Rex Bionics

Going global

It’s not often we’re able to reduce hardened hacks to tears. But as 23-year old paraplegic Hayden Allen stood up and walked over to shake the Prime Minister’s hand in a room packed with journalists there was hardly a dry eye in the place.

Hayden was using robotic legs, a ground-breaking invention by Kiwi firm Rex Bionics that lets people in wheelchairs walk again. The story made headlines around the world.

It was always going to be big news; our challenge was to ensure it was told in a certain way. User benefits and the accessibility of this awesome new technology were our focus. We pre-briefed key stakeholders within the disability and medical communities under embargo prior to the launch to ensure we had a number of third party endorsers on hand for launch.

The total secrecy cloaking the project added a certain frisson to the job at hand. Despite this we managed to get every major news outlet in New Zealand along to see Kiwi innovation at its best.

The results were spectacular. Rex went global. Our story was covered in 46 countries and by worldwide news networks such as the BBC, CNN and Fox. Nationally we achieved saturation coverage; One News, 3 News, Prime News, Close Up, The Dominion Post, The New Zealand Herald, Newstalk ZB, RadioLive, Nightline, Tonight on TV1 and Campbell Live all lapped it up.

It also created a huge buzz in social media; Rex Bionics trended on Twitter and was ‘most watched’ in New Zealand on YouTube.

Message delivery was the icing on the cake with every single piece of coverage achieving our messaging objectives. No small feat for a story that rocked the world.  As a result of the PR launch Rex Bionics has received hundreds of sales leads – not bad for a product that costs $150,000 USD each.

Porter Novelli team: Jane Sweeney, Kyra Holland, Bill Rundle