The ordinary public-relations pitch begins near the end of the story. A company has built something, named it, priced it, made a deck about it and scheduled a launch. Then somebody remembers the press. An agency receives a brisk email with “ASAP” in the subject line and is asked to create attention. The strange thing about Convey Communications is that it would rather arrive before all that - while the product roadmap is open, the sales team is complaining and the customer-success people still have fresh objections ringing in their ears.
This is not glamorous access. It is access to the machinery. Convey asks about the buying committee, the personas and the sales process. It wants to know where a buyer stalls and which phrases make a technical expert wince. The firm’s wager is that a credible story lives somewhere inside those details, and that a press clipping becomes more valuable when sales, marketing and product can all use it.
Kristin Hege founded the Phoenix company in 2013 after leadership roles at two PR agencies and a spell as a vice president of marketing. She built it remote from the beginning, with a lean group of experienced practitioners instead of a large hierarchy. The point was efficiency, but also respect for time. More than a decade later, the company’s public roster still looks like a seminar taught by working professionals: Hege and client-services director Rachel Brockway teach at Arizona State University; lead writer Rebecca Hasulak teaches PR writing there, too.
01 / The reversalThe product lesson comes before the media list
Convey is a B2B technology and services PR firm. Its menu includes the recognizable agency staples - media relations, analyst relations, executive thought leadership, speaking opportunities, awards and media training. Then the menu keeps going: podcasts, white papers, content strategy, book promotion, brand messaging and workshops. In one Demandbase program, the agency helped secure a Forbes Council position, created and produced a CMO podcast, managed a book from outline through Amazon publication and did the ghostwriting.
This breadth is less random than it appears. B2B buyers do not encounter a company in one neat channel. They read an analyst note, search a founder, visit a review site, listen to a podcast, forward an article and ask a salesperson an awkward question. Convey is trying to make the same useful idea survive that entire trip.
The Convey loop - access before amplification
The difference from a generalist competitor is not simply a technology label. It is the promise that the client will spend less time translating. B2B software can be a swamp of acronyms and overlapping categories. A team that already understands account-based marketing or logistics technology can reach the interesting argument faster. Hege has put the point bluntly: “In tech, you can’t fake fluency. Buyers see through it.”
02 / The evidenceWhat happens when the clock is rude
In May 2020, Demandbase changed PR agencies shortly before announcing its acquisition of Engagio. Convey was onboarded about three weeks before the announcement. The communications plan already existed. The new agency needed to learn an unfamiliar set of products, understand how the two companies fit together, prepare for questions and begin embargo pitching a week before launch.
This is where the boutique thesis either works or collapses. Deep category knowledge should shorten the distance between introduction and judgment. Convey’s public case study lists coverage in TechCrunch, Forbes, Fast Company, Diginomica, Enterprise Times and Demand Gen Report. The more revealing achievement is not the logo parade. It is that a small outside team could become useful before the calendar became forgiving.
Fluency is valuable only when it arrives before the deadline.The practical advantage behind Convey’s specialist model
The Keap rebrand offers another test. Infusionsoft had been known by that name for years. In 2019 it introduced both a new company name and a new product, aiming beyond its established base toward more service businesses. Familiarity, usually an asset, had become baggage. Convey pitched not one generic rebrand story but company, product and entrepreneurial angles across national business publications and industry outlets. The agency reports 11 immediate media hits and seven more within two weeks.
03 / The momentSometimes your customer gets the headline
The agency’s most charming case began with two words. In late 2020, after a venture capitalist wondered on Twitter whether Silicon Valley should move to Miami, Mayor Francis Suarez replied, “How can I help?” The exchange took off. An investor and the city worked with AdQuick to turn the moment into billboards in San Francisco. Convey represented AdQuick, the software company that planned and managed the outdoor campaign.
A needy agency might have strained to make its client the protagonist. Convey chose the more useful role: explain how AdQuick made the moment physical while letting Miami and its mayor keep the spotlight. The case captures an underappreciated B2B truth. Making the customer look interesting can be the strongest demonstration of what the vendor does.
It also shows what failed first in the old playbook: waiting. A viral moment does not respect a six-week approval cycle. Convey moved quickly so reporters in the target cities understood AdQuick’s role while the joke still had heat. The tactic is copyable, but the condition matters. Speed works when the underlying connection is real; attaching a client to a passing trend with no operational role merely produces a louder irrelevance.
04 / The businessA retainer with fewer theatrical hours
Convey is privately held and does not publish a rate card. Hege has described scopes set by quarter and an emphasis on results rather than hourly tracking. That suits an agency whose value may be concentrated in judgment: the reporter who will care, the phrase that will survive scrutiny, the angle that should be killed before it wastes a week. The company serves growing and established B2B technology and services businesses. Its public client list spans martech, cybersecurity, restaurant software, logistics and health technology, including Demandbase, Keap, AdQuick, GoBolt, Replicant, WebPT, Adaptiva and 7shifts.
The model also has a dependency. Convey’s approach needs access. If executives will not make time, product will not share the roadmap and sales will not surface objections, the agency is pushed back toward surface-level publicity. Hege’s own writing calls executive buy-in non-negotiable. The method is not magic applied from outside. It is an exchange: the client opens the machinery; the agency turns what it learns into public proof.
Give the communications team product briefs before launch week, not after the email is written.
Sales and customer-success calls contain better story material than a generic brand workshop.
Turn a defensible point of view into a pitch, byline, podcast, stage talk and sales follow-up.
Track influenced leads, conversion and sales use alongside mentions and impressions.
05 / The new argumentPR wants a seat at the revenue table
In 2025, Convey and research firm Demand Metric tried to give this operating philosophy a dataset. Their State of B2B Public Relations report surveyed more than 300 B2B marketing leaders and PR professionals. Ninety percent called PR important or critical to go-to-market strategy. Growth leaders were more than twice as likely as growth laggards to say PR was fully integrated with marketing and sales. Brand and reputation management ranked as the most effective tactic, ahead of media relations and thought leadership.
A survey cannot prove that integration causes growth. More capable companies may simply integrate everything better. But the findings sharpen Convey’s practical claim: PR is most limited when treated as a vending machine for mentions. The agency’s work is an argument for continuity - between what the product does, what the executive believes, what the customer experiences and what the market hears.
There is a pleasantly unromantic lesson here. Better publicity may begin with fewer publicity meetings. Put the PR team in the product kickoff. Let them hear a sales call. Show them what customers misunderstand. A story worth sending to a reporter often starts as a problem somebody else in the company is already trying to solve.