The Scratch Dispatch | Issue #3
Your monthly signal check for B2B tech comms + marketing
Hello again — Anya from Scratch Marketing + Media here.
Month three. We’re back with a brand launch that actually does something bold, a multi-vertical campaign worth stealing from, an AI + journalism read we’re still debating internally, and a media drama that is basically a flashing neon sign reading - please do the diligence before you crown the AI success story.
Let’s get into it.
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Brand Launch to Watch: Percona Declares “The Way Is Open”
A lot of rebrands are really just new typography and graphics wearing a pivoted strategy costume.
This is not that.
Open source database leader and longtime Scratch client-partner Percona rolled out a new brand this month anchored in a rallying cry: The Way Is Open. The new identity comes as Percona marks 20 years in market, and it positions the company as a very intentional challenger in a category increasingly defined by lock-in, licensing gymnastics, pricing pressure, and the slow realization that ‘open’ doesn’t always mean what buyers think it means. DBTA covered the launch, noting the new brand was built around “The Way Is Open” as a direct challenge to lock-in, cost inflation, and false promises of openness in modern data infrastructure.
What we like about the campaign is that it does the thing strong B2B brand work is supposed to do. It creates a clear market argument.
In a space where many vendors still default to safe, generic, everybody-says-the-same-thing messaging, Percona is leaning into something sharper. Open source, to them, is a path to control, flexibility and leverage in an increasingly complex data landscape.
From a PR perspective, the job was to turn a brand moment into a market moment. The announcement had the right ingredients: a clear antagonist, a timely industry tension, a confident POV, and enough specificity to make the message feel earned rather than manufactured.
The big lesson? The best brand launches don’t ask the market to admire the new packaging. They give the market a reason to rethink the category.
See for yourself: Percona Brand Video
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Client Campaign Spotlight: Securing Multi-Vertical Momentum for Watson-Marlow
The world of manufacturing is not one market. It’s a map of sub-verticals, each with its own priorities, pain points, buying committee, and technical language.
A pump story in medtech is not the same as a pump story in food and beverage. A fluid management conversation for biotech is not the same as one for paper and pulp. Same core technology. Totally different buyer anxiety.
This month, we’re spotlighting Watson-Marlow, our client-partner and manufacturer of peristaltic pumps, tubing, and fluid path technologies for the life sciences and process industries. The stories we’ve secured span pharma/biotech, food and beverage, and industrial sectors — showing how a single core technology can translate into distinct narratives when the campaign is built with enough discipline.
Why it worked:
✅We anchored to the right moments. Industry events created natural entry points for timely, trend-driven storytelling. MD&M West gave us a platform to engage in medtech and biotech conversations. TAPPICon opened up paper and pulp applications. Cheese Expo created a reason to talk food and beverage. The moments gave the pitch a clock, and the vertical gave it relevance.
✅We built vertical-specific narratives. Rather than forcing one blanket message into four different markets, we developed tailored thought leadership tracks for each sector. That meant each expert had a clear lane, each story had a real buyer problem, and each pitch could stand on its own.
✅We balanced breadth with depth. The goal wasn’t just to show up everywhere. It was to show up meaningfully — through expert Q&As, event-driven coverage, and contributed content that gave each audience a useful angle.
The lesson? A multi-vertical campaign works when each angle has its own center of gravity. Breadth is good. Relevance is better.
Coverage highlights:
Q&A: Pre-Certified Pumps Speed MedTech Design, Cut Compliance Hassles
Future-Proof Food and Beverage Manufacturing Plants with Fluid Management
Watson-Marlow Advances Pump Technology for Medical Applications
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Interesting Read of the Month: The AI Rewrite Desk Is Here
WIRED published a fascinating piece on tech reporters using AI to help write, edit, organize, and pressure-test their work — and the most interesting part is not that AI is doing the journalists’ work now (because that’s just the lazy read).
The right question to ask is what parts of journalism are being unbundled.
The piece looks at independent tech writers using AI agents as everything from first-draft collaborators to editors to searchable memory systems. Alex Heath, for example, described using Claude as part of a workflow that helps him move from reporting notes to draft more quickly, while other writers in the piece draw harder lines around using AI for editing, feedback, research organization, or business operations — but not voice, judgment or reporting.
The takeaway for comms teams is that the economics and workflow of media are changing again.
Independent reporters are often operating without the layers of newsroom infrastructure that used to support editing, fact-checking, packaging, scheduling and distribution. AI is starting to fill some of those gaps. That means the premium on original reporting, real sourcing, sharp judgment, and actual taste probably goes up — not down.
