How moonbird secured 25 published articles through product and expert-led PR
Summary
How Fair Public Relations helped moonbird combine product reviews, gift guides and expert commentary to build visibility in the UK wellness market.
Consumer Products
Health & Wellness
Expert
Client: moonbird
Sector: Wellness technology, breathwork, stress and sleep
Campaign: Product PR and expert-led PR
Campaign length: Six months, beginning in October 2022
Results: 25 published articles across 20 publication titles
Commercial impact: Client-reported increases in UK website visits and sales
At a glance
25
Published articles
Six months
Of sustained PR activity
20
Publication titles
Just over four
Average published articles per month
Two
Complementary product and expert PR routes
Client-reported
Increase in UK website visits and sales
The client
moonbird is a Belgian wellness technology company founded by siblings Stefanie and Michael Broes.
The idea began through Stefanie’s own experience. While working on her PhD, she was struggling to fall asleep. Research repeatedly pointed towards slow breathing exercises, but she found it difficult to practise them consistently without something physical to guide her.
That led to the development of moonbird: a handheld breathing companion designed to expand and contract in the user’s hand, providing a tactile rhythm for slow breathing exercises.
Rather than asking users to follow instructions on a screen, moonbird was created to make breathing exercises feel more physical, intuitive and easier to follow.
The company’s wider mission is to make slow breathing more accessible and practical for people experiencing stress, poor sleep or difficulty switching off.
Its products are wellness devices rather than medical devices. This distinction was important throughout the campaign, particularly when developing stories connected to anxiety, sleep and mental wellbeing.
Stefanie Broes, co-founder and CEO, also gave the campaign a credible expert voice. Her knowledge of breathing exercises, sleep, stress and the thinking behind the product allowed us to pursue media opportunities that went beyond straightforward product promotion.
The objective
moonbird began working with our team in October 2022 for an initial six-month PR campaign.
The primary objective was to introduce the product to a larger UK audience and build confidence in a relatively unfamiliar type of wellness technology.
The campaign was designed to:
— Increase recognition of the moonbird brand in the UK
— Secure independent product reviews
— Place moonbird in relevant wellness, fitness and gift guides
— Position Stefanie Broes as a useful expert on slow breathing, stress and sleep
— Explain the purpose of the product in accessible language
— Build third-party credibility around the brand
— Support UK website visits and product sales
— Develop a larger body of independent online references to moonbird
— Create coverage that could be reused across the company’s wider marketing
— Establish relationships with health, wellness, lifestyle and consumer journalists
Rather than relying on one type of media opportunity, the campaign combined product-led PR with expert-led commentary.
This allowed us to present moonbird as both an interesting consumer product and a brand supported by genuine knowledge of breathing and wellbeing.
The challenge
moonbird was entering a crowded wellness market.
Consumers were already being presented with large numbers of products, apps, techniques and claims designed to help with stress, sleep, anxiety and relaxation.
The campaign therefore needed to explain why moonbird was different without relying on exaggerated health promises.
There were several specific challenges.
Explaining an unfamiliar product
The experience of using moonbird is tactile.
The device expands and contracts in the user’s hand to guide the breathing rhythm. That can be easy to understand when somebody is holding the product, but more difficult to communicate through a short media pitch.
We needed to explain:
— What the product was
— How somebody used it
— Why tactile guidance could be helpful
— How it differed from an app or written breathing exercise
— Where it could fit within a wider wellbeing routine
Avoiding unsupported medical claims
moonbird is not a medical device and should not be presented as diagnosing, treating or preventing a medical condition.
Stories around sleep, anxiety and mental health therefore needed careful language.
The campaign had to remain useful and engaging without suggesting that the product could replace medical advice or treatment.
Balancing the product and the expert
Product reviews could introduce moonbird directly to readers.
However, expert commentary could give the brand a wider and more sustainable media presence.
We needed to create a clear connection between Stefanie’s expertise and the product without turning every expert comment into a promotional message.
Entering the UK market
moonbird wanted to strengthen its position in the UK.
This meant identifying UK publications, journalists, seasonal opportunities and consumer interests that could help introduce the product to relevant audiences.
Competing during busy seasonal periods
The campaign began shortly before Christmas, one of the most competitive times of the year for product PR.
Gift guides and wellness roundups receive a large number of submissions.
To stand out, moonbird needed clear product information, strong visuals, timely responses and a convincing reason for journalists to include it.
Our strategy
We developed a dual-track campaign combining:
— Product reviews, gift guides and wellness roundups
— Expert-led commentary using Stefanie Broes as a spokesperson
This gave the campaign more flexibility than relying on product pitches alone.
