You’ve likely seen the headlines. “Ding dong, the app is dead” or “Life and Death in the App Store.”
Last year, Forrester even warned companies, “Your Customers Will Not Download Your App.”
But there are still GREAT app ideas out there. We’re lucky enough to work with companies, a lot of them start-ups, with some of those terrific ideas every day, but there are obviously some big, interesting challenges to overcome.
One great example of that work was with Kast, the first free mobile video app designed specifically for businesses to have more immediate and interactive internal communication.
Our first challenge was one that we don’t encounter every day. Unlike many that we work with, the company that launched Kast isn’t a traditional startup. It’s the largest independent distributor of online videos in Latin America, Samba Tech. They have a TON of street cred in Brazil, but we needed to translate that into the US, where the app is currently available. This meant leveraging some existing relationships for them, some existing relationships for us, and a fair amount of time just trying to make sure we’re all on the same page.
Next, we had to explain to skeptical press and analysts why they even care about the news. Yes, they know that Snapchat recently reported more than 10 billion daily video views. But how does that translate to a need for mobile video messaging tools for business? Time will tell, but getting folks on the phone is key to making sure they truly understand the message. That was reinforced with some of our strongest coverage, a solid review from ZDNet, and report from 451 Research that underlines the uses and challenges of the road ahead for the app itself.
Finally, we had to deal with comparisons that didn’t quite fit. In trying to get press to even open our mail we needed to explain the app in the context of others in the space, and that meant that even some terrific articles end up with headlines that we didn’t love. (Kast plans to INTEGRATE with tools like Slack, not compete with them, but since they don’t have solid agreements that they can disclose yet it was hard to push back there.) Which we could only really combat by continuing to underline our client’s message with press who were willing to go deeper than a pitch and a press release.
Despite the challenges, we ended up with 35 pieces of coverage for Kast, which in the end feels like a pretty triumphant win.