Perfectly Sliced - October 2021

The time of pumpkin spice lattes is upon us. Love or hate it, it is the flavor of the season, and it comes with a growing appetite for tasty treats and delectable announcements, too. It also means the PR season is kicking into high gear. To confirm this, I only need to look at the great outreaches and top headlines we garnered for our wonderful clients in September. Before we dive into that, however, I would like to report on a major SlicedBrand success. 

On September 23, we held our inaugural Life’s A Pitch on Twitter Spaces. Three startups each had five minutes to tell a panel of respected tech journalists about their companies. The esteemed panel featured Dan Cooper, Senior Editor at Engadget; Shona Ghosh, Senior Tech Editor at Insider; Robin Wauters, Founder at Tech.eu; and Martin Bryant, Founder of Big Revolution and former Editor-in-Chief at The Next Web. After each pitch, our panelists provided individual feedback and shared useful tips on how businesses can make their pitches to the media more effective. To catch up on the advice our experts provided, check out our latest blog post. We look forward to the following installments with more insider tips to boot. 

One thing that never ceases to amaze me in my line of work is technology’s wide-reaching influence and applications in the unlikeliest of places. Seeing all the ways in which our clients leverage blockchain technology to move their fields forward made me ponder its potential applications in the media space, too.

In my piece on PR Daily, I mused about putting PR on the blockchain. I considered several ways the technology could ease the work of PR professionals and journalists. That said, public relations will remain an inherently human field where connection, storytelling, and a personal touch take us further than any technology ever could.  

We’re always emphasizing the value of a good story and an inspiring educational piece with our clients. Here is a small selection of the great thought leadership pieces published in top industry outlets recently.

Michael Huth, Co-Founder & Chief Research Officer of Xayn, discussed how Federated Machine Learning keeps data in your pocket, not in the cloud on DZone. Federated Machine Learning should be embraced so users retain full ownership of their personal data from creation to analytics.

Xayn’s Head of Human Resources, Beatrice Kahl, was a hybrid workspace expert long before the pandemic hit, so she shared her top tips for switching to remote work on The Next Web. An adaptive mindset and use of the right tools, coupled with the right company attitude toward team-building and support for work and life balance, will allow us to emerge from this pandemic stronger.

Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation, shared on TechCrunch how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are part of a larger economic development in finance capital. Although many respond to NFTs with confused laughter, they are well-positioned to completely transform traditional investment models – but we still have a lot of work around regulation, standardization, and managing the environmental impact of this exciting new development.

IOTA’s Co-Founder and Member of the Board of Directors, Serguei Popov, argued why the new digital, decentralized economy needs academic validation on Cointelegraph. The shape and form that the crypto revolution takes will be the product of dreams and ideologies on the one hand, and peer-reviewed research and development on the other — in equal measure.

Wasteless Co-Founder and CEO Oded Omer explained how food waste can be marketed as smart discounts on a deadline on Nasdaq, a necessity in an industry with a huge waste problem that nevertheless operates on razor-thin margins.

Duda’s Director of Strategic Integrations, Russ Jeffery,  detailed eight ways to improve the CLS score in the metrics on Hacker Noon. Understanding Cumulative Layout Shift is vital to ranking well with Google’s upcoming updates and keeping your platforms user-friendly.

ROOM CEO and Co-Founder, Cevat Yerli, weighed in on the less-discussed aspects of the remote work debate for Nasdaq, outlining a future of work rooted in productivity, trust, and compassion.

We also earned some great coverage for our amazing clients. They made it into competitive selection rounds, released exciting new products, and started promising projects around the globe. Check out the product news and stellar reviews that grabbed the headlines.

The IOTA Foundation was selected to enable the massive European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) and the coverage was appropriately monumental on Cointelegraph and again, Investing and again, Yahoo! Finance, BeInCrypto, Benzinga, U.Today, BTC-Echo, FOCUS, CoinTribune, Finanzen, Newsbreak, CryptoNewsZ, and more.

Xayn’s desktop version landed on top of the newsdesks on TechCrunch, Yahoo! Entertainment, Yahoo!News, Yahoo!Finance, Yahoo!News UK, Yahoo!Finance UK, Yahoo!News Australia, Heise, The Mac Observer, NewsBreak, CN Beta, Schieb.de, Computer BILD, Golem, Knowledia, and more. 

The IOTA Foundation’s plans to bring paperless trade to East Africa got instant customs clearance on Benzinga, CryptoNewsFlash, DailyCoin, InvestingCube, CryptoSlate, CryptoNews, BTC-Echo, FOCUS, The Crypto Basic, The Currency Analytics, Get to Text, Block-Chain24, Crypto Economy, and more. 

Finoa did the math on the ballooning fees institutional investors face when trading crypto assets and the numbers added up on CoinDesk, Yahoo!News, Yahoo!Finance, Nasdaq, and more. 

Duda acquired e-commerce tool Snipcart and the news checked out on TechRadar, TechCrunch, Yahoo!Finance, CMS Critic, Israel Hayom, Inside Business, KMWorld, BetaKit, Localogy, Le Soleil, Jerusalem Post, BizWest, Shopifreaks, SaaS Industry, Inside Dev, Inside E-Commerce, MSN, and more.  

Artlist’s treasure trove of royalty-free music and sound effects received royal welcome on MakeUseOf, GreenPowerMonitor, DLM Editor, Creative Cow, and more.   

Qualitest’s new CEO and its quality assurance chops were a surefire coverage magnet on CTECH, NewsBreak, Telecompaper, HPE, Built In, and more.

Viber added new augmented reality lenses and the message was delivered on 24h, Business World, T Portal, Smartlife, Manila Times, Biz Today, Finance UA, Objektiv, Telegraf, Hvyla, and more.

Wasteless continued its quest to reduce food waste with AI and genuine press praise on Euronews, Market Screener, Tweaks4Geeks, MirageNews, FoodPrint, India Education Diary, FutureBridge, and more.

Via Surgical put the “medic” in “medical innovation” on the Kevin MD podcast.

Looking back at this past September, I’m invigorated by all the progress into new spaces, from connecting startups and top tech journalists in our inaugural Life’s A Pitch session to approaching tech topics from unexpected angles, such as integrating PR and blockchain technology. Our clients also marched in bold new directions, from Africa to Australia and from crypto to augmented reality. Armed with the excitement and optimism of new beginnings, we set course for the horizon. Come along for the ride.