Access Communications

Twitter, Serving a Purpose

While the debate continues around the societal implications of micro-blogging and what the right path to monetization is for Twitter, companies are increasingly recognizing its value as a real-time communications channel for engaging with customers, prospects, media and other influencers in more intimate ways. The key is to establish credibility and authenticity to ensure your dialogue is paying off on larger objectives.

We’ve established Twitter profiles on behalf of numerous clients with great, ongoing success. One example is for Intuit’s Digital Insight, which markets FinanceWorks and Small Business FinanceWorks online banking solutions to financial institutions.

We launched the site in the Fall of 2008 (http://twitter.com/FinanceWorks) with simple objectives: establish 2.0 credibility and reach partners (financial institutions) and customers with meaningful engagement.

Among the keys to our ongoing success: we tweet on relevant information (momentum surrounding newly minted credit union and bank partners, compelling industry news, analyst and media insights of value to customers) and we never traffic in sales or marketing-speak.

We also engage in two way interaction: while we now have over 400 followers, we also follow over 500 fellow Twitterers. We are averaging over 40 new followers a week, almost all of whom have high strategic value including credit unions (GE, Alliance, Eli Lilly), credit union and bank executives, industry analysts and key trade media (American Banker, Credit Union Times).

We’ve even begun to generate ringing endorsements from financial institution partners, such as this one:

• "Have you tried FinanceWorks? A new free service inside Online Banking. Manage ALL your finances in one spot. http://tinyurl.com/cqwjoh"

And business development opportunities, like this:

• "Please have a sales person call me at work on Monday – xxx.xxx.xxxx - I work for XXXXX our core is Jack Henry & Assoc."

Stealthy Solar Start-up Finally Has Its Day in the Sun

Solyndra, a Fremont-based solar tech company, had developed a unique product: a solar panel comprised of 40 cylindrical modules that could harness sunshine at every angle of the sun’s trajectory. After three years in business they had significant funding and an increasingly robust sales pipeline: Solyndra was ready for its media debut.

Timing is everything, and sometimes effective PR is all about creating timing. The solar tech market is a hot sector and alternative energy is entering the mainstream, giving rise to several new solar companies making unproven technology and business claims. To quote one industry insider, “Right now the solar industry is generating more publicity than electricity.” Despite its media silence, Solyndra itself had been the subject of several skeptical articles. It was in this environment that Solyndra engaged Access to develop a smart, compelling campaign that would effectively and credibly launch the company into the larger marketplace.

Our objective was to create "must see" anticipation for Solyndra’s revolutionary rooftop solar technology, as well as highlight the executive team's impeccable engineering, science and business credentials. With so many competing claims we needed to create a sense of urgent timing around Solyndra’s competitive differentiators, market-changing technology and secured book of customer contracts totaling $1.2 billion while not adding to the overheated expectations set by other players in the space.

The Access strategy was two-fold: assiduously media train the Solyndra CEO and other senior executives, arming them with bulletproof messaging honed for every media audience and draw on our strong editorial relationships to sensitize key media segments to the company’s value proposition. It was imperative that we tell the right story to the right audiences. With two compelling components to Solyndra’s narrative – strong financial backing with a robust pipeline and unique solar technology – we targeted platinum business, technology and financial publications, plus carefully selected blogs and online outlets.

The resulting media tour was a great success. Access secured 23 meetings with top tier media, including broadcast (CNN, Fox News) and print (Forbes, (em>Fortune, AP, Bloomberg, New York Times, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, BusinessWeek, MIT Technology Review, The Economist and Scientific American.) The first week saw over 100 unique articles, resulting in 75 million impressions.

Sales inquiries immediately following launch nearly overwhelmed Solyndra’s sales team. More than 1,400 sales inquiries came in during the first few months following the launch, a final testament to our objective with every client: deliver PR that drives business results.

Trend Micro Scores at RSA

Trend Micro wanted to make a splash at the RSA Conference, the Internet security industry’s biggest show. With more than 300 security vendors converging on San Francisco to launch new products and build their profiles, the battle for mindshare would not only be fought in the booths and at conference speaking panels, but at the many increasingly important after-show media events and parties.

