In Las Vegas, attention is the cheapest thing in town. It flashes from casino walls, rolls across enormous screens and floats above the convention floor in the form of a thousand competing promises. Years ago, a technology startup called Network Power & Light had to launch a product in precisely this environment. Walt & Company's solution was to leave it.
The agency moved 100 editors and analysts out of the convention center, took them to a private jet terminal, and put them aboard helicopters. The group flew past Hoover Dam and over the Las Vegas Strip. The stunt was called “Escape From Las Vegas,” a name that doubled as an instruction. The curious part was not the aircraft. It was the diagnosis. When everybody is shouting in the same room, the room is the problem.
The business of making consequence visible
Bob Walt started the agency in 1991 after running Ketchum's Silicon Valley office and working at Booke and Company and Edelman. The premise was specific: consumer and business technology companies needed strategic communications built around the way their markets actually made decisions. Thirty-five years later, the problem has become more acute. Products have grown more technical, channels more numerous, and attention more fragmented.
Walt & Company sits between invention and recognition. A client may arrive with a faster storage system, a mapping platform, an intelligent printer, rugged aerospace computing or a travel data cloud. The agency's first job is not to announce it. The first job is to decide what it means - to a buyer, a reviewer, an analyst, a reporter and, increasingly, an online community. Only then does distribution begin.
That sequence explains the agency's service list. Positioning gives the product a claim. Media and analyst relations find credible people who can test or interpret it. Review and award programs turn claims into evidence. Events give the idea physical form. Social programs extend the conversation and answer the community. Executive speaking and media training make sure the human being carrying the message does not bury it beneath jargon.
The first failure is usually upstream
Technology PR is commonly judged at the end: Did the launch get coverage? Did social engagement rise? Did an award arrive? But the first failure generally occurs much earlier, when a company mistakes a feature for a reason to care. “Faster,” “smarter” and “AI-powered” are descriptions. They are not positions. If the audience cannot understand the consequence, more outreach merely distributes the confusion.
“A good media interview isn't about saying everything; it's about saying the right things - clearly and with confidence.”Dana Gomez, Walt & Company
The agency's own media-training advice is pleasingly unsentimental. Pick two or three messages. Know the audience. Avoid jargon. Listen. Correct errors politely. Do not speculate. Assume nothing is truly off the record. If a question wanders, bridge back to the point. This is less a bag of tricks than a method for reducing the surface area of failure.
The same restraint applies to global work. Walt & Company joined IPREX in 2016, gaining access to independent agency teams across more than 100 markets. The network supplies local context without forcing the Campbell firm to become a sprawling multinational. One of its strategists offers a useful warning: a campaign can be translated perfectly and still fail. A wellness drink sold to ordinary consumers in one country may belong closer to the medical system in another. The audience, proof and language all change. Translation moves words. Communication moves meaning.
A boutique with borrowed scale
The firm is small enough for senior people to remain close to the work. Cyndi Babasa and Merritt Woodward, now co-presidents, each built careers of more than 17 years inside the agency. Other team biographies show similarly long tenures. That continuity matters in a trade where relationships with editors, analysts and clients compound slowly and disappear quickly.
Its customers reveal the range within its specialization. Consumer and hardware names have included Epson, D-Link, HyperX, Dell, Intel, Fujitsu and Sleep Number. Enterprise assignments have included DDN, Tintri, Mapbox and Seal Software. In 2025, infrastructure manufacturer Panduit appointed Walt & Company for North American PR and global social media support. In July 2026, travel-technology company Sabre named it agency of record for corporate communications, media relations, executive visibility and positioning.
The commercial model is conventional agency work - retained or project-based strategy and execution - but public prices are not posted. Cost follows scope: a media-training session is a different machine from an international launch involving research, reviewers, executives, an event and daily social management. What buyers are purchasing is senior attention plus a network of trusted intermediaries. That only earns its keep when the product is real, the client can supply proof and leadership is willing to sharpen the message.
The useful parts to steal
A company does not need a helicopter budget to borrow the logic. Begin by writing one sentence about the change the customer experiences, not the feature that causes it. List the people whose independent judgment would make that sentence believable. Give each of them the right evidence - a working product, customer result, benchmark or demonstration. Build the launch around that proof. Then keep listening after launch, because community response is not cleanup; it is product intelligence in public.
The spectacle should come last. Epson's Digital Couture event used fashion and synchronized swimming to make digital textile printing visible. Seal Software used a Stanford legal-informatics forum to place contract analytics inside a serious professional conversation. Network Power & Light used helicopters to escape convention noise. Different props, same discipline: the format served the position.
Conditions that help
- A real product difference that can be demonstrated
- Executives willing to simplify and rehearse
- Access to customers, data or working products
- Enough time to brief reviewers before launch
Conditions that resist it
- A commodity offer dressed in fashionable language
- Leadership that confuses message volume with clarity
- Claims that cannot survive independent testing
- A launch clock that leaves no room for correction
This is where Walt & Company fits in the market. It is not a giant corporate affairs network, a paid-media agency or a general-purpose creative shop. It is a specialist communications firm for technology companies that need market understanding as much as market exposure. Its competitors range from other independent tech agencies to global PR firms and in-house teams. Its distinction is the combination of boutique seniority, review-program depth, launch craft and networked global execution.
The lesson of the helicopter is easily misunderstood. One can remember the ride and forget the decision that preceded it. Walt & Company did not make more noise inside a noisy convention. It changed the setting so attention could become understanding. Thirty-five years of technology have altered nearly every tool in the agency's kit. The scarce resource has remained stubbornly the same: a clear reason to look.