To launch a new product, turn to bloggers

In the mobile communications industry, new products are coming into the market at a fast and furious pace, making it tough to stake a claim to coverage in mainstream or social media. For PR agency Northlich, based in Cincinnati, the PR team promoting a service called GotZapp faced this challenge and more.

For one thing, explains Northlich account supervisor Josh Hammond, the most influential high-tech bloggers are based in Silicon Valley—and the PR agency (as well as its client) were clear across the country in Ohio. The PR team feared their client might be at a disadvantage since it wasn’t doing business in the hotbed of high-tech.

For another thing, it wasn’t easy to explain GotZapp’s value to the market. “It’s a crowded market, and this was a start-up vying for limited coverage,” says Hammond.

(Here’s the elevator pitch: GotZapp allows mobile phone users to create groupings of pictures, music, blogs and multimedia—more or less like tiny Web pages—and send them to other people whose phones can surf the Web.)