CES 2016: The "I" in Team

CES continues to inspire me to think big. First off, the literal growth of ZeroHour Innovations, the start-up I’ve worked with for the past couple years. We've gone from standard 10'x10’ booth among hundreds of start-ups to our first 20-footer, fully-furnished and branded! Those extra ten feet made a real difference. While we’re nowhere near the size of the small cities erected by Samsung or Panasonic, we felt great about our presence. I worked my magic PR fingers and, with the help of the CES media team, we received several hits on local broadcasts covering hot products from the show. So many attendees came by and told us “I saw you on TV!” I may have to audition for American Idol next, except this is their last season and I can't sing.

The cherry-on-top was definitely CNET: I happened to recognize a reporter passing by, which led to an invite to meet with one of their editors, and boom! CNET featured us on the last day of CES. Two years into this process, I know how hard it is to stand out and get media interested in you when there are a million other products out there, so I’m really proud whenever we inch along the path of discovery. Of course, it all starts with a cool product, but I still exhaustively research media opportunities, and I think it really helps to be direct and keep our pitch simple when I reach out.

Benefit of having the same name as your father: his high school friends know how to find you!

CES also reminds me how much I miss working on a team. I'm typically brought into projects to solve problems in the absence of a team or outside a team's regular duties, and I conduct most of my work from my home office. But I'm social! I love talking to people and learning about others, and I think I have a knack for conducting myself well in team environments, even when they're stressful. I recognize that we're all in it together and don't get bogged down in politics or posturing, and when the wheels run smoothly, I like to be part of making the machine glide along. I have this experience to a degree in my consulting work as it's project-focused, but working a huge event like CES really lets me dive into the action.

CES 2015: Double Down

I’m back from my second trip to CES Las Vegas, the biggest tech show in the world, with ZeroHour innovations. The Eureka Park area for startups moved from the basement of the Venetian to the much larger Sands Expo Center this year, and ZeroHour has also graduated in many ways from year one.

Our strategy in 2014 had been to launch our first product in November with a crowdfunding campaign, and use its success and publicity to distinguish ourselves at CES since the device was in pre-production and we only had the prototype available.

What a difference a year makes. ZeroHour XD was produced, received all kinds of mentions and support, and the amazing creators at ZeroHour Innovations even had time to take consumer feedback and adjust it for the next iteration of their tactical flashlight with portable power. Rather than repeat the one-two punch strategy, we decided to launch the next crowdfunding campaign from CES, which meant we collapsed two very intensive projects into one timeline. In addition to the logistics for the exhibitor booth, press kits, sales sheets, and of course our snappy attire, we were up late many nights before CES editing the new campaign and preparing to blast it out to the press, customers, and prior backers.

After a last-minute snafu that almost saw us miss our morning launch, everything came together and within hours, we hit our goal! (Prior year we hit goal on day 29.) We displayed our Kickstarter page in the booth so attendees could watch it grow, and this inspired a lot of people to pledge since they wanted to be part of the live campaign. As intense as it was going in, launching from CES paid off, and as a startup ZeroHour has to be industrious with promotion since we don’t have jumbotrons yet.

We hit $50K over the course of our four days at CES, and as I’m writing this, we've passed the $108K that the first project raised, with two weeks left! This is a real testament to the product quality and customer rapport ZeroHour built over the last year, and I’ve had quite a ride myself.

2/6/15: The campaign closed at $250K, more than double the amount raised last year!

ZeroHour XD has arrived!

I’m so proud to be part of the journey of ZeroHour Innovations, which truly embodies the entrepreneurial qualities that mark so much success in business. Bringing ZeroHour XD to market has been one of the most challenging projects of my career, but we kept the ball rolling through crowdfunding, CES, factory adjustments and upgrades. Only weeks ago I was doing the final edits on the retail packaging and user guide, and now it’s ready for consumers!

Next we’ll be reaching out to distributors who have shown interest in carrying ZeroHour since it debuted at CES. There are a number of gadget-focused media ready to review XD, and ZeroHour will be part of the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in August. That means I’ll be developing several more communications soon, but for now, I’m going to bask in what I’m holding in my hands today, a device that didn’t exist until the team at ZeroHour created it. Check it out on their site and Amazon!

CES: The Big Debut

The training wheels are off and we’re having a blast as we speed toward destiny.

Following the end of our Kickstarter campaign, ZeroHour has been on the road, starting with its debut at CES in Las Vegas. CES is the most important tech event of the year, where you hear announcements from Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and all the major companies about their latest releases and future concepts. We were part of their recently launched startup exhibition area, Eureka Park, which already has a reputation for innovative new tech.

Our only chance to explore the main halls was on Monday during load-in, and as starry-eyed first-timers, everything was massive and brilliant to us. Sony had a beautiful 360 LED screen, and many "booths" were as big as a house. It definitely got us dreaming about the day ZeroHour can offer a fully immersive experience at CES.

Armed with our trusty prototype, we embedded ourselves with dozens of other startups, all featuring unique smart technologies and budding entrepreneurs. It was a pleasure to be a part of this community, where we really could relate to each other’s efforts to launch a new product and gain recognition in the marketplace.

Speaking of recognition, ZeroHour was featured in Best of CES coverage by CNET and Yahoo Tech! Since I took over communications for ZeroHour, I’ve spent so much time learning about best practices as I reach out to journalists. I’m also new to tech, so I’ve had to approach publications cold, building concise pitch emails that point them to our information and hoping they’ll like it and respond. I was floored that we received the feature coverage that we did, but I do think we offered a nice hook as a recent Kickstarter success story. Local newspapers OC Register and HB Independent covered ZeroHour as well, and as awesome as the digital features were, it’s still feels special to hold an article with your name in print.

Next up the creators at ZeroHour will be working with their engineers on final adjustments to the ZeroHour prototype, while I create new marketing and sales collateral for the big launch in late spring.