How to Hack Public Relations (PR) for Millions of Downloads

coming up is a presentation from our app masters connect event in Santa Monica where you will discover how Jake Ellenberger CMO at x-mode drove millions of downloads for drunk mode primarily through press listen to why not porn was his favorite subject line how he hacked LinkedIn to get connected to reporters and why you should not land all of your desired press at once stay tuned

Oh okay I thought of this fake news that you can do because I mean like of course we all hear about the term beta news right but all uses fake it may be a real story but how I got to the person wrote about it was usually sensationalized right so even without will Trump sitting or talking about see identity of fake news you want to talk to you there's a it's just as big so I'm Jake the chief marketing officer x-mode graduated from the University of Alabama about two years ago a lot of people know this university of alabama is actually the top PR school in the nation we beat out syracuse so i helped us get truck votes over 1.5 million hours of annual energy growth hacking which is you know a lot of people either have a negative you know conversation with a lot of that was also press i say out of the 1.5 million almost you know 700,000 can't compress i've also put it over 300 hours of the sky

and which is a problem anyway the press really loved drunko it was this app that pretty much it's still in the App Store really buggy so don't download it right now we're planning on a relaunch in the future drunk mode came out around 2013 and with 10,000 downloads Josh pretty much met me while I was in college and said I was like hey man you're marketing the stretch you know your message is so spammy they're like because Josh our CEOs our CEO is so good at getting the message in front right like he's so good at finding his growth axe he's ready these avenues to kind of like tell people about what the path is but then when he would get from home he would freeze you know it was kind of like the message just wasn't there so I came on and said hey man let me help you with that and he let me and so I got us into we were at 10k downloads I got one of the first things articles I forgot the sin was to help me post one when they

were told us that we were redefining the college experience and then how was able to use that to pretty much get us in everything else you see here there was a lot more by the way these are just some of my favorite ones the USA Today actually on black television said that Josh would win a Nobel Prize alright then we made an app for drunk college students but sure I'll take my new belt and so you know surprising like

everybody always thinks like okay you know like you want to be that person in that scooter right be in the first thing that scoops comes with a negative thing that's 50 be wrong and then you're you know you lose your journalistic integrity right and so one of the biggest things to do is provide we come after you getting the Huffington Post which is pretty easy to get into honestly like I mean there's talk about college there's like everything and then you can find a writer honestly like maybe paid to like some of them you can pay 500 bucks no write an article for you right well that sounds terrible what you do is you pay five bucks on that Michael you take an article you send it over to a guy the Wall Street Journal TechCrunch MTV anything anything right the biggest thing is to remember where's our market and who are we trying to hit this was a drunk college at MTV News crushed it we got seventy five thousand downloads in

three days on the MTV News wonderful okay so and that's something that Mike was that's free by the way I think I made five hundred bucks a month because we were bootstrapping right and so as CMO I still only made like 500 bucks the the month and I probably almost a hundred thousand dollars to this platform right and so you basically take one of these articles whenever you can get like something like this in TV news call us life-changing since that day a hardened title has been drunk mode the Apple TV called life-changing right and that you know it adds to the brain it away there the nineties part a PCP each one we're all Yankees anyway so it's one of those things where like you know with the economy you can kind of help prove this so we help make and we're like I am somebody please write everything and so anyway so how do we do it LinkedIn was a major key it is one of those things where I was a college

student at the University of Alabama junior sophomore lovely I don't nobody impressed right I'm a nobody they don't know me I'm just a kid now they're all right so we did was awesome I pretty much made my we didn't make it look like I was the most professional CMO you had never seen of a drunk college right over here using my past work at you know Walmart as a car pusher as a person you know like so you know everything sounds good because that's part of the framing we're gonna do later but uh we did was a major way because I was able to not just add journalists I'm gonna get in touch with but then add plate you know how it works with the same degree connection thirty degree connection so I'm sitting there adding like you know different people from like Arby's or whatever just cuz they were friends with a TechCrunch right right just gonna come up first connection with him and then have him when they get in