Trend Micro had a high profile booth location, two speaking engagements and the team had secured its share of pre-show media coverage. Yet the company was looking for a big idea to draw reporters away from parties thrown by other vendors. Access had to think outside the box, or in this case—the diamond, to draw reporters to a Trend event.

For the first time in many years, the RSA Conference was scheduled for April instead of its usual time around Valentine’s Day. Since opening week for the San Francisco Giants baseball season would coincide with the RSA, the Trend-Access team determined a trip to the ball park was in order.

Working the phones in advance of the show and using an HTML mailer to break through the pre-show PR noise, Access booked 30 reporters from business publications, dailies, wire services and trade publications to attend the baseball mixer.

Reporters mingled with the Trend Micro team, including members of the company’s elite Threat Research Team, while enjoying beer, wine and ballpark fare before heading down to watch the Giants battle their division rivals, the San Diego Padres. Not only did the Giants win in the bottom of the ninth, but the RSA media mixer was a grand slam, providing Trend Micro executives an opportunity to strengthen and renew relationships with key reporters that continue to pay dividends.

WMS Gaming: Sometimes What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Stay in Vegas

For 16 years, DEMO has been the premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies. And DEMOfall07 was no exception, with executive producer Chris Shipley carefully vetting 69 companies to present six minute demos live on-stage. More than 500 venture capitalists, influential journalists and analysts, entrepreneurs and C-level executives of major corporations attended DEMO.

At 65 years old and $600 million in sales, WMS [NYSE: WMS], the leading technology innovator in casino slot machines, is not your typical DEMO company. So, we focused a major component of our thought leadership program on educating technology influencers and platinum media about WMS’ leadership role in the gaming industry, beginning with securing a spot for WMS’ SVP of Product Development, Larry Pacey, to present that year and take the stage before a packed house.

Larry showcased the company’s revolutionary Transmissive Reels technology to a crowd that literally gasped when the product was shown. The tech media reacted very favorably to the demo, posting coverage to blogs and online editions almost as soon as Larry left the stag. Access used this platform to build a broader platinum media campaign that included a piece on CNN on new innovations in gaming technology.

OnMessage with Citrix Online

At Access we are obsessed with getting our clients’ messaging right. Too many times, new companies launch or existing companies bring products or services to market with poorly articulated, confusing, or overly complicated messaging and the results are almost always the same – insufficient traction, lack of differentiation, no competitive edge. It’s about message pull-through – making sure that your spokespeople (CEOs, product managers, stakeholders) are speaking on-message to get your story out. That’s why we insist on working closely with our clients on intensive message development and media training.

Citrix Online was preparing for a big year: two major product launches, new product feature sets and new market segments to penetrate, competing in a space – remote collaboration and IT administration – that is increasingly more competitive with big names like WebEx (now owned by Cisco) and emerging challengers like LogMeIn.

In advance of these events, we worked with the Citrix Online team and crafted an entirely new message architecture – cascading from high level thought leadership to broad SMB issues, drivers and challenges and finally down to product specific solution sets – designed to underscore the company’s market leader role, position it as a collaboration and innovation partner to small and medium size businesses and map its product suite feature sets specifically to the business needs and requirements of its target customers. With this completed, we then conducted extensive OnMessage training and OnTarget media training with company president Brett Caine.

We planned a high level media tour with a threefold objective: solidify Citrix Online as an authority leader in its space, firmly link the company’s business vision and collaboration toolset with the focus on innovation in the SMB space and sensitize the market to the upcoming slate of major product releases.

Our media pitbulls booked an incredible lineup of interviews with platinum media covering the business of technology to showcase Brett and put our new messaging to the test. BusinessWeek, Financial Times, US News & World Report, Barron’s, IBD, Forbes.com TV and Fox Business Channel led off the tour with more still underway. Did we achieve message pull-through? We’ll let this clip from Brett’s appearance on Fox answer the question.