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Bolt.com
Strategy
Dan Pelson is a multimedia guru who created Word.com and Charged.com at Icon and launched both sites to raves from Web surfers, journalists and critics. Then he rethought his Web future. He left Icon, disappeared for six months, and re-emerged with the announcement he had started his own company: Concrete Media. Most of the press was eager to talk to him, but not about his new endeavor. They wanted the dirt on why he left ICon. To add insult to injury, some heavy hitters in the media had written him off, since the usually press-oriented Dan Pelson would not conduct any interviews during his six-month absence.
Tactics
Pelson was in need of re-positioning in the media, so prior to setting up interviews RLM developed rigid talking points and released statements from Pelson to the press. In addition, RLM conducted media training sessions with Pelson and his staff. The emphasis was on steering reporters in the direction of his new company, as opposed to interviews turning into a smear campaign against ICon. Truth be told, Pelson left ICon to go onto greener pastures, start Concrete Media and build Web properties with a decided focus on content, something that very few companies do.
Results
Six months prior to the release of Concrete Media’s first Web property, Bolt, Pelson and his company were thrust into the spotlight, without any negative play for ICon. There was an overwhelmingly positive response from the media on the caliber and promise of Concrete Media. Pelson was positioned by RLM as a “player,” and as a result, drew attention for his vision of changing the Web as we know it.
He was featured several times on CNN International, CNNfn, and Headline News, and appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal (B1), New York magazine, AdWeek (first installment of IQ supplement), Media Week, Inside Media (full page feature), Crain’s, Crain’s Fax Daily (the top story in the premiere issue), numerous articles in Ad Age and countless wire service stories. All this was accomplished in less than four months—two months before the launch of his first Web property.