When a journalist was looking for products, we could present moonbird as a tactile breathing companion with a clear consumer use.
When a journalist needed insight about breathing, sleep, stress or wellness trends, we could offer Stefanie’s perspective.
Developing the product story
The first step was making the product easy to understand.
We developed clear messaging explaining that moonbird:
— Is held in the user’s hand
— Physically expands and contracts
— Guides the user through a slower breathing rhythm
— Provides a screen-free and tactile experience
— Was developed from Stefanie’s own difficulty following breathing exercises
— Is designed to make slow breathing easier to practise consistently
This gave journalists a straightforward way to describe the product without relying on technical or exaggerated language.
The founder story was also valuable.
moonbird did not begin simply because its founders identified a commercial trend. It emerged from a real problem Stefanie was experiencing and a conversation about why breathing exercises can be difficult to maintain without physical guidance.
That gave the product a more human and memorable foundation.
Pursuing product reviews and consumer roundups
We introduced moonbird to journalists working across:
— Health and wellness
— Fitness
— Lifestyle
— Consumer technology
— Sleep
— Mental wellbeing
— Christmas gift guides
— Mother’s Day features
— New-year wellness roundups
— Product-review pages
— Consumer shopping content
Product-led coverage included reviews, gift guides and editorial roundups in publications such as:
— Stylist
— Metro
— SheerLuxe
— Woman & Home
— Women’s Fitness
— Daily Mirror
— Daily Express
— On: Yorkshire Magazine
These opportunities gave journalists the chance to introduce the product directly and explain how it worked.
They also allowed moonbird to appear within relevant editorial contexts rather than relying on conventional advertising.
Building Stefanie’s expert profile
The campaign did not depend entirely on journalists reviewing the product.
We also positioned Stefanie as a spokesperson who could discuss:
— Slow breathing exercises
— Stress and relaxation
— Sleep routines
— The relationship between sleep and mental wellbeing
— The vagus nerve
— Common breathing techniques
— Seasonal stress
— Wellness trends
— Why people struggle to maintain breathing practices
This created opportunities for moonbird to contribute to wider articles in which the product was not necessarily the main subject.
Stefanie’s commentary helped make the campaign more useful to journalists.
Instead of repeatedly asking publications to feature moonbird, we could offer explanations, observations and practical information connected to stories they were already developing.
Developing timely and seasonal hooks
The campaign ran across autumn, Christmas, the new year and early spring.
Each period created different editorial opportunities.
During the Christmas period, we developed and pursued angles around:
— Low-stress Christmas routines
— Christmas wellbeing
— Gift ideas for people interested in health and relaxation
— Managing seasonal pressure
— Products designed to support calmer routines
Around the new year, we focused on:
— Wellness trends for 2023
— Breathing techniques
— Stress reduction
— Sleep and mental wellbeing
— New approaches to relaxation
— Products that could support healthier routines
We also responded to subjects including:
— Mouth taping
— The vagus nerve
— Expert-approved breathing exercises
— Insomnia
— The relationship between poor sleep and mental health
This kept the campaign connected to subjects journalists were actively covering.
Turning specialist knowledge into accessible commentary
Expert PR requires more than having relevant knowledge.
Journalists need comments that are:
— Clear
— Concise
— Useful
— Timely
— Appropriate for their audience
— Free from unnecessary promotional language
Our team handled the editorial and media work required to turn Stefanie’s knowledge into usable material.
This included:
— Identifying relevant topics
— Developing media angles
— Preparing focused questions
— Drafting and structuring expert commentary
— Making explanations accessible to general readers
— Removing unnecessary promotional language
— Tailoring comments for different publications
— Managing journalist outreach
— Responding to live media opportunities
— Following up where appropriate
— Tracking coverage as it appeared
Stefanie remained the source of the insight, while our team handled the work required to shape and present it effectively.
The results
The campaign generated 25 published articles across 20 publication titles.
The coverage board records 24 articles published between October 2022 and April 2023, with a further moonbird feature appearing in August 2023 after the core campaign period.
This represents an average of just over four published articles for each month of the six-month campaign.
Coverage appeared across recognised consumer, health, lifestyle, business and national media brands, including:
— Yahoo Finance
— Metro
— SheerLuxe
— Yahoo
— AOL
— Glamour
— HuffPost UK
— The Independent
— The Irish News
— Stylist
— T3
— The Times
— Vogue India
— Woman & Home
— Women’s Fitness
— Daily Mirror
— Daily Express
— Dundee Courier
— On: Yorkshire Magazine
The campaign produced a mixture of direct product coverage and broader expert-led media contributions.
