Rebranding Agile: How Marketers are Changing the Way they Work for Real-time ...
Gigamon slides dec 12
1.
2. Claire Ayles Richard Scarlett Aislinn Collins Oliver Fischer Violaine Desmons
Managing Director Senior Account Account Executive: Account Manager: Account Manager
Manager: UK UK Germany France
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4. Challenge Challenge
Low media Emerging and
profile technically
complex
market
Objective Objective
Educate enterprises, Hard hitting, relevant
service providers and campaigns to
channel partners about establish thought
Gigamon’s differentiators leadership and define
and brand values market need
5. Campaign planning
Issues-based campaign
Corporate campaign
Social media
CSR campaign
9. See what you’re missing: Months 1-3
Multi-country CIO survey
Report for Gigamon website
Localised releases
121 interviews to announce news/strike up relationships
Use stats in media pitching
10. See what you’re missing: Longer term activities
Article series (two/quarter/country)
• How 2013’s IT projects need better network visibility
• The network as the poor relation of IT
• The security threats of having limited visibility
• How the channel can refocus tech investment on the network
• Vertical themed articles
Rapid response to breaking news
Forward features
11. See what you’re missing: Longer term activities
Speaking programme/trade shows
• Pitch for speaking slots on the ‘See what you’re missing’ theme
• Pre-show publicity
• At show news and interviews
• At show tweeting to increase foot fall to the stand
One event per country/per year
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13. Corporate campaign: 1-3 months
Multi-country channel campaign
• Partner programme news plus interviews
• Personal profiles in each country
• Pan-European profile
Analyst kick off
• Meetings/conference calls with key targets
14. Corporate campaign: Longer term activities
News and customer reference programme
• New wins
• Exclusive interviews
• Case studies
Awards
• Telecoms: GTB Awards/WCA Awards
• Channel: Microscope Aces/CRN Awards
• General IT: BCS/Computing Awards
Analyst relations
15.
16. • Populate following/follower lists with European targets
• Create local tweets – coverage, themes
• Use hashtags and enter into dialogue
• Create compelling content to spark conversation
• Show behind the scenes glimpse of Gigamon
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18. Gigamon London BlackSpot App
Black spot and safe route selector
Register for branded hi-viz pack
Photo shoot at London’s worst black spot
Media launch
Social media buzz
• @GigamonSafeCycling
• Hijack Facebook Groups
19. Hi-viz sponsored ride
Gigamon branded hi-viz gear
Celebrity endorsement
Social media push
Local/trade media outreach
Editor's Notes
Current roleExperience
Claire:Just using this time to explain our ideas for how to raise your profile. All information about the agency, who else we’ve worked for plus our differentiators are explained in the proposal we submitted. Happy to cover off any questions you have though.
Rich1) First challenge: you have a low media profile. Each country team had a look through the key media in each territory and found very little coverage. In the UK we found some stories that obviously generated from US-originated releases, plus there were a few namechecks in the channel press in stories about partners. In France and Germany there was no exposure at all.2) Our immediate objective is therefore to run an aggressive campaign – using the media, analysts and social channels – that educates enterprises, service providers and channel partners that a) you exist and b) offer superior technology.3) But yours is a very technical sell and it’s also an emerging market. We also looked at VSS Monitoring and Net Optics’ press coverage in the three countries, and apart from the odd piece of coverage, neither of these firms have had any exposure either. This is good for Gigamon, as you can define the market, but it also creates a challenge, as it means you have to first convince the media/analysts that there’s a market need for traffic visibility solutions and these are different from WAN optimisation solutions that are well understood and covered.4) Our second objective will therefore to run some hard-hitting issues-based campaigns that links Gigamon’s technology with real business challenges, positioning you as the true thought leader in a relatively new, but critically important, market.
ClaireSo here’s the five campaign elements we suggest to meet the objectives a a) raising your profile and b) defining the market.We’ll walk you through these one by one...
