Bridgehead was engaged by Paul Cuatrecasas, Chief Executive of Aquaa Partners, following the recent publication of his book, 'Go Tech or Go Extinct'. The book was intended, in part, to complement Aquaa's business development objectives by positioning its author, Paul, and, by extension, Aquaa Partners, as expert advisers to either party regarding the sale and acquisition of relevant tech disruptors to established players in traditional markets.
Our brief was to highlight the insights offered in the book and to position Aquaa Partners and its Chief Executive as thought leaders in the field of disruptive tech M&A.
We read Go Tech or Go Extinct to identify relevant parallels with current trends that we could draw upon to secure media coverage. We then shortlisted these with Paul and his team.
We were retained not long after the outbreak of Covid-19 and immediately before the introduction of the first lockdown. Initially, we planned a series of roundtable media breakfasts centred around relevant themes. However, these had to be switched to virtual meetings as we entered lockdown. Similarly, one-on-one in-person briefings with journalists were replaced by virtual interviews.
We also leveraged the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns as an opportunity to show the relevance of Aquaa Partners' knowledge and expertise. With the pandemic highlighting the vulnerabilities of economic dependency on human labour, we arranged a series of sector-specific webinars with journalists where Paul would provide commentary on how the pandemic would prove to be a catalyst for the automation and technological advancement in those sectors, ranging from FoodTech to retail to aviation and maritime transport.
Parallel to the proactive media engagement, we also monitored the news every day to identify news stories relevant to the themes we had shortlisted. Once we saw a relevant news story that was likely to attract further media coverage, we would draft and issue a statement to the media, offer Paul for comment or interview, and, if appropriate, draft and place an opinion piece on the topic.
The campaign was among our most successful. We secured 55 pieces of coverage read by an estimated audience of some 593,000 readers. We delivered coverage in several top-tier publications, including Barron's, Dow Jones MarketWatch, Forbes, Sifted, the London Evening Standard, and Private Equity Wire. We also delivered comment interviews with The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
Our most notable achievement came following an interview with Dow Jones MarketWatch, in which we pitched an original piece of thought leadership by Aquaa Partners demonstrating the improved returns of tech stocks compared to traditional stocks. The report's findings were featured in Dow Jones MarketWatch, Barron's, and Forbes and led to various commercial opportunities for Aquaa.
