The Press Hit That Became a Diagnosis

There are seventeen press clippings in ASTRSK’s case study for Ezra, the cancer-screening company. Together, the agency says, they represent more than 44.3 million potential impressions. The usual public-relations instinct is to admire the larger number. It has commas. It belongs in a recap deck. But the interesting number is one.

One person read the TechCrunch coverage. That person became Ezra’s first patient. The screening led to the discovery of early-stage prostate cancer. A media placement, normally treated as the end of a campaign, became the beginning of something consequential.

That sequence explains ASTRSK better than its service menu does. The independent New York agency sells media relations, launch campaigns, executive positioning, creator programs, events and communications advice. Its clients have ranged from early startups to names such as HelloFresh, Zola, Match Group, Publicis Sapient and Pagaya. But the product underneath the products is a particular idea: attention should move something.

The expensive thing that failed first

ASTRSK began with a pricing problem. Before founding it in 2012, Elliot Tomaeno had worked at agencies in San Francisco, London, Paris and New York. At his last firm, where he led consumer technology work, the clients he most wanted to represent often could not afford the retainer. Contemporary coverage put the traditional figure at about $10,000 a month.

Tomaeno’s response was operational before it was philosophical. Keep the team remote, work from WeWorkLabs, carry less overhead and offer startups the machinery of a full-service firm at a smaller price. The firm is no longer the tiny shop described in its launch story, yet the founding constraint left a mark. Startups move quickly, so their agency had to begin producing in the first week. Elaborate presentations mattered less than useful action.

“The most important PR work is done before the first email to the press.”Elliot Tomaeno, founder and CEO

That motto sounds modest until you notice what it excludes. The first email is not the work. The reporter list is not the work. Even the story is only partly the work. Before outreach, the agency has to decide what the company can credibly own, which audience has reason to care and which proof makes the claim survive contact with a skeptical editor.

A funding round is a peg, not a personality

The pattern repeats across ASTRSK’s published work. Spring Health had funding news, but ASTRSK paired it with original research and clinical authority. The funding announcement produced 17 stories and a reported 68 million impressions; the research campaign produced 12 stories and 533 million. ForceMetrics had a $22 million Series A, but its longer argument came from positioning two founders, with backgrounds in law enforcement and technology, as interpreters of public-safety technology. AI.Fashion arrived with financing; ASTRSK widened the story into questions about modeling, labor and retail.

The distinction matters because announcements expire. A check is news once. Expertise can be useful every time the subject returns. ASTRSK’s work tends to braid the two: use the hard event to earn the first hearing, then use research, founder experience, product trials, partnerships or cultural friction to make the company worth calling again.

The numbers need skepticism. “Impressions” generally describe an outlet’s potential audience, not verified readers; they do not tell you whether anybody remembered the brand. ASTRSK’s stronger case studies add another kind of evidence. Supergut paired 332 million reported impressions with retail launches at GNC and Target, product seeding to more than 30 media and creators, and a place on Fast Company’s 2024 Brands That Matter list. Currents, an Apple Vision Pro film, paired four-plus top-tier stories with in-person demos. Ezra has the rarest proof of all: a reader did something.

What changed after fourteen years

For most of its life, ASTRSK’s center of gravity was the full-scope retainer. Then clients started buying the edges separately. The agency quietly tested project work and consulting for about a year. In 2025 it made the change official: launch and funding projects, communications consulting, influencer and creator retainers, and event strategy could be bought without a full agency-of-record relationship.

This is an unglamorous but revealing change of mind. The company founded to unbundle expensive agency economics eventually unbundled itself. A startup preparing one funding announcement may not need a permanent press office. A consumer brand may need a creator program. A founder with an internal team may need the strategy, not another team. The offer now bends around the problem.

The other change is informational. In 2026, Tomaeno rebuilt the company website around a searchable knowledge base called Ask ASTRSK. He went back through strategy documents, weekly agendas, coverage reports, decks, email threads, client aliases, acquisitions and rebrands. Each engagement needed fields for industry, stage, audience, problem, workstream and public proof. The archive became a product.

That exercise contains an unexpectedly useful lesson for any service business. “We worked with them” and “here is what we can prove we did” are different data states. A logo wall asks for trust. A structured case history lets a prospective client search for resemblance: another regulated product, another awkward category, another launch without an obvious consumer story.

The capacity to give something away

At launch, Tomaeno said ten percent of the firm’s work would remain pro bono. The mechanism later became an annual competition for companies led by women and/or BIPOC, AAPI or LGBTQIA+ founders. The current program selects one consumer-facing business that has raised less than $1.5 million and gives it a full year of support. ASTRSK reports more than $200,000 in services awarded annually, more than $1.6 million committed since the program began and more than 15 billion potential media impressions.

The precise eligibility is part of the point. “Support underrepresented founders” can dissolve into a slogan. A budget, a calendar, a selection process and a year of staffed work are harder to fake. It is also a clue to the agency’s market position. ASTRSK wants senior people close to accounts, operates a hybrid New York team, and gives staff an unlimited relationship-building budget for meetings with media. Its culture pitch is less beanbags than access: get in the room, learn by doing, bring the senior people into the work.

There are conditions. This method cannot manufacture an interesting company, substitute for clinical evidence or turn an unready product into a trustworthy one. ASTRSK itself has said that compelling founders and stories are selection criteria. It works best when there is a real milestone, a spokesperson with something to teach, evidence an editor can test and an operation able to receive the attention. Without those, a clever pitch merely moves disappointment faster.

The Ezra story is memorable because it compresses the whole theory into a line of cause and effect. The positioning came before the email. The coverage crossed technology, health, business and local news. The reader had somewhere to go. And when he went there, the press clip stopped being a clip. It became a decision.