ClaireFirst thing we’d like to do if we start to work with you is to have meetings will all the key stakeholders within Gigamon to understand their individual objectives within the company – and this help us to build a specific PR plan that reflects these needs. It’s important we don’t speak with you guys, but also product teams, the HQ PR/marketing team plus local personnel in France and Germany.Our next task will be to put together a plan of activity that we’ll understand in order to meet the PR objectives. Normally we work to a six month planning cycle (as this is long enough to be meaningful but short enough to avoid guessing at what activities are likely to come up). The plan will set out the PR objectives for each country, the key messages we propose that both reflect what Gigamon wants to say and what local journalists/analysts will want to hear, a timeline of activities that we’ll undertake and finally a list of targets and metrics, so you can see what you’ll get for your money. We can also conduct media training if you’re using inexperienced spokespeople or people want a refresher on the messaging. This works well with a freelance journalist who can conduct dummy run interviews and write up stories based on them.
ClaireAs Rich said earlier, as you’re both techy and operating in an emerging market, the key part of the campaign will be to make you more accessible! The second element of the campaign will therefore be an issues-based campaign, and I’ll let Rich talk you through the details...
RichOur campaign theme for Gigamon is ‘See What You’re Missing’ which plays on the idea that businesses need to get a better grip of what’s happening on their network if they’re going to operate efficiently as traffic continues to grow and becomes more complex.The rise of big data, virtualisation and the cloud, BYOD devices and increasingly sophisticated attacks, are just a few examples of the additional strains that are now placed on service provider and enterprise networks, yet they still – on the whole - rely on traditional networking solutions that aren’t equipped for this new era. Unless they can understand what’s happening on their networks, they might not be able to support these new technologies and network intelligence is also vital to both secure and optimise their infrastructure.
OliverOur initial idea to get this campaign off the ground is a multi-country CIO survey to assess how much priority the network receives in comparison to other enterprise tech deployments. We’d work with a specialist survey firm (and have a good relationship with Vanson Bourne) to write the questions so they come up with a desired headline – which would be along the lines of ‘the network is the poor relation of IT’, giving us the chance to explain the importance of traffic visibility. A survey size of around 250 CIOs typically costs somewhere around £7,500, but this can he higher or lower depending on the number of questions. But the budget is worth it, as the results will give us plenty of material for use in the PR campaign, for exampleWe could write a summary of the survey results to be downloaded from your website (and use social media to point followers towards it) Each country would come up with our own local release, talking about trends in the market We’d also set up one-to-one interviews with the press to explain the survey and of course introduce Gigamon’s spokespeople to the press The stats can also be used in all subsequent media pitching – journalists across Europe have a strong appetite for facts and figures
RichOver the longer term we’d also want to write and place a series of articles, bylined to you, showing true thought leadership. The UK team would take responsibility for writing the copy, while Oliver and Violaine would translate and localise the articles so they’re relevant for each market. Here are some title ideas, that might appeal to separate sections of the media – starting with the corporate IT press, the networking press, security media and the channel (which needs to understand it can make money out of networks!). With some tweaking, they can also be re-placed in key vertical titles.Something we do a lot of at JK is rapid response to breaking news. We scan the media on a daily basis and will draft media alerts – containing quotes attributed to Gigamon – that are distributed to the media. With journalists short on time, they like this approach as they can just lift the quotes and add them into their stories. Stories that you could respond to include network outages, peaks in usage, big data stats or analyst reports about cloud usage, to just give some examples.We also have a database of all planned forward features so will pitch the ‘See What You’re Missing’ messaging for all relevant opportunities.
RichWe’ll also use this theme to pitch for speaking opportunities at key shows, and along with that will undertake pre-show publicity and set up on stand interviews. We can also tweet at the show (using the show’s hashtag) so encourage visitors to come by your stand.Trevor, when you spoke to Claire it seemed that you’d only signed up for InfoSec this year so far, by we can make recommendations on shows elsewhere.
ViolaineIt’s also important that we explain what’s happening within Gigamon’s business, so we recommend more of a corporate campaign to run in parallel with the ideas already discussed.
