Why is that window talking to me?

Take an unknown company with a cool product, add some shoe-leather pitching and we're talking ink… – Perfect Pitch…

To land coverage for a fascinating product, albeit from an all-but-unknown company, GroundFloor Media Vice President John Shors did some old fashioned, hit-the-ground pitching, with the added ingredient of playing to the media's fear of getting scooped.

The client, ETREMA Products, a small high-tech outfit based in Ames, Iowa, was launching its first product with consumer appeal: Whispering Windows, which allows windows and other flat surfaces to act as audio speakers. While the product was aimed at retailers (who could use it to broadcast sales messages as you walk by a store window), it had "gee-whiz" for people interested in gadgets.

The challenges: The company's low profile might work against it. "It's not a Silicon Valley company," Shors explains. Its Iowa location would have reporters expecting it to produce something agricultural. Also, ETREMA had never done any PR before, so there was no base to build upon.

Shor's goal was to get the product covered in key retail trades, since that's where the core audience was. With a well-defined pitch list, and a trend angle on how markets are using new technology to win business, Shors hit the phones.

When he landed one interview, he would phone a competing media outlet, telling them that coverage was planned by the competition. Inevitably, that media outlet would book an interview as well.

"It's a bit dangerous," Shors acknowledges of this strategy, but it can pay off handsomely—and it did for ETREMA. The first story hit The Associated Press in early August; a second major piece appeared in The Wall Street Journal later that month, with more stories slated for Fortune Small Business and Newsweek Japan.