STEM PR with Inspekto

2nd June, 2021

The brief

Quality assurance (QA) and manual inspection cost the manufacturing industry billions. Relying on the human eye for inspection is often unreliable, businesses needed a better strategy to avoid these losses — enter Inspekto.

Disruptive start-up Inspekto, has launched the world’s first Autonomous Machine Vision System (AMV). The new S70 technology self-sets, self-learns and self-adjusts, adapting to cumbersome light conditions and both pre-programmed and unique faults. Pretty cool, right?

Stone Junction was tasked with convincing the manufacturing industry that AMV was the logical progression for QA, while also promoting trust and reassurance in the Inspekto brand.

With links in both Germany and Israel, Inspekto needed a PR agency with experience in international media relations. Combined with Stone Junction’s knowledge of industrial automation PR, the partnership was a no-brainer.

Objectives

Establish the AMV technology and its benefits by achieving 60 clippings across the UK, US and Germany between August and December 2018.
Launch Inspekto at the VISION trade show, arranging 20 journalist interactions or interviews
Create a sales funnel to support Inspekto’s growth and investment, generating more than €500,000,000 worth of leads at VISION

As the first PR agency for Industry 4.0, Stone Junction knows a thing or two about manufacturing technologies. That said, convincing industry leaders of AMV’s superiority was crucial to campaign success. In order to provide Inspekto with a succinct brand image we conceived a single trademark for the company— the best in the world for AMV.

“Stone Junction was able to grasp Inspekto’s overall company strategy extremely quickly and understood how its PR fit into our business objectives. Stone Junction has proven that it is not just a PR agency. The team acted as consultants and I don’t see Stone Junction as our agency, but an extension of our own team.”
Harel Boren, CEO of Inspekto

Strategy and tactics

The campaign was split into three target markets; potential customers and relevant media, potential investors or financiers and finally, potential buyers. A clear and aggressive message was determined— SI is dead and AMV is the revolution.

The campaign could be deconstructed into four main phases: preparing the media and the QA market for a new category, drip-feeding crucial AMV concepts to the media including Plug and Inspect and Total QA, press releasing the S70 technology teaser to the media. Nothing specific just enough to prepare the market for the upcoming change and finally, the official launch on 6 November 2018. . The launch was accompanied by a press conference and speaking slot, giving press opportunity to interview Inspekto.

Implementation of tactics

Pre-launch, a series of aggressive opinion pieces were produced linking to the growing inferiority of SI and human quality assurance.

Subjects included causes of poor quality (COPQ) and operational efficiency, challenges of machine vision and the death of system integrators.

As interest peaked, a press release announced Inspekto’s launch, the definition of AMV and the technical details surrounding ‘Total QA’ and ‘Plug and Inspect’. This established the company’s position within the quality assurance industry whilst preceding their future product launch.

By October investors such as Grazia, Steinbeis and Planven were announced, all multinational heavyweights within the manufacturing industry. Over 100 telehpone pitches to journalists were made following this release, all inviting international media to attend Inspekto’s VISION exhibition. No specific information about the S70 technology was released before launch in order to generate maximum interest.

At VISION, Inspekto dominated the conference centre; graffiti banners, floor tile promotions, a ceiling blimp — all to promote Inspekto and AMV. Press conferences, media one-to-ones, speaker slots and a journalist tour where organised to finally announce, Automated Machine Vision. S70.

"We were really happy to see the premiere of Inspekto at VISION 2018! From the beginning, we were convinced that the launch of its Autonomous Machine Vision system would be a real innovation. Therefore, we included Inspekto in our guided highlights tour for the trade press. Journalists were really fascinated by the talk of Inspekto´s CEO, hanging onto every single word. For me, the whole story of this innovative trade show debut was perfectly scripted by the team from Stone Junction who accompanied Inspekto’s work with a great PR and marketing campaign.”
Florian Niethammer, Project Manager VISION

Measurement and evaluation

Objective one:

Delivered 110 clippings across nine countries reaching 4.1 million people. This exceeded the original target by 83 per cent
Secured 20 clippings which went to print across ten full pages with an audience view of 772,000,000
Achieved 75 website backlinks, driving the newly launched Inspekto site to a domain authority of 21 from zero in nine weeks
Automated machine vision was featured on the front over of SMT Global and Packaging, with several third-party institutions, such as Beckhoff and Control Design, referencing the technology in their content

Objective 2:

Post-launch, 42 clippings were generated in November in preparation for Inspekto’s VISION announcement
Through curation of journalist relationships, 27 members of the press toured Inspekto’s stand, 12 attended the press conference and we achieved seven one-to-ones. This exceeded the target by 130 per cent
Achieved multiple press features. In the official post show release VISION stated, “Inspekto… was overwhelmed by the interest the visitors showed” Additionally, we delivered a four-page spread in Machine Vision Professional’s VISION feature — the largest for a non-advertiser
Martin Buchwitz of Inspect — a leading machine vision magazine — commissioned seven articles following Inspekto’s VISION journey

Objective 3:

Achieved sales leads for over 450 facilities, extending Inspekto’s commercial footprint by €500 million
For every €1 spent on PR €21,975.74 was added to Inspekto’s commercial footprint
Inspekto CEO, Harel Boren, attributes 100 per cent of launch success to the marketing and PR designed by Stone Junction
Instigated investment enquires from multinational conglomerates and several investment funds
The machine vision industry now accepts that AMV is possible, something the media had yet to admit previously

About the author

Richard Stone - CHART.PR, MCIPR

MANAGING DIRECTOR

Stone Junction is managed by Richard Stone, a chartered member of the CIPR whose previous experience includes campaigns for Arup, AIT Plc, CIENA, Parker Hannifin, Schneider Electric, SIG, SKF, Roche and WorldCom.