When our partners at global publisher Smilegate came to us for public relations support, we jumped at the opportunity to work with a world-renowned company. Being the creator of the immensely popular multiplayer FPS CrossFire and wildly successful isometric MMORPG Lost Ark, Smilegate wanted to announce its new Barcelona-based studio to draw in the best talent they could find, and they came to us with that challenge.

Typically, we focus most of our attention on North American media relationships, but with more than 13 years in the biz we’ve built up hundreds of contacts outside of the States and are always ready to go above and beyond for our international partners (we frequently support Nexon Korea and Tencent Games, among others, in Southeast Asia and India). Smilegate asked us to capture the attention of North American, European and Spain-based media in revealing its new Barcelona studio. Smilegate wanted to attract prospective team members to fill out their new digs, so it was incredibly important to not only draw attention from general gaming media, but also business and trade specialists. Through our industrious researching, targeted pitching, and advanced knowledge of the videogame space, we secured interest with many top gaming outlets under embargo.

It wasn’t all empanadas and carnations , though. Just hours before the announcement embargo was supposed to lift, a complication with an important website link forced the news to be delayed. With less than a day to the news going live – around the world – we had to act fast.

We scrambled to reach all of our contacts who agreed to the embargo and informed them of the delayed embargo date. Thanks to our strong relationships, we prevented the news from accidentally being released too early. When the initial embargo time hit, we succeeded in not securing any coverage (a win!).

Despite the delay, when and after the news broke, we locked in an impressive amount of excellent coverage. We secured placements with some of the largest Spanish gaming outlets, top games trades, and general gaming media in North America, getting the news in front of the countless eyes of prospective team members for the studio.

Here are some noteworthy hits:

We are super stoked to continue our successful relationship with our partners at Smilegate for their future communications. You can check out Smilegate Barcelona’s website here.