You can view moonbird’s published articles in our Media Coverage database, alongside hundreds of other articles secured for our clients across a wide range of industries, sectors and areas of expertise.
Coverage highlights
The product appeared across several different editorial formats.
These included:
— Independent product reviews
— Health and wellness product roundups
— Fitness features
— Christmas gift guides
— Mother’s Day gift content
— New-year wellness trend articles
— Advice-led breathing features
— Sleep and mental-health articles
— Seasonal stress content
— Consumer shopping features
This variety helped moonbird avoid becoming dependent on one story or publication type.
Product-review coverage
Stylist reviewed moonbird as a breathing and stress-management product.
The product also appeared in health, wellness and fitness coverage from publications including Metro, SheerLuxe and Women’s Fitness.
Further product-focused coverage appeared through Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Dundee Courier.
Gift-guide opportunities included:
— A Mother’s Day gift guide from On: Yorkshire Magazine
— Christmas gift content from Woman & Home
— Seasonal wellbeing coverage in Daily Express
These features introduced moonbird to readers who may not previously have been familiar with tactile breathing technology.
Expert-led breathing coverage
Stefanie’s knowledge supported stories about breathing exercises and their role within everyday wellbeing routines.
Breathing-related features appeared through publications including:
— Yahoo
— HuffPost UK
— T3
— Stylist
One HuffPost article explored expert-approved breathing exercises designed to help people feel calmer.
Stylist covered the relationship between the vagus nerve and calming the body.
T3 included breathing advice in a feature about stress, sleep and anxiety.
This allowed moonbird to become connected with the wider subject of slow breathing rather than appearing only within product roundups.
Sleep and mental-wellbeing coverage
Sleep was another important theme.
A sleep-related contribution appeared across several recognised media titles, including:
— Yahoo Finance
— AOL
— The Independent
— The Irish News
The articles explored insomnia and the impact of poor sleep on mental wellbeing.
The repeated appearance of this theme across several outlets extended the reach of the original expertise and strengthened moonbird’s association with sleep and relaxation.
Seasonal and trend-led coverage
The campaign also connected moonbird with timely lifestyle stories.
Glamour and Vogue India included coverage linked to wellness trends for 2023.
The Times published advice around surviving Christmas while protecting health and wellbeing.
Stylist covered ways to have a lower-stress Christmas.
Daily Express included moonbird within Christmas wellbeing coverage.
These opportunities helped keep the campaign relevant to what readers were thinking about at particular points during the year.
Coverage continued after the campaign
One moonbird article recorded on the campaign board was published by Dundee Courier in August 2023, several months after the main six-month campaign period.
This illustrates an important feature of earned media.
An article may appear after the original outreach because:
— A journalist retains the information for a future feature
— Publication schedules change
— A product is included in a later roundup
— Previously supplied material becomes relevant again
— An article takes longer to move through the editorial process
The end of a campaign does not necessarily mark the end of the coverage generated by it.
Supporting UK traffic and sales
The client reported that moonbird’s UK website visits and sales increased while working with the PR team.
It is not possible to attribute every sale or website visit to a particular article without complete analytics and attribution data.
However, the client’s feedback indicates that the period of increased UK media visibility coincided with stronger commercial activity.
The campaign placed moonbird in front of relevant audiences through:
— Product reviews
— Shopping content
— Gift guides
— Health and wellness features
— National media commentary
— Recognised lifestyle publications
This gave potential customers several different ways to discover and assess the brand.
Building independent credibility
Before purchasing an unfamiliar wellness product, consumers may look for reassurance that the company and product are credible.
Independent media coverage can contribute to that process.
The moonbird campaign created a body of third-party material that the brand could use across:
— Product pages
— Website credibility sections
— Social media
— Email campaigns
— Retailer conversations
— Partnership discussions
— Sales materials
— Founder biographies
— Media kits
— Presentations
— Future journalist pitches
A product claim made on a company’s own website is naturally promotional.
A review or independent mention in a recognised publication provides a different type of evidence.
Supporting search and AI visibility
The campaign also created additional independent references connecting:
— moonbird with guided breathing
— moonbird with stress and relaxation
— moonbird with sleep and wellbeing
— Stefanie Broes with breathing expertise
— The product with recognised consumer and lifestyle publications
This can help search engines and AI systems find a broader range of third-party information about the brand.
PR cannot guarantee search rankings, website traffic or inclusion within AI-generated responses.
