KickstarterForum.org

In our search for a public relations agency to partner with we found: Crowd PR. Our team has a big upcoming crowdfunding campaign. We have full programs planned for: advertisement, paid media, product reviews, influencer marketing, and media relations. More than anything, we need to get featured in big tech outlets (like TechCrunch). I have heard in the startup community that the conversion rate from them is high, and this is a must for us to succeed.

I talked with their sales rep, and journalists are something they always target - primarily traditional online media, as well as popular youtube channels. Their strongest case study seems to be a campaign named Amabrush which raised an astounding amount of backer funds. Although I am sure they did some other sales magic (especially facebook ads) I am certain that they played an important role in their fundraising. Or am I wrong?

I see on their website, they have a message displayed in regards to Amabrush:



We are unable to understand what they mean in the reference section part. The words in their sales copy do not make sense to me. Perhaps others here can help me translate. In terms of other verification techniques, I see their website has less than a million monthly visitors which feels low to me. Here are the web traffic stats: https://www.similarweb.com/website/crowd.pr

Additionally, their facebook page has only 500 likes. Personally, I would expect over 50,000 likes. Here is their social profile to check out: https://www.facebook.com/crowdpragency

After a bit of investigation, I was also able to find another page they set up, but it is for past clients to write about them. It says it is currently not being used until they can figure out their strategy though. Here is link to that one: https://www.facebook.com/crowd.pr.reviews

Does the community know of any agencies that are willing to work for zero upfront, cover the costs of my ads, and refund me if we do not reach our goal?

Interesting to see that you mentioned bribing journalists. It had me thinking, so I went ahead and did a little digging into this practice because I think it’s a good idea in general. Someone has already asked this about them in a Quora question: https://www.quora.com/Does-Crowd-PR-bri ... r-coverage

What I glean from my research that in China it is common practice to pay journalists for media coverage. However, in the United States is considered unethical by 99% of all journalists. But that 1% though, how do we find them? Some media websites don't even pay their journalists and their editors don't review articles (Forbes does this). It was hard to find, but I found a record of this happening with a TechCrunch journalist: https://techcrunch.com/2010/02/04/an-ap ... r-readers/

Quote:

“After an investigation, we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.”

This could become a key marketing practice for many of us! This practice appears to be the most direct way to get press coverage on our products.

I succeeded in achieving this metric once, and it was not easy. I don’t know if it would work again since it was several years ago. First off, if you are going to offer a journalist a bribe you CANNOT use their work email. That will leave evidence of it and get them fired, they will not even respond to your email. Don’t use a mass email program like MailChimp either, because it will be obvious that you are sending out the bribe offer to hundreds of people. You can’t even use a mail merge, you have to send an email that is undeniably sent directly to them. If they are a tech journalist you can use a PGP message for the bribe. It won’t be cheap, mine cost me about $5,000 for an article, and I have had associates who have paid up to $10,000 or more for their coverage in a media outlet. But at least it’s guaranteed.

One thing to keep in mind is that it’s risky. Something worse than them just saying no could happen. They could easily report you to their editor and ban you and your products from ever getting publicity in their publication. The worst case scenario is that they post an article about how you tried to bribe them, and then everyone can see that - including investors, other journalists, and even future employees.

Proceed with caution on this one my friends.

I can’t believe this is being discussed here. Bribing a journalist? Do you even know how illegal that is? Don't do it.

Anyways, all I could find about them was this here: https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/crowdpragency/about

You clearly misread that article, it was not talking about bribing journalists it was talking about journalists bribing officials (particularly in violation of the foreign bribery laws). It is considered a grey area and certainly not illegal.

I don't know what to make of this material, but it appears to be written by one of their employees:
https://medium.com/crowd-pr-crowdfundin ... 94084e7e52

If you have to rely upon pr or advertisement, then you are not on the right track. I advise a much more holistic approach to marketing. "Build it, and they will come". You have to make sure all the proper channels are in place for this to work. Influencers are especially not effective just FYI. What agencies don't realize is that you can maximize conversion rates without their services. If you want to acquire backers at scale yourself without Crowd.PR then just follow these simple steps:

1. Create Community. The best approach to this step is to get involved in your community to drum up pre-campaign hype. Attend church services, pass out flyers, and place some advertisement signs around your local park. This is a sure fire way to ensure success and a high fundraise.

2. Be Diligent. In order to avoid failure, you need to be leverage your startup's ability, acquiring talent, and building a strong link profile. Don't post spammy links since Google considers these to be of low value.

3. Produce Content. Network at startups events, coverage with backers, and pitch journalists and blogs. A startup needs allies in venture capital, and marketing to them is of the utmost importance.

4. Leverage Relationships. My marketing prescription is that you need to become married to a journalist or an editor. When you hear people talk about "relationships" this is what they refer to. And be sure to check references on them throughout your period of engagement. High engagement rates convert well to backers.

If all goes according to plan, you will be well on your way to raising $100M.

They may running an Indiegogo campaign:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/crow ... 18194362#/

It is not clear if they're behind it, but it does use the same terms found on their own website I'd say. Just wanted to share this information with the community, good luck with your crowdfunding campaigns and my god bless you. It is important that we look out for each other so that we may draw favor upon our outstanding community. I will continue to fight the good fight, and I wish you luck in all your endeavors.

Also, their domain was registered last year: https://www.whois.com/whois/crowd.pr

Am I the only one concerned about them not being based in the United States? A PR domain is the domain extension for Puerto Rico. In order to obtain one of those domains, you must be either a citizen of Puerto Rico or a registered permanent resident.

I don’t appreciate these unskilled workers digitally jumping our border just to scam us. It seems that even as Kickstarter project creators we are still exposed to this kind of stuff. Nowhere is safe these days I guess. I could have easily fallen victim to them since their Google listing shows they are based in San Francisco at 18 Bartol Street.

Luckily I have done web development previously and I was privy to that information about domains. There is no way around that requirement. Crowd.PR is not based in the US!

I hate to break it to you, but there are many services online where you can pay someone to register a domain in a foreign country. It’s usually used for when companies want those really short domains and it does not come cheap. Just because the Crowd.PR website is a puerto rico domain extension, it does not mean that they are not US based. From what I see about them, I judge that their crowdfunding agency is actually US based.

Anyways, looks like they have a big presence on reddit right now:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrowdPR

There is a ton of media outlets already doing this out in the open, but they call it “native advertising” or “paid placement”. Many of them mark them as Advertisements (but they are native and don’t drop cookies so they don’t get blocked by Ad blockers). The best part though is that a ton of them don’t even bother to mark it. You just pay them like you are buying an ad and then they write up a post about you. Perhaps Crowd.PR is in on this, but I see nothing about it on their website. More info is needed about them at this current time, stay tuned for updates.

The biggest and worst offender of this is Uncrate. Did anyone saw the Casper mattress on there? Yeah, it’s been on the front page of Uncrate for about 6 months now. I can’t even read that website anymore it’s seriously all ads. For example: Uncrate always has a high ticket item on the front page. It’s usually either property for sale, homes for sale, or high-end cars for sale. Guess what?? Uncrate is receiving a commission from the sales that they generate. With high-value properties that sell because of placement on Uncrate, they can rake in a million bucks even. Not bad, but not good for readers.

Just checked the subreddit, looks like someone in this forum did a long investigation about them: https://www.reddit.com/r/kickstarter/co ... _pr_group/