PR brings home the hardware. A great product isn’t great until people know it’s great. And to know it’s great somebody has to tell you it’s great. That’s Public Relations.
It’s award season. The best of the best are recognized for their merit and given awards for being awesome. Or they aren’t. And that sucks.
Imagine this. Your organization just brought an incredible, revolutionary product to market. It’s smarter, faster, sleeker, and elevates the customers experience to higher levels than anything remotely like it. Truly groundbreaking. So imagine your disappointment when that product is left out of all the major industry award categories you envisioned it winning. The problem: great products don’t speak for themselves. They need a PR plan.
The Heisman Trophy is not won by stats alone. PR is in the gameplan.
The Heisman Trophy is awarded annually to the top player in American college football. The award was created by the (New York) Downtown Athletic Club to recognize “the most valuable college football player.” Three or four of the best college football players in the country are invited to the awards ceremony in Manhattan following the regular season. All of them are invited based on a vote; votes submitted by select sports journalists and former Heisman Trophy winners.
In general the cream rises to the top and the best are invited to the ceremony. Yet who wins is largely determined by PR efforts. This year Travis Hunter of the University of Colorado won. Few can argue he wasn’t the best overall player in the country, being the first player to play both offense (Wide Receiver) and Defense (Corner Back) nearly every play of every game at an elite level. A feat not done in over half a century. The jab, his stats were not the best for his positions on either side of the ball.
Hunter is phenomenal, a generational talent. So is his Coach Deion (Primetime) Sanders. Sanders was a generational, two-sport athlete and is a Pro Football Hall-of-Famer, and that not his greatest talent. Coach Prime’s greatest talent is PR. He lobbied for his star player to be ‘in New York to win the Heisman’ early in the season and often. Hunter had a phenomenal season and Coach Prime made sure everybody knew about it.
Meanwhile a generation running back talent, Ashton Jeanty of relatively remote Boise State had the best season statistically in decades for a running back and may set the all-time rushing record. Should he have won? A strong case can and was made for him to win. Could he have won, absolutley. Why didn’t he win. He wasn’t supported by a strong PR campaign. It was simply too little too late.
Show people that you are award worthy.
Now back to your brand. You may ask yourself, “How did we not win?” “I know we were the best!” After years of thankless development work leading up to launch, such outcomes can be a bit defeating, to say the least. But it also deserves the question “Why?”
The answer is simple: you failed to position your incredible product to win. You failed to ensure it was relevant and failed to create a compelling story that begs to be retold. Is your company communicating with industry-specific media outlets, user groups, and the mainstream press continuously in ways that keep your product front-of-mind? Are you properly positioning your product to be an obvious standalone, a groundbreaker within its industry? Are you creating a compelling narrative to set your product apart from the rest?
If you’re not winning then the answer is, “Clearly, not the right way,” and you have some work to do before next awards season. And we can help.
Communicating the awesomeness of your product is a year-round job. And positioning it to be recognized as an award worthy choice requires a strategic awards PR plan. And we aren’t just talking about social media and other traditional marketing channels. Product positioning within an industry revolves around nurturing media relationships, strategic press events, and curated experiences to introduce your product’s most relevant aspects to the people who matter most.
Plant the seeds and water them often
To prove the point, here are two especially prestigious awards that we worked diligently on winning from the day the 2024 Sea-Doo RXP-X 325 watercraft was launched to the public, way back in August 2023. This watercraft is (cliche worthy) the absolute next-level high-performance personal watercraft. It boosts the highest horsepower ever, advanced digital display, one of a kind ergolock, rider ergonomic design… and simply a mega giggle-inducing, headshaking ‘WOW’ machine… and we made sure the people who needed to be WOWED were WOWED.
The 50 Greatest Innovations of 2024 – Popular Science
Popular Science is arguably one of the most trusted technology publications of our time. Because they are not a textbook endemic outlet for Sea-Doo, they were not included in our initial press event. However, this made their introduction to the product even more critical to execute properly.
To demonstrate the characteristics that made the RXP-X 325 truly groundbreaking, we curated a 1:1 on-water experience for one of their influential editors. Using the winding St. Johns River in Florida as a racetrack to showcase the unmatched maneuverability and power of the unit, we wove in some old Florida history, scenery, and cuisine—including large helpings of fresh Florida gator tail—to create an experience that left a lasting impact. the expereince showcased it’s ‘WOW’ and was very memorable for all the right reasons.
Watercraft of the Year – The Watercraft Journal
The Watercraft Journal is one of the most consistent, authoritative, and trusted voices in the PWC community. We have spent more than a decade forging a relationship with the outlet, ensuring our feedback on anything PWC-related is just a phone call away.
And to get Sea-Doo’s new RXP-X 325 off on the right foot, we invited the editor to join our product launch press event for an exclusive experience on a secluded lake in the foothills of Arkansas. Because we know that great products don’t speak for themselves, we had product experts/engineers on hand and an on-water experience strategically designed to highlight the raw power of this revolutionary new watercraft, laying the groundwork for for media coverage that would recognize the new model throughout the year. And we followed up with providing a properly prepared PR loaner unit for an extended period of time for him to get intimate with it.
These awards were prominent on our radar from before day-one. And we built a plan of continual positioning to ensure it was hard for those choosing the award winners to not pick our represented products/entries as the best and Award worthy.
Do you like awards? We Do. We like winning. If you like winning #lookatus
Need help getting your brand or product in front of the right eyes? Let’s Talk!
