HB11 Energy

Coalition of global laser technology heavyweights release

Situation

The global race for scalable and sustainable energy, and now fusion net energy gain, is on – and Australia’s first laser fusion energy startup, HB11 Energy, is right up there among the best in the world. But gaining international media coverage in a misunderstood industry, dominated by huge overseas players, is incredibly challenging for a small Australian startup.

Action

When we discovered that the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California was about to announce they had actually achieved net energy gain, we rapidly jumped on the opportunity. We leveraged this global news by timing our own announcement about HB11 Energy creating a “coalition of global laser technology heavyweights” for the day this global news was announced. In our email pitches we explained to journalists how the two pieces of news were linked, what it all meant for both Australia and the world, and why they would be insane to not report on this critical moment in history and speak to Australia’s most appropriate spokesperson on the topic – and they listened!

Results

Our “coalition of global laser technology heavyweights” media release became one of the most widely-covered stories in the history of Third Hemisphere.

This story may have created only a small stir in local media if we had distributed it at any other point in time. The NIF results also may not have been covered so extensively in Australia without journalists being given a local Australian angle with HB11 Energy’s news to use as the reason to cover it.

Implementing this strategy meant HB11 received extensive coverage locally and globally, including impressive features in The New York Times and The Guardian, The Australian across multiple stories, Sky News Australia (which then syndicated across NewsCorp), a separate story in NewsCorp that also syndicated across The Daily Telegraph, The Advertiser, Herald Sun, Courier Mail, and The Mercury among other publications, and comprehensive stories in Crikey, The Conversation, and Gizmodo, to name just a few in a long list of media this announcement received.