Halloran
Media Relations
Financial Technology
A Series C fintech needed trade and national coverage inside a six-week funding window.
How nine placements landed inside a six-week funding window, without a single leak.
Client
Series C payments company, ~300 employees
Engagement
Project
Duration
6 weeks
The situation
A Series C fintech had six weeks between their funding announcement and a competitor’s expected re-launch. Miss the window, and the story would run as someone else’s.
The company had raised well but had almost no national profile. Its previous announcements had gone out as wire releases and been picked up by aggregators only. The board wanted the round to establish the company as the category leader, not just announce that money had changed hands, and the CEO had never done a national interview.
There was also a confidentiality problem. Two of the investors were well known, and the round was already rumoured in a trade newsletter. If the news leaked before the company was ready, it would run as a two-line item with no narrative at all.
Our response
Message development started before the round closed, not after. Marcus Voss built the narrative around one argument the company could uniquely make: what its payment data showed about small-business cash flow. That gave reporters a story beyond the funding itself.
We built a list of 40 named reporters and analysts, offered two national business outlets an exclusive angle each under embargo, and briefed six trade reporters in advance. The CEO had two practice sessions, one of them a deliberately hostile mock interview. Nine placements were secured across trade and national business press within the six-week window, including two national business outlets timed to land the week of the announcement.
We held the trade newsletter off by giving its editor a confirmed briefing for announcement day in exchange for not running the rumour. After launch, we kept the momentum going with a follow-up data piece and two podcast interviews, so the company was still in the conversation when the competitor’s re-launch arrived.
How it unfolded
Week 1: engagement starts before the round closes; narrative workshop with the CEO
Week 2: proprietary data angle agreed; target list of 40 reporters and analysts built
Week 3: CEO media training, including a deliberately hostile mock interview
Week 4: exclusive angles offered to two national outlets under embargo; six trade briefings
Week 5: announcement week, with two national features and four trade stories
Week 6: follow-up data piece and two podcast interviews, ahead of the competitor’s re-launch
What we delivered
Narrative and message house, including a proprietary data angle
Target list of 40 named reporters and analysts
Embargoed briefing plan and exclusive offers
Announcement release, fact sheet and founder bio
Two CEO media-training sessions and per-interview briefing packs
Six-week coverage report with message pull-through analysis
Results
Nine placements, two of them national features published in announcement week, and all nine carried the company’s core data point. No outlet broke the embargo. The competitor’s re-launch two weeks later was covered in the same outlets, and three of them cited our client as the category benchmark. The client’s head of sales reported that enterprise prospects began referencing the coverage in first calls within a month.
The CEO has since become a regular source for two of the national reporters on small-business finance. The company counts that as the most valuable long-term outcome of the project: a relationship that keeps producing coverage without a new announcement.
The takeaway
Funding news on its own is a two-line story. Before announcing a round, find the one thing only your company can tell reporters, usually something in your own data, and build the announcement around that. Start at least six weeks out, before the round closes, and decide in advance who gets an exclusive.
“We had reporters already briefed before the wire story even went out.”
— Chief Executive, Lumen Pay
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