Situation

Arraycomm has pioneered new "personal cell" technology that offers ubiquitous access to broadband wireless, or what the company calls "personal broadband." Gaining mass media coverage of a technology that still is years away from being available to consumers is difficult. But Arraycomm’s founder, Marty Cooper, is known as "the father of the cellular telephone." So we took full advantage of the cell phone’s 30th anniversary, making a very modest budget get extraordinary ROI.

Objectives

• Gain highest level coverage possible for this milestone
  
• Shape stories so that cell phone anniversary focus naturally segued into the potential of broadband wireless
  

Special Connections

• We knew the milestone was a natural for coverage – the challenge was to build broadband wireless into the story. So we played researchers and reporters ourselves to build a rich set of content that wove the two stories seamlessly into one.
  
• We were highly creative in mining our sources. We worked with keepers of data and archives at Motorola, where Cooper was employed, with various analysts, associations and organizations to gather a wealth of data and create a broad variety of media materials, supporting visuals and third party spokespersons.
  
• We worked closely with Cooper to help him internalize the "cell phone to personal broadband" message track.
  
• We arranged to re-enact Cooper’s first successful demo – on the exact same spot on the streets of Manhattan where he’d done it the first time – and pitched the historic event to all broadcast media.
  
• We scheduled a three day media blitz around the anniversary itself.

Results

• Coverage ran in more than 100 print and broadcast media, reaching more than 100 million people.
  
• Arraycomm and its personal broadband technology and vision were included in 80% of the stories:
  
• "Martin Cooper made the first cell phone call from a street corner and sparked a global communications revolution" – CNN Headline News
  
• "Cooper believes that the next big advancement in the wireless industry will be ubiquitous wide-area, high-speed access to the Internet." – Reuters