“Going big” to engage national press

Chirpify needed national media coverage. After striking out with a Silicon Valley agency, they turned to Voxus.

A fresh start after a false one

With an interesting social media conversion offering, Chirpify naturally wanted to get its story told. Yet as a true boot-strapped startup, the company had limited resources to bring to bear, and a somewhat muddled message. So they took the plunge and hired a Silicon Valley PR firm to refine the positioning and get them launched.

And the launch went nowhere. The firm couldn’t seemingly grasp what Chirpify was trying to do, couldn’t compellingly tell the story, and ultimately couldn’t get executives in front of the press.

Regrouping afterward, company executives reached out to their professional networks and were referred to Voxus. And that’s where the true story began.

When you ask the right questions, you get better answers. And better results.

After talking with Chirpify to better understand the solution and how to uniquely position it within the greater landscape, we proposed a strategy that flipped the script. Instead of traditional customer-centric marketing message, our recommendation was to focus on a burning question the media was already itching to answer: how can you monetize social media? We worked closely with the Chirpify team to craft that answer, and bring together the requisite supporting material.

With story in hand, we also thought that a more segmented media pitch was called for. Rather than just going after traditional social media and technology publications, we wanted to also stretch down-market to specific industry verticals and “go big” to engage national press.

So that’s what we did.

Through the launch and over the ensuing 18 months, Voxus helped take Chirpify from a virtual unknown to one of the hottest social companies around, generating outsized press coverage, intense investor interest, and open doors with some of the world’s most prominent brands. Name a major media outlet, and Chirpify has likely been in it, generally with feature coverage and often appearing in numerous articles.

Major coverage

A partial list: ABC News, Advertising Age, AdWeek, All Things D, The Atlantic, Billboard, Businessweek, CIO, CNET, CNN, The Economist, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, GigaOM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Market Watch, Mashable, Miami Herald, NBC News, The New York Times, The Next Web, Politico, TechCrunch, Time, Wall Street Journal, Wired, and many, many more.

chirpify logo Chirpify powers hashtags that connect consumers with their favorite brands through social commerce. As the glue between social and traditional mainstream media, Chirpify “#actiontags” let consumers digitally raise their hand and start a direct relationship with a brand. The brands gain valuable social data and contact information, campaigns that organically trend on social channels and natural cross-channel marketing. Customers include adidas, Estee Lauder, Forever 21, Master Card, OREO, RCA Records, Secret Deodorant, Sprint and artists from Green Day and Lady Gaga to Tim McGraw and Eminem. Located in Portland, OR, the company has raised $7.3M to date.

Chirpify media coverage: chart

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