How do you become a household name in the USA?

Croatia’s Infobip serves six continents, providing enterprises like Uber and Burger King with their backend SMS platform to improve customer satisfaction.

But salespeople complained that no one in the USA had heard of them: Info-who?

The company seemed too foreign and didn’t have the clout of competitors Twilio or Vonage.

But… what if Infobip teamed up with the guy who invented texting?

Would that change things?

Infobip’s first American PR team developed an audacious plan to recruit the inventor of SMS and get their story on America’s most-watched news programs.

On December 3, 1992, Neil Papworth changed our lives.

That’s not hyperbole: all of our lives have been changed by his invention.

Papworth created the very first text.

His inaugural SMS: “Merry Christmas.”

Most of the world’s population - five billion of us - now send and receive SMS messages.

Thirty years later, Infobip provides back-end SMS support for companies like Facebook and Uber.

But as it officially entered the U.S. market, salespeople complained that no one had heard of them: Info-who?

Infobip charged its first American PR team with building the company’s brand so sales could compete with the likes of Twilio and Vonage.

The challenge? In a share of voice comparison, Infobip ranked last against its six biggest competitors.

But Infobip wanted more than just a larger SOV.

The company wanted to be a household name in the USA.

Or at least have a path to get there.

Becoming a household name?

We knew we couldn’t stay in the typical tech B2B lane.

We knew we needed a high-profile consumer play.

We needed broadcast TV.

And, of course, they would all be clamoring for a story about an SMS company from Croatia.

In our research, we learned that it was the 30th anniversary of the first SMS. We recommended launching a PR campaign celebrating the anniversary.

Then we recommended enlisting the inventor of texting, Neil Papworth.

We knew that wasn’t enough for consumer media.

We recommended a survey asking Americans about texting intersecting with love, marriage, and everything in between.

We had our media play – a story about the start of messaging with fun data that shows its growth.

But a media placement in "the news" wasn’t going to get us where we needed to be. So, we hit up the Today Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

PR discovered that Infobip’s offering was hard for most journalists to understand.

“Full-stack, cloud communication platform-as-a-service” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

PR recommended we focus our efforts on Infobip’s SMS abilities and then broaden our storyline to include more technical and esoteric topics once we got the media’s attention.

We used the research from our survey of 1,000 Americans, such as that a solid majority of millennials (63%) and Gen Zers (61%) have sent a sext message.

Our findings demonstrated that SMS is important to every aspect of our life, from business to romance.

We suggested our PR campaign enlist Neil Papworth to position Infobip as the modern-day realization of his vision.

To create a sense of timeliness – and give Infobip some gravitas - PR recommended we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the text with a fireside chat between

Papworth and Infobip executives at a top-tier academic institution.

On November 28, PR hosted a live-streamed fireside chat with SMS inventor Neil Papworth and Infobpib execs at Columbia University.

On December 2, the day before the 30th anniversary of texting, The Today Show aired its story: “Text messaging reaches major 30-year milestone.”

Gadi Schwartz recounted how texting has led to terms like “LOL” and the creation of emojis - even replacing dialogue in Hollywood entertainment and giving companies a means of providing faster customer service.

“I had no idea texting was going to turn into what it is today,” said Neil Papworth during the interview

Infobip hosted watch parties and issued a press release celebrating the win.

But we weren’t done.

On December 21, Jimmy Kimmel Live aired a segment Infobip sponsored with the eponymous star’s sidekick, Guillermo. PR worked with Kimmel’s producers to create a segment tracing the evolution of texting that was informative, funny, and on brand.

Thanks to the increased visibility, sales reported they were able to close deals faster than before, doubling on closures.

“We were able to far exceed our expectations this campaign,” said Janet Lennon, Infobip head of PR and communications.

Thanks to our anniversary campaign, PR secured 183 stories in December, including outlets like TechCrunch. For 2022, PR secured 447 stories reaching an audience of 3.41 billion.

But let’s put it another way.

In November, Infobip only had a 4.5% share of voice among its six competitors. In December, its SOV grew to 36.9%, placing Infobip second only to Twilio (40.6%), which was generating a lot of news that month due to a crisis. Vonnage came in third place with 18.7%.

“The campaign has proven to be a milestone success for the company and the business results are still coming in,” Lennon said, adding that her colleagues in sales no longer had the “Info-who” problem. Every audience they wanted to improve their standing with cited that the one-two punch of The Today Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live had been transformative.

“We wanted to grow our brand share in the U.S. and generate visibility,” Lennon said. “It was so incredibly successful and everyone across the board was so pleased with the work and the results we achieved.”

“The executive team was really hopeful for us to engage in top-tier media and amplify and backdoor our messaging as a company,” added Lennon. "I couldn't think of anything they could have done better," Lennon concluded.