By PromptBoston

August 15th, 2014

Achtung, start-up alert!

Achtung, start-up alert!

Silicon Valley was yesterday. Now say hello to Silicon Allee. Frankfurt may be Germany’s financial capital and Hamburg the country’s media hotspot, but when it comes to founding new tech start-ups Berlin is definitely the place to be.

With almost 3,000 start-ups and hundreds of millions of euros in investment, Berlin is rapidly gaining a reputation as Europe’s most exciting innovation hub. IT giants Google and Microsoft are rushing to the German capital where tech companies such as SoundCloud, ResearchGate, Wooga and 6WunderKinder have become the face of the city’s start-up success.

But why is Berlin so popular with young entrepreneurs and professionals? Certainly its comparatively cheap rents and utilities make the German capital a desirable location when choosing the right spot for a new venture. But economic reasoning alone does not drive flocks of business-savvy tech geeks to the once divided city. For many of them, Berlin is also a cultural Mecca where traditional arts meet new innovations. A hotspot of contemporary art and music, a rich variety of restaurants and an internationally acclaimed clubbing scene, the multicultural melting pot attracts young and highly educated people, providing the perfect soil for pioneering spirit and innovative ideas.

In the city once described as “poor but sexy” by its mayor Klaus Wowereit about a decade ago, tech related sales now contribute more than nine billion Euro per year. And the booming start-up scene is also bringing good news to the job market. According to McKinsey & Company, start-ups are expected to deliver more than 100,000 new jobs to the capital city by 2020.

As a native German speaker working at Prompt working for DACH-based software and for American software companies that are ramping up their PR presence in DACH, I’m really pleased to see how the region is transforming.

If you’re a German, Austrian, or Swiss company that wants to launch into the UK or US markets – or a company looking to launch and get more traction in the  DACH region, then email us at dach@prompt-pr.com.

By the way, we speak your language!

Wenn Sie ein deutsches, österreichisches oder Schweizer Unternehmen sind, dass am britischen oder US-amerikanischen Markt Fuß fassen möchte – oder ein Unternehmen, das seine Präsenz in der DACH Region ausbauen will, dann kontaktieren Sie uns doch unter dach@prompt-pr.com. 

By PromptBoston

September 10th, 2013

aPriori signs new European PR contract with Prompt

aPriori signs new European PR contract with Prompt

International agency to continue to drive European media relations for PCM innovator

10 September 2013 – Prompt has been appointed by enterprise product cost management software specialist aPriori to run targeted 2014 European media campaigns covering Britain, France and DACH (Germany, Switzerland and Austria).

Headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts, aPriori develops and markets enterprise product cost management software to reduce the costs of products both post- and pre-production. aPriori Product Cost Management software platform is the first solution of its kind that allows companies to maximize savings throughout the development and manufacturing stages. The software provides real-time product cost assessments, enabling discrete manufacturers and product companies to make informed decisions to drive down product costs. aPriori helps world class manufacturing corporations stay on budget and reduce excess spending. The company recently announced $6 million in additional funding on the back of a record financial year which included annual revenue growth of 84% and a 62% increase in customers alongside a fifth year of 90% customer renewals.

Rick Burke, VP of Marketing for aPriori, said: “In Prompt we feel we have found a public relations company that matches our own personality. Together we are goal focused and strategic, targeting relevant media audiences in key territories, and concentrating on very specific markets. Prompt has understood our ambitions to produce some excellent and metric-based results to date including opinion pieces, interviews and coverage in core automobile, aerospace and manufacturing press. We now look forward to continuing our momentum, press coverage and sales-focused PR activities in 2014.”

Prompt is a PR consultancy that has gained significant experience in the technology industry with PR, copywriting and marketing clients from early stage technology companies to global organisations such as Dell and Oracle Corporation. The company also offers early stage companies an introduction to PR with packaged services called ‘First Byte’ with sales-focused, ‘no surprises’ PR, thought leadership, media coverage and sales-related content.

Hazel Butters, CEO, Prompt said: “aPriori is a unique company that provides a high quality product with huge value for any businesses looking for an innovative way to make more informed manufacturing and sourcing decisions that drive significant cost out of products. Rick and his team are great to work with – and they’re incredibly focused, providing our team with the goals and objectives essential for effective, results-driven PR. We very much look forward to continuing our work with aPriori into 2014.”

About aPriori
aPriori software and services generate hard-dollar product cost savings for discrete manufacturing and product innovation companies. Using aPriori’s real-time product cost assessments, employees in engineering, sourcing and manufacturing make more-informed decisions that drive costs out of products pre- and post-production. With aPriori, manufacturers launch products at cost targets, maximize savings in re-work projects and never overpay for sourced parts.
www.apriori.com

About Prompt Communications

Founded in January 2002, Prompt Communications is a communications agency with European offices in London and US offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California. Prompt Communications offers expertise across all marketing disciplines, teaming its consultants’ extensive knowledge of start-ups, technology market with experience of pan-European and American media, analyst and marketing campaigns. Using highly targeted marketing, PR, analyst relations, social media and corporate copywriting initiatives, Prompt helps its clients gain the visibility they need to achieve their business objectives, from increasing sales to enhancing reputation with stakeholders.
www.prompt-communications.com

Media Contact:
Jackie Fraser | Prompt
Tel: +44 845 053 9121 | +1 617 401 2717
press@prompt-communications.com

By Hazel Butters

July 16th, 2013

Technology PR travels: Around the technology world in 80 days – Day #9: Vienna, Austria

Technology PR travels: Around the technology world in 80 days – Day #9: Vienna, Austria

From Zagreb to Vienna. We walked in the cold air. Freezing breath on a window pane. Lying and waiting…

Photo courtesy of: www.raileurope.com

Oh all right then, our journey was nothing of the sort. The train journey was warm, sunny, very pleasant and there wasn’t a New Romantic to be seen. We quickly arrived in the cultural and political centre of Vienna, more famed for its musicians, artists, psychologists, philosophers and economists than its technologists. Over the years engineers and physicists like Ferdinand Porsche, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli and Victor Francis Hess have been dwarfed by giants in other disciplines, such as Mozart, Mahler, Haydn, Schubert, Strauss, Klimt, Fuchs, Freud, Wittgenstein, Popper, Menger, Mendel and, erm, Schwarzenegger.

But Austria is home to a number of successful information technology companies, not least Telekom Austria which operates not just here, but also in Slovenia and Croatia where we have just arrived from, as well as Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Belarus and Liechtenstein. Content management system (CMS) specialist Fabasoft is well-established, and has recently also become a rising star in the cloud computing market. CISC and AMS operate in the tough semiconductor and ASIC sectors, while Austria can also boast a few successful full computer systems producers, led by Gericom.

However, despite domestic success, these names remain largely unfamiliar to many outside of their home country, which is partly why Austria, like many forward-thinking European states, is now ploughing investment and resources into a new generation of technologists. In 2010 the Vienna University of Technology, Graz University of Technology, and Montanuniversitaet Leoben were united to form TU Austria, a 440 million euro institution employing 8000 people to train 42,000 students each year in the varied disciples of technology, science and engineering. Proof, if needed, that high-tech means a lot more than nothing to the people of Austria.

Our next destination? Budapest by blimp!