Case Study: Gupshup
Situation
Gupshup’s origin story begins with the firm Webaroo, founded in 2004 by Beerud Sheth. At the time, Sheth was recognized across the tech industry as “The guy who started Elance!” But one giant question remained unanswered:
What transformative concept was Sheth going to come up with next to disrupt a category and change technology?
Since Sheth had been toiling in the Artificial Intelligence trenches for 20 years—going back to his days at MIT—he had a reasonable amount of credence in the messaging space as something of a thought leader. But RLM PR understood that he certainly deserved more credit: Sheth at this point was a budding industry guru. Gupshup (which means “chit-chat” in Hindi) was quickly rising as the leading global chatbot development platform, and Sheth was delivering keynote presentations at tech symposiums the world over as an AI subject matter expert. Yet the brand awareness was not there. Furthermore, it was in dire need of a partnership strategy and a total embedded thought leadership campaign for Sheth.
Strategy
RLM PR leveraged the credibility of Sheth and Gupshup as the leader in the bot space—a pivot towards educating reporters on this ever-growing capabilities. RLM PR initiated many conversations by utilizing the ever-growing narrative around AI, and where Sheth could speak to the high-profile topic in as many manners as possible.
Results
After arranging an extended series of desk-side media appointments between Sheth and an array of marketing trades and business and technology media (Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, et al), we succeeded in securing expert commentary from Sheth into the media. There, he had a platform to talk about Artificial Intelligence and chatbots, and with that he teed up the story regarding the vision for Gupshup. RLM PR allowed these synergies (and levels of expertise) to flourish, to the extent where Sheth is now the #1 trendspotter in the bot world.
Once RLM PR laid the groundwork for educating media on the chatbot concept—with Gupshup leading the conversations—the agency began tilting the story in various sectors and business pieces to effectively demonstrate its vast array of uses in different environments, from CRM to advertising to HR to #metoo to retail experiences, and even topical bot ideas such as GDPR.