CEO’s story wins coverage in Men’s Vogue, NY Times

For startups with little or no public profile, changing focus to execs’ personal stories can yield much-needed media coverage

Many CEOs are nervous about promoting themselves instead of promoting the company. Pictures of the kids, a stroll on the golf course, some personal revelations about a misspent youth—these are not the PR elements that executives usually want to bring into a story.

However, personal stories are often far more effective at gaining media attention than the business story, at least when a company is new, or is in a crowded market without clear differentiation. Affect Strategies, a strategic marketing and PR firm in New York, recently used this tactic to land the CEO of a startup company in Men’s Vogue and The New York Times.

Background: Tough story to tell

New York-based Proclivity Systems has developed software that can predict what online shoppers will buy when they visit an e-commerce site, and why they’ll buy certain products and not others. Proclivity came to Affect Strategies in September 2007 to help launch the company and develop some buzz in trade media and general business press.