Back-to-School PR Campaign for Productivity Software App Is a Study in How Strategic Public Relations Delivers Media Coverage, Increased Visibility
Notability is a note-taking app for students and professionals from Ginger Labs.
The award-winning app exists to help people collaborate, learn and think more effectively.
For more than a decade, it has been the top productivity software on the App Store.
Challenge
For more than a decade, it has been the top productivity software on the App Store.
But the company is not one to rest on its laurels. The back-to-school season, the app’s biggest time of year, was approaching. And the company knew this was the perfect time to shine.
The aim? To position the app as more than a digital notebook at a time when students and parents are actively investing in study tools to enhance experiences and drive success.
The underlying message? This app is the essential back-to-school note-taking platform.
Strategy
The PR campaign would serve to lead the conversation around how student learning is evolving, driving awareness via media coverage on personalized, multimodal, AI-informed study habits.
Bospar’s public relations experts collaborated with the client to insert the company and its app into the AI in the classroom conversations happening in schools now and make the case for handwriting and focused study habits at a moment when screens dominate the story.
We built the campaign around three tracks instead of one generic back-to-school pitch.
- A back-to-school survey on student study habits: Our PR strategists used the survey results to seed data-driven stories with outlets covering education and productivity.
- Newsjacking the AI in schools debate: The PR team’s media outreach referenced the growing number of districts restricting or banning AI tools, providing a counter view emphasizing how its application actually better enables students to use AI to study.
- Our handwriting and “pencils vs. pixels” angle: In additional, our PR team pitched local and regional broadcast on the return of handwriting as a focus tool for Gen Z students.
The team secured great coverage, exceeding the client’s expectations around back to school.
That included multi-market broadcast runs, not just single hits. The “Pencils vs. Pixels in the Classroom” segment ran across six stations in one day, on:
- Fox 4 Kansas City
- Fox 2 St. Louis
- KTVI
- Fox 40 Sacramento
- WBFF Baltimore
- Good Morning Wyoming (Caroline Elliott reporting)
The KDKA’s “Back to School: Developing Better Study Habits” segment aired across five separate timeslots on one station, plus on CBS News Pittsburgh, which commented “In short, handwriting is the king.”
On the AI side, we landed the company coverage in
- Fast Company’s article on why the notebook still matters in the age of AI
- The Edvocate coverage of teen AI use in schools (Matthew Lynch reporting)
- Solutions Review’s report on students getting more deliberate about AI in the classroom
- A regional broadcast by KAAL-TV/ABC 6 on AI in the classroom tied to back to school
“Back-to-school season is our busiest time of year, and Bospar’s campaign helped us tell a bigger story about Notability’s role in how students learn. The team’s creative angles and fresh survey idea made sure we were never without something new to bring to media. The coverage speaks for itself. We couldn’t be happier with the results and our partnership with Bospar.””
— Ben Baker, vice president of marketing at Notability
