A string of numbers is a terrible protagonist. In 2018, Cloudflare had one anyway: 1.1.1.1, the address of a new service that made internet browsing faster and more private. The technical story was sound. It was also the sort of story that could disappear into a thicket of acronyms before breakfast. SutherlandGold found a different character - the ordinary person whose internet provider could still see where they went online.
The agency did not lead with the mechanics of a DNS resolver. It led with the last watcher in the room. Technical influencers supplied credibility first; consumer and mainstream outlets followed. Across the launch and the later mobile app, the campaign generated more than 350 stories. In under three months, the service passed one million downloads.
That sequence explains SutherlandGold better than its long service menu does. The San Francisco-founded agency handles positioning, messaging, media relations, executive communications, digital campaigns, content, social media, video, crisis work, speaking and awards. But the product beneath all those products is translation. It finds the human tension inside an unfamiliar company and gives the right audience a role in resolving it.
A DNS address is not a story
Lesley Gold came to public relations by way of places where attention is scarce and consequences arrive quickly. She had been a producer at CNN, a press secretary at the Department of Labor and a communications strategist in Washington. In 2002, she and Scott Sutherland started SutherlandGold during the bruised aftermath of the dot-com boom. The firm grew around technology companies, first in consumer products and then across enterprise software, fintech, healthcare, infrastructure and AI.
That background shows up in the agency's taste for conflict. Privacy against surveillance. A startup card against the old financial gatekeepers. A sidewalk robot against the reasonable suspicion of the people whose sidewalk it occupies. The company is not inventing a fight so much as locating the one already in the audience's mind.
“Audiences are shareholders of your story and can be your greatest champions.”SutherlandGold's communications playbook
Its framework has four parts: Insight, Imagination, Influence and Inspiration. In less polished language: learn what matters to people; decide what the brand stands for; reach those people where they already pay attention; let the community participate. The words are broad. The case studies make them useful.
Name the people, their motive and the action that matters.
Turn a product claim into a position the company can own.
Sequence credible voices before chasing the widest reach.
Give customers and communities something real to do.
The RV test
Consider Gusto. The payroll company wanted to become a champion of small business beyond Silicon Valley. A press release about caring for small businesses would have been cheap, tidy and forgettable. SutherlandGold helped put the CEO in an RV for two weeks, visiting customers in ten local markets. The claim became a trip that reporters and customers could see.
The Extra Mile campaign earned 24 regional hits, at least four national stories and more than 104 million impressions. Gusto's Instagram following doubled. The stunt worked because it was not only a stunt. The journey supplied local characters, geographic variety and proof that the company's executives would leave the conference room.
Marble, a sidewalk-delivery robot company, presented the inverse challenge. The audience was already close - perhaps too close. Delivery robots were entering public space, where local businesses and pedestrians had legitimate concerns. SutherlandGold framed Marble as the “friendly neighborhood robot,” using restaurants and small businesses in the launch and putting executives on the street alongside the machines. The launch produced 58 original stories, largely positive, across business, technology and San Francisco outlets.
Three campaigns, three useful outcomes
Brex shows the same instinct without a vehicle or robot. Instead of aiming at the hazy category of “tech companies,” the agency targeted founders at startups. It positioned Brex as a peer taking on entrenched financial players, then staggered the story through reporting, founder bylines, outdoor advertising, events, a podcast and a blog. The narrower audience created more places for the idea to travel.
The expensive lesson was delay
Agency profiles tend to turn adversity into decorative grit. Gold's version is less flattering and more useful. During the 2008 recession, she kept operating with optimism while avoiding layoffs and the conversations around them. When cuts finally came, she had to dismiss friends who had helped build the company. One told her that moving sooner might have saved more people.
The remark changed the rule. “Inaction is an action,” Gold later said. It is a management lesson, but it also explains the agency's communications philosophy. A company that declines to define its story has not preserved a neutral option. Competitors, employees, customers and the internet will define it instead.
SutherlandGold itself changed when demand exceeded the kind of agency work it could responsibly accept. Some businesses were too early to fund a full PR team; others lacked the internal time to work with one. Rather than pretend every prospect needed the same engagement, Gold and journalist-entrepreneur Sarah Lacy piloted instruction with the Chairman Mom community. It became an eight-week course in positioning, launches, messaging and crisis preparation, supported by workshops and office hours. The agency reported an 85 percent completion rate and 30 percent repeat enrollment on the platform.
In 2019, SutherlandGold also acquired Astro Media, bringing founder Rachelle Spero into the agency and adding data, measurement and audience-driven content expertise. Later, its Resonance Report looked beyond clip totals to message pull-through, social engagement, coverage sentiment and competitive context. The shift matters. Coverage is activity. Resonance asks whether the intended idea survived contact with the audience.
The part worth stealing
You do not need an agency, an RV or 350 reporters to borrow the method. You need discipline before distribution. SutherlandGold's strongest work can be reduced to four questions that fit on an index card.
Name one audience precisely. “Founders at startups” creates decisions. “Technology companies” postpones them.
Find the tension already present. Internet users dislike being watched. Neighbors distrust machines dropped onto their sidewalks. Start there.
Stage visible proof. A CEO visiting ten markets says more than a paragraph about customer obsession.
Measure the change you asked for. Downloads, qualified attention, message pull-through and community response are more revealing than a pile of links.
The approach is less useful when the product cannot deliver the promise, the audience is too broad to share a motive, or the organization will not expose leaders and customers to scrutiny. A narrative cannot compensate for a broken service. Community participation cannot be choreographed if the community has no real agency. And no amount of sequencing makes a generic idea distinctive.
That may be why SutherlandGold's public work feels most persuasive when something physical happens: a download, a road trip, a robot meeting a restaurant owner. The story leaves the slide deck and acquires witnesses. In a communications business crowded with abstractions, that is a surprisingly concrete advantage.