Zed - Driving 730% Waitlist Growth for a Fintech Disruptor

ZED is a Philippine-based, credit-led neobank and a Y Combinator alum, founded to address the financial access gap for young professionals. Its flagship product is an innovative no-fee credit card, designed for a generation often overlooked by traditional banks.  

At a Glance

• Client: ZED
• Industry: Insurtech, Technology
• Services: Regional Communications, Investor Relations, B2B Communications, Share of Voice Analysis

Building Trust and Driving Mass User Acquisition

As a new neobank in a highly competitive fintech market, ZED needed to build brand trust from scratch. Its core challenges were twofold: 1) build a credible, innovative brand to attract users, and 2) drive mass user acquisition for its product waitlist to prove market traction to future investors.

[caption id="attachment_16229" align="alignnone" width="1920"] See how neobank ZED leveraged strategic PR to drive massive user acquisition, successfully growing its product waitlist to nearly 100,000—a stunning 730% increase—in less than a year.[/caption]

The Strategic Insight: Credibility and Demand Generation

PRecious leveraged the compelling narrative of ZED’s experienced founders to build trust and drive demand simultaneously:

• Targeting the Credit Gap: We anchored the campaign on the core target audience of young professionals and their primary pain point: the lack of credit access from traditional banks. To prove product market fit to investors, we tied this narrative directly to a clear and measurable PR metric: growing the product waitlist.
• Aligning with Regulatory Milestones: We built a six month strategic campaign, carefully timing key stories to align with regulatory milestones like BSP certification to maximise credibility. We then launched with a high impact media briefing for key fintech press, followed by sustained one on one interviews to amplify the founders' unique story across local and regional media.

 

Measurable Results: 730% Waitlist Growth and Investor Validation

The campaign delivered significant, measurable results in both brand-building and direct user acquisition.

• Massive Audience Reach: The combined media efforts achieved a total reach of more than 29 million, successfully introducing the ZED brand to its core target demographic.
• Direct Demand Generation: Proactive media outreach was a primary driver in growing the product waitlist from 12,000 in January 2024 to nearly 100,000 by October 2024—a more than 730% increase.

Strengthened Investor Credibility: This massive, measurable user demand provided indisputable proof of product-market fit. This traction, amplified by a strong media presence, became a powerful validation tool for investor conversations, significantly strengthening ZED's appeal and credibility for its next funding round.

The PRecious Perspective: Deploy Public Relations as Your Primary Demand Engine

The Diagnostic: If you operate in a low trust and high stakes sector, traditional advertising alone cannot buy you credibility. To achieve massive market traction, you must treat public relations as a hard hitting demand generation engine. The Strategic Pivot: True credibility is built by bridging the gap between media visibility and commercial adoption. This is not about generating vanity metrics; it is about converting trust into tangible growth. The Commercial Engine:

• Align a compelling founder narrative directly with critical business and regulatory milestones.
• Create a halo of trust that fuels measurable user acquisition and product waitlist expansion.
• Amplify unique executive stories through sustained one on one media engagements.

The Bottom Line: When you successfully map PR outputs to undeniable product demand, you provide indisputable proof of product market fit and significantly strengthen your leverage with investors.