How To Organize An Educational Press Conference: Tele2 & Google Play

When Tele2 and Google decided to announce they were rolling out carrier billing for the Google Play store in Croatia, the two successful brands decided that insights would work better than a standard press conference. Which is why I was so humbled when Tele2 asked me to create a talk about the best premium apps in the Google Play store for their announcement.

Remember You’re Talking To Journalists

Contrary to what you might have learnt from Apple announcements, journalists don’t clap at press conferences because it’s not considered professional. You could have the best gadget in the world, but the journalist’s job is to stay objective, even if they are the world’s biggest technology lover.

A tough audience.

How To Include Education in Your Press Conference

If you want to the educational part of your announcement work like it did for Tele2 and Google:

• Understand your audience and their challenges: The challenge for most journalists is how to cover stories better and more effectively. Most of the apps and use cases were examples of writing or productivity apps that could make my fellow journalist’s lives easier. if you ever wondered why so many journalists cover Apple, a big part if definitely that they write on Macs, making the company a personal interest;
• Help them write a better story: While most of the journalists in the audience covered technology, some of them were more interested in business or fashion. Parts of the presentation included raw data on the usage of premium apps, as well as examples of premium apps in a specific category, to give them material to think about when writing their stories;
• Have a presented that’s part of your audience: While I might be the last person to say that Tele2 was right in choosing the speaker, having a journalists talk to his colleagues about the challenges they all fact just gives you as a company more credibility.
• Include In-jokes for colleagues: To lighten the mood for the more experienced members of the audience who might be skeptical of the format, have the speaker include a few sarcastic jokes about himself and the industry. Again, having a speaker that is a member of the audience is key!

The presentation and announcement were a success, in the end, generating buzz for Tele2’s launch and showing just how good a job Marina Bolanča‘s team at Abeceda komunikacije, the agency responsible, did for the project.

You can read more about the announcement on Netokracija (in Croatian).

Za kupovinu u Google Play trgovini više ne trebate karticu, samo Tele2 broj!