there get my story a lot of people realizes a lot of people use their personal emails when signing up for social media we didn't and it was beginning was one of these social medias that a lot of people use them personally you know for so I wasn't contacting Lucas at TechCrunch I was contacting Lucas oh man like Google or gmail and I was sifting through all the easy right because TechCrunch article or journalists Mashable all these guys are getting hundreds of pitches a day from people like myself yourself I mean you can hire the best in the world but if he's cold reaching out to the guy can't get their attention and so LinkedIn was amazing Twitter also helped a lot of journalists have their you know email in their BIOS and that's always super helpful you kind of reach out to them directly and then of course research before you say anything you don't want to send a tech but pictures of the food article guy you know that's

just like that's just one easy way did not you know because if I'm an autumn eternal list and you just send me a picture of your dope app that has nothing to do with cars I'm gonna be like okay thanks for wasting my time I'm not gonna get you to the Apple Rex well that's because you should at least have a break a lot of these dudes don't talk either so that's interesting we worked at AOL for a couple years they owned TechCrunch me still couldn't get us into TechCrunch I had to do that Fox I'd be respectful at all times I know that sounds easy but like I feel like some people know a little peon when they're told no and that's one thing that I had to tell a lot of people on my team whenever they were helping me reach out the press is like you're gonna have a dude it's like if you get out of my face this is nuts there's trash you know like your hat sucks I don't want to talk about it Mashable it hasn't wrote about us and

still gave me the most notes I was always so nice that lady she was always so mean to me about that and I was just always like okay man well I'll let you know whenever we hit you know like a bigger number 1.5 million a drunk college hat was not enough to get math 102 sounds interesting right but the Wall Street Journal always get their name right - that's a huge thing that people forget it's so it's just right just respect Friday folks names right I try to remember look any email specifically you have time to double check this like in person Monday for these years or whatever but on an email you have time to go through LinkedIn make sure you get the spelling right make sure you do this this is just the boom my name is Jake when I get emails to Jim or to Josh which is our boss right he doesn't know it could be super important I don't care pitching and branding is super important you want to make your pitch Thunder me like I

said these are people they're not robots and make sure you have a story and this is a big thing that I have to drop them to have to tell the person I had to drive home they're all team to a story of you is not stored in them all the time right we work so hard on our babies we see these apps growing we see them like becoming you know all this but it's not new sometimes right like a lot of these apps wasn't groundbreaking technology you could use find my friends if you wanted to and basically have the same effect but the branding and everything brought people a drug right and it was like it's one of those things where we kind of had to make it a story right because the technology is already out there for a lot of these things we're just innovating making new ways to do it make a new stories the new ways to use that right and so that's really like how you have to handle the situation is kind of to step back and take yourself

out of that huddle and say like what's news about this you know if I wasn't working here and get their attention right one of my favorite subject lines was not for not for Gus in the TechCrunch MGB a lot of those ones you saw the subject line I grew up in the 90s and you know it was early on computers and stuff and so one of the few things I remember was whenever you got an email from a sketchy thing click on you know or it's end of weird advice right you know and so like I think that's a lot of nineties kids and stuff have like PTSD when it comes to like bars on screens like the banners right they're dead my generation so if you some banners stop it this is one of those things where like they've actually done iatest boomers look at banners Millennials do not we'd like and you have this weird association with banners and clickbait will spam right and I think it's the same for emails for a lot

of folks and so if everything was to get their attention the subject line the thing about PR is that your professors or whoever you talk to is going to tell you make your subject line the head right because it makes their job easier as a journalist if you can just hang on a headline here right I was always not about that life it was just about getting there laughs these people get hundreds of emails a day mainly from app developers know if it's aren't always the funniest folks right like they usually don't crush it at the Apollo right if they're usually you're introverts folks like that and so the pictures that they're giving these folks to be the same monotonic that they see every day right and so it's super important to kind of like make it attention-grabbing right and you'll always want to know who you're talking to treating them like friends helps the way I'm conversating with you guys right this is how the

journalists have talked to my CEO of my mom my friends you know this is just talk right and it's like we forget back when we're trying to talk business are we trying to pitch something and we click in this like business mode that to me is just so like standoffish and so uh I don't mean to be the one that's like you know break it all down the Goldman Sachs one business catch okay so tipping down didn't make it exclusive this is a big thing but you know a lot of people don't want to be the scoop but if they can be the exclusive interview right somebody's generated the press in the past that was a big thing that we did after we generated a lot of presses like well if you'd like we can set up an interview with our CEO who helped drive this amount of downloads and you know they need to talk about how we use certain growth hacking techniques and all that so give them an exclusive make them feel as if they're getting a scoop

