#PR SECRETS OF TESLA,

SLACK, UBER, FACEBOOK,...

ELON MUSKPAYPAL, TESLA, SPACEX, OPENAI

ELON MUSK – A MAN WITH VISION(S)

“So, in short, the master plan is:

• Build sports car

• Use that money to build an affordable car

• Use that money to build an even more affordable car

While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options.

Don't tell anyone.”

ELON MUSK, 02.08.2006

SPACE X

Because you need to be able to explain very clearly to media what your company

wants to achieve and why. The answer: “we just want to make money” is

generally not good enough (unless you launch a hedge fund).

A vision allows you to talk about all the great things that you will do in the

future, and allows you to explain how fast you are advancing towards that goal. A

vision is also a lot more exciting than talking about features.

WHY DO I NEED A VISION/MISSION AND VALUES?

All the better. The goal is not to create a cult around a person. The goal is to

create a cult around a vision and a mission – the founders are merely the faces of

that mission. Not the other way around.

“BUT I DON’T LIKE PERSONALITY CULTS”

THE MISSION

OR DO YOUTHINK IT’S A COINCIDENCETHAT “SLACK = KILL E-MAIL”?

THE HATCH-SCHULTZ MODEL: IT STARTS FROMTHE VISION

THE LINK BETWEEN VISION AND CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

Key takeaway:

• Make your long term goals very clear to stakeholders

• Make your vision more operational

• Measure progress against the vision

• Use the vision to measure stakeholder alignment

• Is our vision known to employees & external world?

• Do stakeholders align with it or not?

STEWART BUTTERFIELDSLACK

#2

STEWART BUTTERFIELD

“The big lesson here: don't underestimate the power of traditional media when

you launch. It must be your primary concern, starting months beforehand and

continuing for weeks afterward. Pull the strings you have. Work closely with

your PR firm to find your hook. It can be personalities on your team, impressive

customers you already have in the bag, prestigious investors, etc. But don't leave

it to two weeks beforehand and throw something together.”

Source

THE STORY

THE STORY

Often, your story will have one or more story elements in it. Actually, the more,

the better:

• Market opportunity

• Conflict (taking the fight to the taxi industry)

• Unusualness (rent out a room in your house)

• Newness (hoverboards)

• Human interest (bringing high speed internet to rural India)

• Investors

• Prominence (Ashton Kutcher invests in your startup)

• Significance (you know how everybody hates to shop groceries? Well, HelloFresh)

THE STORY

Every story element should be “charged”:

• Founders

• Human interest (a disabled veteran launches a prosthetics firm)

• Proximity (3 local college friends start a company that’s doing well)

• Human interest (Google employee #1 launches own startup)

• Funding event

• Significance (Magic Leap raises 700 million $...)

• Unusualness (…while still in stealth mode!)

• Technology

• Timeliness (VR!)

THE STORY

MARC BENIOFF, SALESFORCETRAVIS KALANICK, UBERMIKE CANNON-BROOKES & SCOTTFARQUHAR, ATLASSIAN

“TWENTY SIEBEL EXECUTIVES POURED OUT (...) TO INVESTIGATE. A SIEBEL EXECUTIVE CALLED THE POLICE, WHO IMMEDIATELY ARRIVED TO PROTECT THE PROTESTERS!”

“We meticulously planned so that anyone looking for Siebel always found

salesforce.com. Eventually, when anyone thought about Siebel, he or she also

thought about salesforce.com. The reality was that we were still the gnat on the

back of an elephant, but our unusual tactics were making that elephant

dance.”

Source

BECOME PART OF THE INDUSTRY NARRATIVE BY PICKING A FIGHT

“MAKE SOMEONE COMPLAIN ABOUT YOU”

Inspiration:

• Pick a fight – or better, pick a cause

• You do not need to pick a fight with a company or a person. You can pick a fightwith any kind of injustice, imbalance and ever minor inconveniences.

• Salesforce: “No software!”

• Make the CEO the face of the cause

• Mark Benioff: “As the founder of this mission, it was my job to walk the talk. Many CEOs are leery of getting too personal and are wary of inventing a mythical persona.”

• Find creative ways to bring that cause to life

BE CAREFUL ABOUT THE DOSAGE, THOUGH

“At first, it can seem like your reputation won’t suffer too much by picking a

fight. The problem is, the second time, you are becoming a bore. The third

time, you’re like the kid who’s always in trouble. No one will listen to you, and

you now have the status “troublemaker”. People will kindly excuse themselves

from writing about you – and from doing business with you or work for you.”

Source

CAREFUL, THOUGH!

MARK ZUCKERBERG, FACEBOOK

F8: “ALMOST-YEARLY” STAKEHOLDER CONFERENCE

JASON LEMKIN, EX-ECHOSIGN

Inspiration:

• Don’t rely only on media (owned or earned) to align internal & external

stakeholders

• Create focused events to inform and engage stakeholders

• Share your long term plans – the FB 10 year roadmap shows technology that

doesn’t even exist yet

• Often heard excuse: “We’re listed, we can’t do that.”

• (Facebook and Tesla are also listed)

SATYA NADELLA, MICROSOFTJEFF WEINER, LINKEDIN

05.02.2016LINKEDIN LOSES43,6 PERCENT MARKET CAP

COMPANY ALL HANDS MEETING ON SLIDESHARE

“YOU ARE THE SAME TEAM, EXECUTING THESAME MISSION”

FORBES

SATYA NADELLA, MICROSOFT

“FIRST, WE WILL OBSESS OVER OUR CUSTOMERS.”