No Domain Rating or wider SEO data has been supplied for this campaign, so this case study does not attribute a specific SEO increase to the PR work.
However, a larger body of relevant independent coverage can support the wider online footprint of a business.
What the client said
“It’s wonderful working with the team — both from a personal and business perspective. Our UK website visits and sales increased when working together, so I can confidently say — when done right — PR works!”
Ann-Sophie Van Camp
moonbird
Why the campaign worked
Two complementary PR routes
The campaign did not depend entirely on product reviews.
Combining product-led PR with expert commentary created a larger range of opportunities.
Product pitches could introduce moonbird directly.
Expert pitches could place Stefanie within broader conversations about breathing, sleep, stress and wellbeing.
A product with a clear point of difference
moonbird was not simply another wellness app.
Its tactile, screen-free format gave journalists something distinctive to explain and review.
The physical movement of the product also created a clear visual and experiential story.
A credible founder story
The product emerged from Stefanie’s own difficulty maintaining breathing exercises.
That personal origin made the brand story more relatable and helped explain why the device had been created.
Useful rather than promotional expertise
The expert-led campaign did not depend on forcing product mentions into every comment.
Stefanie’s expertise was used to help journalists explain wider subjects.
That made the material more editorially useful and created more natural opportunities to connect her insight with moonbird.
Strong seasonal timing
The campaign made use of Christmas, new-year wellness, Mother’s Day and wider seasonal stress and sleep stories.
This gave the campaign timely hooks alongside evergreen subjects.
A broad range of media targets
The campaign reached beyond one publication category.
It included:
— National news
— Lifestyle media
— Health and wellness titles
— Fitness publications
— Consumer technology coverage
— Shopping content
— Gift guides
This increased the number of credible routes through which readers could encounter moonbird.
Sustained campaign activity
The results were not generated by one press release.
They came from a combination of:
— Product pitching
— Expert commentary
— Seasonal ideas
— Live journalist opportunities
— Reviews
— Gift guides
— Trend features
— Follow-up
— Continued outreach
This helped create a consistent body of coverage over the campaign period.
What happened in six months
| Campaign measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Campaign began | October 2022 |
| Core campaign period | Six months |
| Published articles | 25 |
| Average articles per month | Just over four |
| Publication titles | 20 |
| Campaign routes | Product PR and expert-led PR |
| Later coverage | One further article published in August 2023 |
| Commercial impact | Client-reported increase in UK website visits and sales |
| Campaign status | Completed |
The outcome
Over six months, our team helped moonbird combine an innovative consumer product with credible expert-led commentary.
The campaign generated 25 published articles across 20 publication titles.
It:
— Introduced moonbird to larger UK consumer audiences
— Secured independent product reviews
— Placed the product within wellness and gift guides
— Positioned Stefanie Broes around breathing, sleep and stress-related subjects
— Generated coverage across recognised national and lifestyle publications
— Built a larger body of third-party credibility
— Created material that could be reused across moonbird’s marketing
— Continued generating coverage after the core campaign ended
— Coincided with client-reported increases in UK website visits and sales
The campaign demonstrates how product PR and expert PR can work together.
The product gave journalists something distinctive to feature.
Stefanie’s expertise created wider opportunities that did not depend on direct product promotion.
Together, these routes helped moonbird build meaningful visibility around both the device and the knowledge behind it.
About Stefanie Broes
Stefanie Broes is the co-founder and CEO of moonbird.
The idea for the company developed while she was working on her PhD and experiencing difficulty falling asleep.
Although her research repeatedly pointed towards slow breathing exercises, she found them difficult to maintain without something tactile to guide the rhythm.
A conversation with her brother Michael and several friends helped turn that personal challenge into the early idea for moonbird.
The resulting device was designed to make slow breathing more physical, accessible and easier to practise as part of an everyday wellbeing routine.
Stefanie is available for relevant commentary relating to:
— Slow breathing
— Stress and relaxation
— Sleep routines
— Wellness technology
— Building a mission-led consumer brand
— The challenges of maintaining breathing practices
— Female entrepreneurship
— Founder stories
Could product and expert PR support your business?
Fair Public Relations helps consumer brands, founders and credible experts turn their products, experiences and knowledge into useful media stories.
Our team develops the positioning, identifies the angles, prepares the content, approaches journalists and manages the campaign.
Clients provide the knowledge, product information and insight that make the coverage possible.
We do not guarantee editorial coverage, named publications, backlinks, sales or a particular publication timeframe.
We provide experienced, journalist-led PR support designed to build meaningful media momentum over time.
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