or something special anyway is always a great way to bring your story and get it recognized right know what you're pitching this may seem like common sense but no you're talking about just knowing your product front and back this this actually is more so for folks who are think about hiring outside PR firms or outside books to come in make sure they know who you are make sure they're working handle it like the lady said earlier she said I've worked for you right and that's how it is when you're a PR person like my name Jake Ellenberger was never being pitched it was always Josh and timing was always drawing right and this job has our CEO that way so the store was never about me you know it's always about the team the company what everybody else is doing and so you have to like you have to make sure you know you have to make sure you know the people behind the product and I don't know it sounds easy but it's just one of

those things where a lot of people you'll start asking questions if you won't have answers to those questions then you may not write about you and so so know why pitching to a super board don't just get press to get a lot of people are like oh we're babies together Brandon right brain recognition all doesn't give up it is not really like sometimes you don't need press for x-mode we download into the anonymous location industry right and it's one of those great areas where a lot folks still like they feel like either it's a it's a you know huge invasion of privacy or the flip side I have facebook snapchat around all these are some of my location data ownership ski vehicle laughs right and so kind of like flip-flops between those two so with X mode it's important to pretty much like get press in specific areas right like unicasting a good blog a couple of other ones that like are specifically for our industry

trunk boat you know Kate for The Wall Street Journal but the Wall Street Journal story was more about the company and what we have built not necessarily trying to drive traffic whereas the MTV's or it'll definitely go down whenever we drive traffic and that's one of those where like you know you have to know who you're pitching to and all that and so you know why do we need to get press don't just think honey much nowadays I'm gonna go free PR 3 would do it it is but at the same time you may not want those problems a lot of stuff comes up race it's being known right it's also hundreds of thousands of users increase server calls that's a big thing when I crashed our servers at drunk mode it was a huge day for me I was so happy texting not so much they're they're over here like holy the house is on fire oh my god and so let go it's one of those things where be ready right let's go up their

vision like crazy make sure you have the money for the servers make sure you have the software this app isn't crashing the day we got into interviews in the next day and we were actually when the first apps that are triggered in the accident when iOS 9 first came out the I would say so whatever the training bar first started right like as soon as you've updated we were the first half turning on a device like into the turning spots and so the day that happened you know wherever you're like holy what's going on we didn't get press forgive anything when it was happening we were trending one of the first apps that are trending and so we just weren't prepared for it and it's one of those things were like you gotta have the money and you gotta have everything together and then we press American syndication is one of those beautiful things the fact that like everybody wants to talk about the same thing or everybody doesn't want to

be the last person to tell that story right so like when when TechCrunch picks it up then someone else is like oh TechCrunch is right about that's right now so it causes this like windfall right it's a where like you could have got this one article and you thought that's dope that's all I needed I get my download numbers it's a snowball now and you'll have the money or the team or anything to keep up with all this it's happening then somebody found something about your app they didn't like and then you know like it's just it's one of those things where sometimes you don't want those projects right and so it's best to be prepared for those you want to setup press plants like what is next where are we going to do when they write this article Who am I send it to next to keep that so those are all just important things to remember and so you want to slow your roll a little bit you don't want to land

everything at once this was a big thing we did it from boat attack everything we blitzkrieg press it's how we went down and it pretty much led to everybody being like okay so what are you doing now like when we got the names Evie Josh few months later CEOs like stood the pitch they media like saying a peeper bell to three months ago and I'm like get away but we haven't won downloads now you know and they're like that's not news about things and so it's one of those things where like you want to trickle in your press you don't want to hit everything at once and if you do you want to make sure have something next you have a story that's going to continue press something that you're doing next it's going to keep it rolling right because you want to make it count make sure your products where that is where it's at before you get the exposure a lot of people including our CEO is one of those fire I bet our

