was introduced to 104 West by my partner Alan. Alan had done some work with them and spoke highly of their shop.
Our first “get to know you meeting” was over some soggy theme food at a local restaurant close to my house. Steeped in technological experience their agency seemed like a distraction to our cause of breaking down language barriers. From my perspective we’re using technology to eliminate confusion, miscommunication, or inefficiencies for businesses and end users – we don’t need to talk technology to accomplish our relations with the public.
Alan and I deliberated, and came to the conclusion that it could be a fit, in light of the recent revelations, that, whenever I started to describe our offering to other outfits, they were lost in the phases Buddypress, Transposh, Crowdsource, API, and social network. At best, most agencies wanted to file us under “social network” and couldn’t grasp the concept anymore than to ask us the standard questions like “what’s your revenue model?” (as if eliminating language barriers for the 3rd rock from the sun was some dot-com pothole to avoid while going down the streets of our careers).
We circled back. 104 held a level setting meeting with key members of their staff.
We broke it down…..We’re using machine translations, Google APIs, crowdsourcing along with BuddyPress and WordpressMU to create a foundation from where – we’ll break down language barriers for anyone worldwide, who is ready to take advantage of this new era.
It was a fit.
Over the next few weeks, Kathryn and Elaine inquired “ How does your offering become coherent to users? How do we craft messages that explore the technological benefits like your API vs fundamentally communicating this new combination of software as a distinct benefit to an end user or for that matter, mankind? WOW. Conference call after conference call, it became clear to me that they were coaching our brand. They were nurturing our thoughts and teeing up questions that allowed us to have epiphanies.
In short order we’d sort out our internal communications enough to start the real work of our launch.
So, how did we go from API assets to a three story concert at a local nightclub with Deborah Takahara: host from Fox31 and evangelism from the Godfather of hip-hop himself : Afrika Bambaataa? 104 took our launch messages and wrapped them up into standard press releases, tidied up as much as they could “our tech and philanthropic notions” then dropped them on the wire. Kathryn and Elaine worked around the clock, coaching our ideas in stride with 11:45pm emails and 7am conference calls – it was the kind of relentlessness that creates confidence.
From PR coaching to scripts, dry runs and coordinating with famous hip-hip stars, everything went well. On the day of the event, several curve balls were coming, weather issues, sound issues, and in fact, at the event, the top floor continued to black out – no lights, no sound, during a buffet, live performance art from internationally renowned artist Bill Gian, and set by nationally famous Break Beat DJ “MLE” – that’s right…intermittent BLACK OUT. At one point I gave a radio interview in the glow of iphone flashlights.
It was no phase as Elaine guided me to the radio interview in the dark, whipping out her phone to cast enough light for us to have the conversation with the talk show host. Meanwhile Kathryn was ushering in TV crews to grab live feeds from the main stage with Afrika, and prepping every – next moment of the evening.
At the end we were all in a gush of blur, happy that we’d launched, made new friends and that we were able to conceive of the business, develop the software and launch within 5 months. (and yes true story, the next day I went directly to Disneyland – but that’s another blog entry.)
Since October we’ve worked side by side with 104, developing our strategy and clarifying our memes with a partner who understands the tech inside and out, from the software to the industry at large. It’s safe to say they also understand tenacity, perseverance, dedications, rolling up their sleeves and discipline. We’ve benefitted on so many levels from this relationship no reporting could do it justice.
As we move forward and outward – globally, we’ve begun speaking to Edleman to work with us on a global scale, and to our excitement, Edleman being the class act that they are, have let us know they share our appreciation of dedication and perseverance and further- they are collaborators who are happy to work with 104, Mojofiti and anyone else who wants to break down language barriers worldwide.
We’re all in this together that’s what we’re all about. Let’s Do this!.