The question for brands is similar. What are you using AI to accelerate, and what should never be outsourced?
Because if the value is in moving faster, AI helps. If the value is in trust, taste, access or lived expertise, AI can assist the process — but it cannot be the process.
Worth reading: Meet the Tech Reporters Using AI to Help Write and Edit Their Stories
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PR Reality Check of the Month: AI Fatigue Has Officially Hit the Inbox
Christopher Mims of WSJ said the quiet part out loud on LinkedIn this week. Readers are exhausted by AI hype, and tech reporters are too.
His post was basically a flare sent directly into the PR ecosystem (although I very much dislike that he calls us flacks). Mims said that, based on the past few months, readers are no longer clicking on many AI company or AI application stories because the ratio of AI content to actual audience interest feels wildly out of balance. He also noted that mass-deleting AI pitches has cut his daily inbox “by half, at least.” Brutal. Useful. Worth taping to every pitch brainstorm doc.
The takeaway is not not to pitch AI. That would be too easy, and also wrong.
The takeaway is: don’t pitch AI as the story.
At this point, ‘AI can do this’ is not a hook. It’s table stakes. Or worse, it’s a warning label that tells a reporter the pitch is probably going to be vague, breathless, and interchangeable with the 47 other AI pitches they deleted before breakfast.
What still works is specificity.
Show the operational shift. Show the customer behavior change. Show the business model pressure. Show the workflow that got rebuilt. Show the regulatory tension, the labor implication, the margin impact, the failed assumption, the thing that was not possible six months ago but is now actually happening in a measurable way.
The better question for every AI pitch is: would this still be interesting if we removed the phrase “powered by AI?”
If the answer is no, the pitch probably isn’t ready.
The lesson? AI fatigue doesn’t mean the market is done with AI. It means audiences are done with the AI hype, and they are skeptical (especially, across the pond). The story has to move to here’s what changed, here’s why it matters, and here’s the proof.
See it here on LinkedIn (and the comments are excellent!)
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Media Drama of the Month: The NYT, MEDVi, and the AI Success Story That Needed a Second Read
The New York Times profiled MEDVi as a kind of proof point for the AI-native company myth: a telehealth business selling GLP-1 drugs, reportedly built with $20,000, a stack of AI tools, two full-time employees, $401 million in 2025 sales, and a projected $1.8 billion in 2026 sales. Very cinematic. Very viral. I’m sure it got sent to every founder with the ask of why they have headcount. Business Insider later summarized the same revenue/profit claims while reporting on the company’s affiliate-driven advertising engine.
Then came the follow-on reporting.
Business Insider found MEDVi-linked ads promoted by purported doctors who did not appear to exist, including pages with signs of AI-generated imagery and repurposed social accounts. It also reported that MEDVi’s founder said “maybe 30%” of advertising came through affiliates, and that active MEDVi-linked Meta ads dropped sharply after BI raised questions.
The FDA had also sent MEDVi a February warning letter stating that representations on a MEDVi-branded site were false or misleading, including claims that implied compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide products were FDA-approved or evaluated for safety and effectiveness when they were not.
Techdirt and Futurism then went hard at the Times’ framing, arguing that the piece treated a messy, regulatorily fraught telehealth marketing operation as a clean parable about AI-enabled business scale. Futurism later reported that the Times updated the article with an editor’s note saying the story should have included information about legal and regulatory scrutiny.
For comms people, this is the actual story.
Not that AI built a successful unicorn.
A compelling founder narrative can move faster than the scrutiny around it, especially when it flatters the market’s favorite thesis. Right now, that thesis is that AI will compress headcount, unlock insane margins, and create the first one-person billion-dollar company.
Maybe it will.
But proof points need proof. Especially when the category is healthcare, the product is pharmaceuticals, and the growth engine includes paid acquisition, affiliates, and claims consumers may rely on to make medical decisions.
The lesson? In the AI hype cycle, credibility is the moat. The numbers are not enough. The founder story is not enough. The Sam Altman-adjacent narrative is definitely not enough.
Do the second read.
Read the drama: The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI
Also worth reading: Why Is the New York Times Laundering the Reputation of a Sleazy AI Startup…
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That’s Issue #3.
If there’s something you’re wrestling with right now — rebrand narrative, vertical storytelling, AI visibility, or whether your pitch has enough proof to survive the second read — hit reply or find me on LinkedIn. We’ll pull the best questions into future editions.
See you next month.
— Anya & the Scratch team