Companies launch out “stealth mode” every single day, but very few do so with an exciting list of investors, millions of users – and after nearly five years of being on the market. But in the fall of 2015, OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers sought to do just that. Though one of the fastest growing marketplaces in the U.S., OfferUp had not focused on media attention. Our mission was to communicate the company’s market dominance, convince a skeptical hoard of tech reporters, and create messaging from the ground up. We also needed to get our spokespeople – the CEO and CTO – comfortable with that messaging and communicating it to media, something they had never done before.
Getting the narrative right was our number one priority. To help us do that, we developed a bevy of materials to help effectively tell the story, including fact sheets, a personal Medium post from the CEO, social media posts and visual assets. We also completed media training to make the CEO and CTO comfortable when facing tough questions from the media.
OfferUp is growing almost impossibly fast."