Access Communications

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 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 at 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 attended the baseball mixer.

Reporters mingled with Trend Micro team, including members of the company’s elite Threat Research Team while also enjoying beer, wine and ballpark fare before heading down to the 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 by providing Trend Micro executives an opportunity to strengthen and renew relationships with key reporters that continues 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 gaming industry, beginning with securing a spot for WMS’ SVP of Product Development, Larry Pacey to present this 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 stage; Access used this platform to build a broader platinum media campaign that included a xx minute 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 is 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 addressing 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.