SATYA NADELLA, MICROSOFT

GEEKWIRE, MASHABLE, BUSINESS INSIDER,…

Inspiration:

• The strict distinction between internal and external communication is no

longer useful

• The fact that journalists still use this distinction can be exploited tactically

• Sometimes it’s better not to send a press release – it’s more interesting if it’s an“internal” memo

• Sometimes, you want to maximize message control and still go for big reach

(eg in times of crisis, issues,…)

STEVE JOBS, APPLE

IPHONE 7

IPHONE 5E

APPLE CAR

APPLE WATCH

“Over the years Steve Jobs would become the grand master of product launches.

Jobs found ways to ignite blasts of (press) publicity that were so powerful the

frenzy would feed on itself, like a chain reaction. (...) It was a phenomenon that

he would be able to replicate whenever there was a big product launch, from

the Macintosh in 1984 to the iPad in 2010. Like a conjurer, he could pull the trick

off over and over again, even after journalists had seen it happen.”

Source

Inspiration:

• Steve Jobs understood the power of exclusives

• Jobs had his own intuitive sense of how to stoke the excitement, manipulate the competitive instincts of journalists, and trade exclusive access for lavish treatment.

• Apple understands the power of leaks

• By leaving out key information, you can generate 2x or more the amount of coverage for a piece of news

• How to use: send out a generic press release about a key hire – then tip 1 journalist about the significance of the hire (eg a new product launch!). Works like a charm.

DHARMESH SHAH, HUBSPOT

BLOG

BUILD AN ONLINE COMMUNITY FOR YOURSTAKEHOLDERSINBOUND.ORG: 159,823 MEMBERS (!)

STAYACCESSIBLE IN TIMES OF ISSUE MANAGEMENT(IN “NEAR TIME”)

Inspiration:

• CEOs and founders are leaders, but can be wizards too

• In depth, technical knowledge about a subject inspires confidence about visionand leadership

• Online communities are difficult to build, but once they exist and thrive, they

are like market places – hard to disrupt

• If you solve the chicken and egg problem of supply and demand in a community, it’s very hard to take that community elsewhere

HILLEL FULD, Z-CAST(TEL AVIV! NOT SILICON VALLEY)

CONSISTENCY

BRAND PROMISE

CONSISTENCY

BRAND PROMISE

CONSISTENCY

BRAND PROMISE

I have spent years on Twitter and other platforms generating and sharing tons of

content. Content of my own, content of others, and just general thoughts on a

variety of topics. I have dedicated endless time and resources to building

meaningful, not opportunistic, relationships with journalists of all kinds.

Friends, colleagues, not “journalists”.

Hillel Fuld

“Emailed tens of people telling them about the upcoming launch. Each email

was personal and real. NOT a template or a copy paste job! Do things that don’t

scale!”

Hillel Fuld

“I had already pitched The Next Web and I even did a ZCast the night before

with the great Martin Bryant but then, because ZCast was on Product Hunt,

another writer named Kirsty, who didn’t even know about the launch in advance,

found it on Product Hunt and was going to write about it. When I asked Martin

why they were about to publish it hours before the embargo, he rightfully

answered “How can you have an embargo if the product is already on Product

Hunt?”

To be fair, Headline Media told me NOT to hunt the product before the time, and

I didn’t listen.”

When Hillel launched his startup, it was covered in just about every tech

publication on the planet and got the #4 most upvotes on Product Hunt ever.

Forbes called it “a perfect launch” (here). Insights from Hillel here.

PERSONAL BRANDING & NETWORKING

Inspiration:

• “Slow PR”: build relationships over the course of the years

• It’s better to have meaningful connections with 10 influencers than superficialcontact with 1000s of semi-influencers

• Use social media to stay in touch with people you know, instead of

“collecting” new followers

• The best way to do social media marketing is to have coffee with people!

VIRALITY OF INFORMATION IN A NETWORK:

Q(I)XQ(R)=V

QUALITY OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP (R)QUALITY OF YOUR INFORMATION (I)

“MAKE FRIENDS. BE INTERESTING.”

RANDY KOMISAR, KLEINER PERKINS

REMEMBER THE NETWORK WE TALKED ABOUT?IT ALWAYS WINS

The world:

• Givers

• “other-focused, paying more attention to what other people need from them”, “a relatively rare breed”

• Takers

• “tend to be self-focused, evaluating what other people can offer them.”

• Matchers

• “operate on the principle of fairness: when they help others, they protect themselves by seeking reciprocity.”

“GIVERS ARE THE MOST SUCCESSFUL. BECAUSEOF THE IMPORTANCE OF NETWORKS.”

ADAM GRANT, “GIVE AND TAKE”

Givers are successful because matchers want them to be successful -- and

remember, most people are matchers. Givers tend to receive a lot of favors from

matchers, often without even realizing it, says Grant:

“Karmic moments can often be traced to the fact that matchers are on a mission

to make them happen. (...) they’ll go out of their way to reward givers who act

generously toward others.”

More on giving vs. taking: here

“IT’S EASIER TO WIN IF EVERYBODY WANTS YOU TO WIN”

RANDY KOMISAR, VC, KLEINER PERKINS

PING ME HERE:

RAF WEVERBERGH

CO-FOUNDER FINN

TWITTER: @RAFWEVERBERGH, @FINNBE, @KRIS10VERMOESEN

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