Everything’s Coming Up Rock Paper Scissors: Indiana PR Firm Blooms by Serving Technology Sector

New tech companies get a lot of media attention–along with the incubators, investment, and tax structures that let them make the leap from elevator pitch to start-up. A tech-friendly business climate needs another ingredient, often overlooked: infrastructure services that help tech companies build their business from start-up to success. Rock paper scissors (rps) is an Indiana-based public relations firm that hasn’t waited for Indiana’s tech sector to mature–they’ve already grown an international roster of technology clients from Tokyo to Toronto.

Rps got its start representing artists on the world music scene. Founded by Dmitri Vietze in 1999, the company has grown from a one-man show to a team of 16 in Bloomington, Indiana. They have built a reputation for capturing what makes clients’ stories most compelling and delivering quality media hits. Rps remains active in the eclectic global music community; recent music clients range from funk legend George Clinton to label Waxploitation Records.

In 2013, rps made the astute side-step into the rapidly expanding music technology space. Global music and technology aren’t such an odd match in an age when nearly 4 billion of the world’s 5.5 billion adults have smartphones with which to discover local and international music. One of rps’s recent clients, Boomplay, is a music streaming and download service that dominates the market in Africa.

Rps has quickly built expertise in representing technology clients who are innovating the music industry and beyond. 2018 marked a watershed moment, when a critical mass of “pure” tech companies—unrelated to the music industry—also tapped into the power of rps’s deep storytelling.

The verticals on rps’s 2018 client roster read like a year-end “Tech Trends” list. In the much hyped artificial intelligence (AI) space, rps worked with Amadeus Code, an AI-powered songwriting assistant developed by Japanese researchers, and Ople, a platform that offers AI solutions to business leaders. Augmented reality (AR) is one of the biggest buzzwords in the gaming and entertainment industries. Rps was there representing Virtex Arena: a mobile app enabling fans at sporting events and concerts to compete in stadium-wide AR experiences. In the fast-growing wearable marketplace, RPS represented Hurdl, whose patented LED wristband technology allows new modes of direct-to-consumer marketing and interactive fan experiences at live music events.

The expanding experience of rps’s tech publicity team has caught the attention of Indiana tech start-ups like Platformatics, the innovative IoT company that provides lighting as a service (on the SaaS model) and Cheddar, the usage-based billing provider.  “It’s funny,” says rps CEO Dmitri Vietze, “after working with clients around the world, we find ourselves diversifying by working locally. The team at rps has taken all this in stride, promoting cutting-edge tech with the same zeal for telling compelling stories as we have always brought to promoting psychedelic Peruvian organ players and Tuvan rock bands.”

A key factor that contributes to rps’s success reaching new verticals in recent years is the gusto with which they have expanded into new service types. They added event planning to their menu in recent years, organizing conferences with music tech clients CDBaby and global music client globalFEST. In 2018, they stayed on top of trends by conducting an influencer promotion campaign, content marketing, tech website re-design, and video production.

“Thanks to our stellar team, we are regularly reaching new media outlets and breaking our own records for sales and revenue,” remarks Sheryl Woodhouse, rps COO, “Rps publicists are averaging over 7 hits per client per month, the highest number we’ve ever seen. As revenues grow, we build our staff in order to pave the way for future gains. We just made three new hires that will significantly add to our capacity for event planning, client writing, and fostering continued growth for the music side of our business.” With rps’s proven track record of building on their victories, 2019 looks even brighter.