Seven Years of Strategic PR Guidance: From Canadian Tech Startup to Google Acquisition
North, previously Thalmic Labs, builds products that change the way humans see and engage with the world. The three co-founders came to Uproar fresh out of college to launch Thalmic Labs and introduce a revolutionary gesture-control wearable, called the Myo armband, to the world. After five years working together, the company rebranded to North and evolved the form factor for its technology into a ring and smart glasses, called Focals.
Solution
Industry
Campaign Themes
- Introduce novel technology in a way media and consumers could easily understand and get excited about the potential use cases in everyday life
- Establish the co-founders as true innovators in human-computer interaction and position them as thought leaders within the tech industry to support multiple funding rounds, and eventually, an acquisition by Google
North needed consistent consumer tech and national business coverage to secure multiple funding rounds and drive early adoption and sales of its smart glasses.
Our Approach
Uproar used a variety of key tactics to attract North’s desired audience through media relations, including:
Results
After five years of working together and garnering consistent top tier results for Thalmic Labs and Myo, Uproar pivoted to strategically guide the company rebrand to North and launch Focals. Uproar utilized existing relationships with top tier business and tech reporters to quickly secure a hybrid of Google Hangouts and in-person meetings in New York, San Francisco and Toronto with top-tier publications, like The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Tech Crunch, CNBC, The Verge, The Associated Press, The Canadian Press and Financial Post, to demo Focals the week before the new product launch.
The Focals launch was an immediate success, with more than 50 (positive) articles posting online and nearly 700 million views around Focals total – 1.2 million stemming from a CNBC video alone. Focals presented an entirely new take on smart glasses, prioritizing form and design first, function and technology second, so Uproar worked with North to prioritize a nice balance of national tech, business and Canadian coverage, including Wired, Engadget, Tom’s Hardware, Business Insider, Forbes, FOX News, The Globe & Mail, BNN Bloomberg, CTV News – just to name a few.
Uproar finds ways to keep clients in the conversation with target media. For North, like many consumer tech companies, this meant providing consistent updates on software and product developments. Between new Showrooms (retail stores) opening in Brooklyn and Toronto, mobile pop-up stores to expand to new markets, first customer shipment of Focals and a new app for customized fittings and the next generation of the product – Focals 2.0, Uproar averaged 75 pieces of coverage per quarter.
To bring the consumer tech and lifestyle brand to life, Uproar combined media relations with influencer marketing to create an interactive retail and product review experience for top tier tech media and influencers to get hands-on with the product and better understand how the technology looks and feels in real-life. This approach resulted in feature articles and over 20 product reviews with publications like AdWeek, TechCrunch, CNET, Rolling Stone, WIRED and Recode.
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