Oveit is a US company based in Austin, Texas, founded in Romania, which aims to improve access to marketing solutions and experiential commerce through its technological products. We have been collaborating with the company locally since October 2020, helping them to increase visibility and product awareness in Romania and raise 450k euros in financing in an equity crowdfunding campaign.
Read on to find out how our mix of digital and traditional PR campaigns has helped Oveit achieve its communication goals internationally.
What is Oveit?
In a constantly changing and evolving world, using technology in our daily lives has become standard practice. The events and entertainment industry has changed drastically throughout the years. People are looking for easier ways of buying tickets for their favorite festivals, offline events, or even amusement parks. Not only that but eliminating any printed tickets contributes to the global objectives of reducing the impact on the planet. Oveit adapted to the new market context and trends and developed the online ticketing solution.
Ever since, the company has just continued to grow, as technology is the future. To improve the festival and entertainment industry, Oveit introduced the cashless payments solution that not only makes it easier for customers to pay during an event or at an amusement park with money stored on a bracelet but also helps the players in the entertainment industry to maximize their profits. Moreover, transactions made using this method are 63% faster than cash ones and 53% faster than the classic card payment model, according to Secure Technology Alliance.
Oveit Pay, a solution already established in their portfolio, is a digital payment system that operates payments for small or large events, recreation areas, and amusement parks. This solution allows organizers to access purchase statistics during the event or in the amusement parks to increase the value of their earnings by recording all the sales made, viewing sales statistics of the partner brands, and tracking the route of the participants and their purchase behavior. Oveit Wallet is a solution designed for festival attendants and amusement park visitors: they can store their money and benefits that organizers offer and operate payments by scanning a QR code on their bracelets.
Scaling up the business: Fulfilling the American dream
With the sole objective of improving live events access, Mihai Dragan and Andrei Stefan founded the company in 2015. The company continued to grow, setting up the goal of creating an ecosystem of live experiences. Being that Austin is known as the ”World live music capital” and is also one of the best places for business in America, the two decided to move their headquarters here in 2019. Unlike other places, such as Silicon Valley, where tech companies occupy over 40% of the city's jobs, in Austin, there is not only one company or industry that dominates the local economy. Thus, many big companies or start-ups moved or are planning to establish themselves there.
America is a bigger market, offering multiple opportunities, collaboration openings, and ease of doing business, but there are also a lot of obstacles. European companies need to understand the market and adapt to continue growing. A fresh start in a new country is always challenging, and making yourself noticed may take a lot of time. That is why companies use marketing and communication techniques to make themselves known in the press and, later, in the market.
They were known in Romania and have been active on the American market for quite some time, with a few ongoing partnerships, but their presence in the press was little to none. However, they felt that using different marketing and public relations tactics could expand their business even more.
“Entering a new market is never easy. Moving our headquarters to the USA was an impactful change for our business, so the need to communicate more in this market was crucial. For our industry, a well-designed PR strategy is a must-have approach to develop top-of-mind awareness, as there is a lot of competition. As a tech start-up, we consider it highly important to communicate every new launch of products or development to enhance the brand visibility among potential customers, partners, and investors, while differentiating ourselves from competitors”, stated Mihai Drăgan, COO of Oveit.
PR campaign launch on the American market
Firstly, we started by researching the local market, from what is the press workflow in Austin to what is the best way of approaching the journalists or how American PR professionals write their press releases. From then on, we continued researching the most relevant publications for our topic and started to build a relationship with local journalists. JuneCom has written a personalized press release to the local market to spark media interest and increase publishing chances. For launching the press release, we reached the journalists individually and used a press distribution wire to gain increased coverage.
Campaign results
The campaign was a great success. More than 100 local online publications took over the press release, specializing in different areas, such as local news, business news, entertainment, and technology. Austin Daily Sun, Texas Technology Digest, and Entertainment Daily Texas are just a few names. As short-term results, the client has registered a growth in brand awareness, a positive impact with a higher ranking in search engines (SEO optimization), and more potential customers proving interested in their activity and services.
Are you ready to talk to the world and expand your brand?
Contact us at hello@junecom.ro for a successful PR campaign.