ViolaineThe initial priority for the press will be a channel campaign. As you want to expand your channel across Europe it’s important that we explain that you’re 100% committed to the channel and that you have a number of happy partners who are successfully making money out of the traffic visibility fabric.A couple of the things mentioned in the issues campaign will work well in the channel – for example, they’ll be interested in the survey and we’ll place articles on the theme in the channel press. In addition we should formally announce your European channel programme and set up interviews, by phone or face to face, to start building relationships with the press.AislinnIn the UK another of our immediate actions would be to set up initial briefings with analysts. This will include the big tier 1 companies like Gartner and Forrester who have European-based analysts, as well as more local firms that track the area, like Quocirca and Freeform Dynamics. It’s important we do this early, as they are increasing key in purchasing decisions.
ViolaineIf possible, it would be good to have a steady stream of local and pan-European customers to announce as this will be a great way of addition credibility to the PR campaign. Activity can range from contract win announcements, but if the customer is particularly happy or enthusiastic, we can also set up exclusive interviews with journalists or write in depth case studies showing the business benefits of Gigamon’s solutions over time.AislinnIn the UK, awards are quite prevalent, so here’s just a few examples of the awards we can enter you for – spanning telecoms, channel and general IT.Over the longer term, we’ll also keep up with analyst relations – distributing relevant news and pitching for your inclusion in upcoming reports.
RichWe can also miss our the press/analyst middle men and go straight for your key audiences directly via social media.
RichYou already have Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook covered, but our observations are these are very US focused. We recommend working with your US-team to make these streams a little bit more international in flavour.First off with Twitter, we can help build the list of people you are following by adding in European press, analysts as well as any business contacts you guys may have. We’ll also suggest or draft local tweets to show what you’re up to in UK, France and Germany. These could point to news stories, analyst reports or other news that support your arguments as well as the survey report. We also need to make sure we’re not just broadcasting tweets or retweeting other people’s posts, but engaging with other users. This means using hashtags to Gigamon is part of a wider conversation and directly responding to tweets.Like many vendors, Gigamon uses LinkedIn as a jobs notice board. We can create posts and discussion topics to get employees and other followers more engaged in what Gigamon is doing.Facebook is the hardest nut to crack for B2B brands, but your page is very technical. Our suggestion is to provide a behind the scenes look at the company, so people can understand the brands personality. Photos and CSR campaigns are a good thing to publicise through Facebook.
ClairePart of your brief was for us to support the charity work Gigamon is supporting in Europe – this is exactly the kind of thing we can use on Facebook. Here’s a couple of campaigns we’ve come up with, as well as our ideas of how to publicise them.
ClaireTrevor had the idea of running a cycling road safety campaign, and we think this dovetails nicely with the ‘See What You’re Missing’ message. Our recommendation would be for Gigamon to develop an app that London cyclists can download to see where the accident blackspots are in the capital as well as select safer routes. If they register, we can also give away branded Gigamon high viz gear.To launch the app, we’d firstly organise a photoshoot at the capital’s most dangerous spot and would focus on Boris Bike riders.We’d also launch it via the media targeting the London and cycling media/bloggers.Regarding social media, we’d start at dedicated Twitter account and tweet at cycling celebs and groups encouraging them to re-tweet to their followers. It’s also a perfect story/pic idea for Gigamon’sFacebook page, plus there are other groups (e.g. London Cycling Campaign) that we could post to.We can of course repeat the exercise in Paris or in Germany (it’s road safety day there in June).
ClaireI know you’re also very supportive of CRY, so to tie both ideas together, we propose a sponsored hi viz bike ride to raise funds for the charity.Participants would need to be as high viz as possible (even morph suits) and we could hijack an existing event (Nightrider event in June) or do something standalone – converging on Paris perhaps. Best to get an endorsement – James Cracknell.Re. publicity – the channel, some of the IT together with local press will be interested in the news (and photos), while we can populate your (and CRY’s) Twitter, LI and Facebool pages with updates.
