PlantSwitch Case Study
PR Goals
Introduce and communicate the pressing environmental and health-related issues associated with traditional plastic products and microplastic pollution. Communicate the reasons why previous attempts at replacing plastic have failed to gain traction with large companies and in the national and international corporate distribution stream. Communicate why PlantSwitch’s plant-derived alternative plastic material is the most cost-effective, high-performance and most highly compostable alternative plastic to hit the market.
Establish PlantSwitch’s co-founder and CEO as a global leader in alternative plastic manufacturing and announce new business developments, customer acquisitions and growth to the media.
PR and Media Strategies
We have taken a business-to-business and business-to-consumer approach to PR and media achieving media coverage for PlantSwitch. We courted industry media that covers the plastics industry, the packaging industry, and manufacturing. We also presented the PlantSwitch business model of affordability, innovation, disruption, performance, and social good to broad news media and business media. Additionally, we announced PlantSwitch’s impressive rounds of fundraising, solid infrastructure and expanding market share to financial media.
We continuously monitor the news cycle to measure news trends related to plastics use, microplastic pollution, microplastic-related poor health outcomes in the U.S. and GreenTech trends.
Our Challenge
Our core challenge lied in explaining PlantSwitch’s process of converting agricultural waste product into compostable bioplastic – the process of taking agricultural waste product and converting it into a plant resin, manufacturing it into plastic pellets that drop into existing corporate plastic molding machinery.
Another challenge was in effectively communicating how PlantSwitch raw bioplastic material was a “drop-in” solution and more affordable than previous incarnations of alternative plastics.
A third challenge was in communicating how well PlantSwitch plastic looks, feels, and performs identically to traditional plastic products.
Our Results
We successfully booked a 7 page story with Inc. Magazine/Inc.com, a featured story with Bloomberg News, a television segment with CTV News Canada, a television segment with CBS News and CBS News’s 2024 Earth Day special, a feature story on U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a story with Business North Carolina where the company is headquartered, Plastics News, Sustainable 360, Packaging Strategies, WRAL-TV News North Carolina, a PBS News Special, Spectrum 1 News’s 2024 Earth Day Special, Dallas News, Business Insider and Sustainable Plastics News.