baptism by fire time right where you just kind of throw that up there let it go and figure it out I'm a planner I like to you know sit back and say okay let's make sure we can handle this whenever all this stuff so it's going crazy and so that's where I'll say make it count make sure you have the processes everything in place that you're going to want to do whenever you do land that press cuz it can end up being a snowball effect and just be here another sounds silly but it's really like Genie when this comes out people man like thank you people understand you're fake right I'm baking Phillip you're fake glass fake looks they know right no and something you can even tell their emails it's weird it's just like just just coming off genuine and you know tell the people about your comments about yourself even it's just one of those things that can be you know really helpful when it comes to the pigeon press and also asking I

didn't work for the company when I read this what I write about this right what I find this interesting right and and if so then that story should probably find the right Avenue to pitch that suit and you work there so you're not about there's probably some prompts but befriend like a journalist and they might be friendly back one of the biggest things I learned I reached out to each one and he pretty much email me back I was like hey man not around about the story first off he was an auto journalist so roll there these are all you know stuff that money from the states by the way although journalist he said don't write about axe but I like your idea I'm gonna help here's how you should be framing the pitch here's how you should be writing that pitch here's how journalists like to read he gave me all that information the next pitch I wrote we landed right it was one of those things where like

journalists know how they want to see stuff and so if you just ask them you know like how should I be pitching this to you or I know actually like they comment you know I've never really been asked that so here's the information like that and then you've already established a relationship with that person you know you're emailing back and forth you may don't feel like I'm human you're a human let's be people like we're email robots and so even if they say no follow back they before their time people's time is the most valuable thing they hacked right and if they took the time to read your email you wouldn't know the least you can do is email back a thing right and another sounds ridiculous but at the end of the day we can't people tell us know that then do they like just respectfulness and being nice and everything come back around later on say hey you know we're actually writing a story about a couple of us that's how

electric journal article happened they told us no multiple times we kept the relationship open finally he wanted to do a story on the advancements in mobile technology and he's the stupid drunk College app to do so in a huge newspaper that's indeed right and so it's one of those things where just being respectful we get you a long way I mean so you guys do all the same let's not standing citizens but it's you know it's even if say you know you know think a good time and so any questions comments concerns that's pretty much all I have I know there's a brief overview and it's very like not really high level but I didn't really know where everybody was you know one of those things where like if you have any questions just let me know my my emails Jacobs on social calm like I said X might help us monetize on their location do and everything and a part of me on the excellent platform is help with PR marketing stuff like that so I'm

here go your go-to gap you know so big ones yes what did the moderator tell you about he pretty much did bullet points Man Thing is full of things people no one wants to read a wall of text right and so a lot of us like you know we're technique eyes and so we sit down this is the most amazing app you'll ever use well blog like start going through and don't realize that it had become a wall of text would know too long been greedy or anything like that journalist it's all the time thing they want to be able to get your story written to get out there as fast as possible we're not in the air print media anymore relatives die digital it's definitely going to be the way to go especially from blogs and everything like that you want like that no it's pay per click pretty much and so it kind of takes away from the actual essence and news in my opinion but that's a whole different conversation so it's like yeah so it's one of those

things where keep it as smooth and simple and like these are the big facts about us and we'd love for you to write about us is there anything you would like to know because getting smaller coverage like I think it helps moving economy person yeah I would definitely say without the weak economy I don't think it would hurt anyone the only way would have heard is if the journalist looked at it as this is something that's already been written about but usually when it's small endings like smaller blogs stuff like that they still feel like they can beat the story right whereas when I go around everywhere for you

they don't you should like I mean like most time a journalist from TechCrunch is only talking about I mean he may read some other stuff or whatever usually if they're a far enough apart they're never going to see your article the other thing that they think they remember about exclusives and like how I'm usually a little out is I kind of give to bikes back first patient always folks and if you're the first one to tell me you're interested then I kind of like give it to you and then I let the other folks know if they ever kind of actor of are asking things you'd like here's the article and so it's really like my big thing about pitching exclusives is the picture that everybody and then if you want to get everybody I would definitely pick one that I would like break the story right you know you need to sit back and look at the different ones that are biting and say this one's going to hit our

