Last winter, Voxus partnered with sports tech client Rapsodo to announce an incredibly affordable MLB-grade pitch analysis solution called Rapsodo Baseball. The product is designed to take the kind of hyper-accurate pitch analysis and training technology usually reserved for professional clubs, and make it accessible for coaches, trainers and players at every level of the game.
In November, when Rapsodo Baseball became available for purchase, Voxus partnered with the team on an outreach campaign to get the word out about this amazing new product. With several well-established competitors in the market, Voxus got to work on a mix of traditional media outreach around a few feature updates and the product availability, coupled with a targeted product evaluation program in order to gain industry validation from the get-go.
Notably, Sports Illustrated and Baseball Prospectus (a leading baseball analysis publication) showed a great deal of interest in getting their hands on the the product for a review. While Baseball Prospectus was able to gather data for its evaluation by working with live athletes pitching in front of the product, Sports Illustrated was not. Instead, Voxus and Rapsodo worked together to connect Sports Illustrated with Craig Breslow, an MLB pitcher who had recently begun training with the product. Breslow’s interview provided a great feature element to the Sports Illustrated story, and differentiated it from the more technical, in-depth Baseball Prospectus review article.
For the resulting hits, check out:
Sports Illustrated: How one MLB player is using Rapsodo pitch analysis technology to revive his career
Baseball Prospectus: Pitching Backward – Reviewing Rapsodo
This kind of validation from such respected publications, along with other media coverage and reviews of the product, were a great way for an emerging product to build momentum in the market.