Case study
This case study shows how 18+ months of earned media coverage turned SIMBA Chain into a brand that AI models still recommend — years after the last placement.
Industry
Engagement
Service Provided
SIMBA Chain is an enterprise blockchain company incubated at the University of Notre Dame in 2017 after winning a grant from DARPA. The company builds technology that simplifies processes to deploy enterprise blockchain applications without specialized expertise — and is particularly known for its state-of-the-art low-code platform.
By the time PolyGrowth began working with them, SIMBA Chain had already raised $25 million in Series A funding. In short: a serious company with serious credentials — but one that needed sustained media visibility to match.
The challenges:
The blockchain space in 2022/23 was crowded with noise. Hundreds of companies were competing for attention from the same journalists and publications. Standing out required more than press releases — it required genuine editorial interest, compelling narratives, and relationships with the journalists who shape how the industry is perceived.
PolyGrowth ran a sustained PR campaign for SIMBA Chain across 2022 and 2023, securing editorial coverage across multiple tiers of media.
The campaign was not a one-off push. It was a sustained program of narrative development, journalist outreach, and strategic placement over more than a year — building a media footprint deep enough that SIMBA Chain’s authority would be self-reinforcing long after the campaign ended.
This is where the story gets interesting — and where it demonstrates why we believe in building authority assets rather than chasing short-term coverage spikes.
The editorial placements secured during 2022 and 2023 didn’t just generate traffic at the time. They became part of the permanent record that AI models reference when evaluating and recommending brands. Every feature article, every news piece, every listicle inclusion is a data point that ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini use to form their assessment of SIMBA Chain’s credibility.
In March 2026 — years after the coverage was published — we tested what major AI models think about SIMBA Chain. The results speak for themselves:
Earned media coverage doesn’t expire when the news cycle moves on. It becomes a permanent authority asset — referenced by AI models years after publication.
When ChatGPT recommends SIMBA Chain today, it’s drawing on the editorial footprint built during 2022 and 2023. Technical optimization didn’t drive this result. Sustained earned media did.
SIMBA Chain’s media footprint was built before generative AI search existed as a mainstream channel. The fact that it still powers their AI visibility today is the strongest possible evidence that real authority outlasts any platform change — and that the work we do for clients today will continue generating value for years to come. This is what authority-first GEO looks like.