target better all right this one's going to hit our target better if they're all going to target then I'm all kind of right about it just be like oops you know I didn't matter like someone else was I mean never gonna call you out on it like that's just one of the things that they're too busy yeah most of time these people write this article in the girl with the next one they forget about yours in a way I know it sounds shady but that's just like it's a 24-hour news cycle people are always constantly hungry for news we're talking about Huffington Post almost got soup I read Because within an hour something in the front page of Reddit it was a new story so reddit came to know I was like hey you don't quit stealing our we're gonna see and I'll go head it back off and start doing real journalism yeah that stuff don't have to do that yeah so I would definitely I've given exclusive to multiple people

yeah it's one of those things where yeah sound the most you know like greatest thing but they usually don't find out usually it's never anything negative this most the time whatever they're writing the story they won't mention it was an exclusive give it to it you know I think the non-porn one is always one

of my favorites when I try to do that another thing it's most of my subject lines manifesting subject lines like the biggest ones I've read a lot of coffee TJ's our Head of Sales around a lot of a copy from so see how because you know they can't do it themselves just because everybody thinks everybody think that shit's money right it gives more clicks and so so yeah I think down the data are used a lot of catchy subdued lines to try to get people's attention and that's one of my favorite things is pretty much like you know using McKenzie putting subject line to kind of get your attention anyway something that they haven't seen because they're seeing a ton of something lines man a lot of two of them are just like you know top ten ways to be successful with this this is this you know the wreck you know just where 20 articles on that about you know ten minutes ago so it's all about like but then whatever

your we're gonna TechCrunch are scrolling down you see not you know tree

market yes that mostly the subject line in my intro this is a huge thing to in my pitches and you know I'm always open to send examples for example the power trip I love having equal press I work in marketing right now I'm gonna shoot that marking I'm gonna get a half time but the arson that's what I know about it so it's one of those things where like I definitely changed a beat up like the meat of the beginning funny thing because like I said right so some of the little points going down about all the information at the top of it you know hey Steve you know notice if you are at a pastor last week and look like that round a great time wish I could have made it anyway I was just I'm gonna get a few minutes every time to tell you about around drum foam how we're kind of like you know doing some stuff up blah blah you know and so like the top part is where I've been trying to introduce some humor some of the times like that's

a bad example on the fly right so it's one of those things we're like during that top part where I'm kind of doing an intro kind of like a warm a little like okay this guy knows who I am that kind of thing I usually have low-key were in there you know and I don't know any other specific examples of jokes but those are some of my favorite ones subject lines here agree so what so people don't even house IATI and Christopher key ideas so that's our guy Josh brought me in not because of my PR knowledge right it was mainly because when I first met Josh I was doing stand-up comedy in Tuscaloosa getting like a degree finishing that up like I said I were gonna cross me out thought it was bigger than it was it was just joshing tequan I thought had a whole team it was just two dudes one engineer and they had a couple thousand dollars right and so yeah and so like one of the big things that he brought me into dude was just kind of

like help make his family's pain right he never really thought about like the our PR asset I could do until I started doing it so I think in-house PR is great and it's one of those things where like anytime there's a new story like like you know help sorry about that heal and a couple of other believing the saying is it like oh you know you want to keep your story out there you wanna keep it like you know we want people talking about in the leg and so like in-house PR is the best way to do that because like every time you guys somehow an update if you have somebody in-house you could say hey there's a new something we have here and your stuff need to aggressively sign and if you're hiring an outside PR you're not gonna be their own client usually so like it may be an expedient thing may be that I think they're smaller thanks dude I think like firms are weird like in my opinion I've never worked at Edelman

they're never worked at a PR firm and I've had a lot of success in public relations and so it's one of those things where you can just find a dude that was like driven and creative and has a little bit of PR I mean he can lay his price without meeting the whole agency right I'm not necessarily against it don't get it wrong I think they're great they offer wrong I can't do right but at the same time I know a lot of people who spend a lot of money away distinguish it from it and it's just because like they can have all the connections in the industry and all of those other stuff that still not be able to execute whereas someone who may be a founder I thought was super important for us to have a PR guy in house because it gave me a job but also because if we work the location data and that could have a negative connotation like there and I know Expo that's one of our big things we're trying to help the

transparency in the industry and make it look a little better yeah move the fence right here it's kind of in like a have a shape in straightaway and so yeah I think in house PR is important but I think you can also outsource it it's just kind of like up to you and your size I think if you want to make one of the founders your PR guy or if you have a pallet it is a PR guy that's good and I think because I think it helped us out tremendously