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Many entrepreneurs have experienced the frustration of watching an early-stage competitor (or even a colleague) score a spot in a “Top 10” list or a feature in a leading tech publication, some even before they have a product or any clients. 

The usual response: “hey…that just ain’t fair!” 

Any entrepreneur who successfully founds a company knows that business, like life, ain’t always fair. But there’s a good reason so many business leaders are peeved to see less-worthy competitors in the media.

Indeed, most tech entrepreneurs intuitively understand the power of a well-executed public relations campaign, even before they’ve mounted one themselves. Done right, PR is a rocket ship that can launch a company to new heights. An aggressive, well-timed PR campaign can help generate funding opportunities, partnerships, higher recruitment, better retention, higher valuation, and ultimately a successful exit.&nb...

What a difference eight years – or even a few weeks – can make.

At Headline Media, we’ve grown a lot since our founding – but we’ve had a lot more to celebrate these past few weeks.

Since September, we’ve welcomed a record four (!) new babies to the Headline family. Mazel tov to Gavriella Kaplan-Weinreb; Orit Yogev, who welcomed twins; and Justine Rosin. These star Headliners are now star parents – and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

The past few weeks have also marked some big milestones for the Israeli tech world – and for our stellar clients.

Since Headline Media launched eight years ago, the Start-Up Nation has gradually transformed into the Scale-Up Nation. Scrappy up-starts have grown into industry leaders or have even become unicorns, and there’s no doubt that the future holds plenty more in store. But as the high-tech ecosystem matures, more and more companies are focused not on secu...

You’ve taken a cutting-edge idea and turned it into an innovative new startup—and now you’re ready to scale up as your company embarks on the next phase of its growth. To reach new heights of success, you’ll need strategies for fundraising, product development, differentiation, and customer acquisition. Each of these is a key ingredient for future growth—but without an effective, long-term strategy for building public awareness of your product or service, none of this will prove sufficient.

Simply put, your company can’t thrive in the competitive marketplace unless you’re reaching target audiences. And for your business to resonate with those audiences, building a compelling, consistent message, with an eye toward the long run, is paramount. 

Here are five principles to guide your company in crafting a narrative that drives results.

Be unified.

A company needs to have a single voice. A coherent,...

Ms./Mr. Mayor, Governor, President, Prime Minister… You’ve built an amazing tech ecosystem. 

You’ve made all the right moves: you’ve built it around a world-class research institution. You’ve attracted leading multinationals to build local R&D centers to nurture management talent and spinoff startups. You’ve created public-private partnerships to help fund exciting, seed-stage initiatives, mitigate risk and bolster infrastructure. You’ve instituted regulations creating a favorable investment environment. You’ve zoned wisely to encourage a hip, young creative class to cluster and thrive inside your hub.

But now that your innovation engine is running autonomously on all cylinders, how do you let the world know? 

Working closely with the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Israel Innovation Authority as well as some of the country’s leading startups and VCs, we’ve gained some insight into how Israe...

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Aristotle famously declared, setting out one of the early postulates of physics.

The PR world has a similar postulate: The news cycle abhors a vacuum.

If your company isn’t being inserted into relevant media conversations and building a steady drumbeat of coverage, you can be sure that other companies in your client’s sector will be driving the conversation and earning coveted clips.

But you won’t always have breaking company news to share with the world. Milestones are typically few and far between; that’s what makes them milestones, after all. So how do you stay in the headlines when there aren’t any funding rounds, product launches, major executive hires, or other big developments to announce?

Enter newsjacking. 

Newsjacking offers a way of injecting your company into breaking news coverage, and it’s a tried-and-true tactic for elevating your  public profile even when...

It’s hardly a secret: The relationship between public relations professionals and journalists has always been fraught with tension. Reporters roll their eyes at persistent pitching and often regard PR flacks with a hefty dose of skepticism. PR reps, meanwhile, are ever-vigilant against any whiff of unfair coverage of their clients.

Despite this dynamic, journalism has always depended on PR and vice versa – and that’s especially true in today’s media landscape.

Rapidly evolving business models have coincided with news cycles that are more frenzied than at any time in recent memory, meaning that fewer and fewer journalists are expected to produce more and more content. The Pew Research Center finds that in the U.S. alone, newsroom employment plunged...

It started late last year, gradually building up to a conversation I am now having 10 to 15 times a week.

Some crypto startup will approach Headline Media to gauge our interest in doing their PR. Our response is always the same: We appreciate your interest, but we don’t do ICOs.

“What? Wait, we aren’t like the other companies…”

 “Sorry, we aren’t interested, but I can gladly refer---”

“But it’s not an ICO, it’s a private offering for accredited investors outside the Unit-.”

Many competitors and colleagues say we are foolish to miss out on the biggest cash cow to hit the industry since Indiegogo and other crowdsourcing schemes, which for the record, we avoided like the plague.   

Our reasoning wasn’t altruistic.  Beyond the fact that we wanted no part in misinforming unwitting investors, hyping questionable startups damages our reputation with journalists, and ultimately undermines the real achievements of the Israeli innovation...