Agency Chosen for Collaborative Approach in Marketing to Technical Audiences

AUSTIN, Texas – December 4, 2012 – Crank Software Inc. of Ottawa, Canada announced today it has selected Austin-based TREW Marketing to lead its company awareness and lead generation campaigns. Crank Software chose TREW Marketing for their experience in developing integrated marketing programs that target embedded design engineers. The partnership entails brand and product-level messaging and positioning, PR, content development, partner co-marketing management, search engine optimization and advertising, social media and email marketing.

Crank Software specializes in embedded user interface (UI) solutions that enable R&D teams to more quickly develop rich UIs for resource-constrained embedded devices like in in-car graphical displays and animated GPS systems. Their product, Crank Storyboard™ Suite, manages the entire UI lifecycle, bridging the gap between UI design and embedded systems by streamlining the development process from months to minutes, helping their customers get products to market faster, with higher return on investment (ROI), and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

 “Crank Software has proven how collaboration during product development results in higher quality at a lower cost, and they sought to find similar advantages in their marketing efforts,” said Wendy Covey, Principal and Co-Founder of TREW Marketing. “The marketing programs TREW developed for Crank fully leverage both companies’ unique expertise, and will grow demand for Crank’s graphical user interface solutions.”

The new partnership includes the following marketing programs:

• Marketing communications strategy and integrated activity plans
• Marketing collateral and content development – case studies, webcasts
• Product launch media relations
• Search engine optimization and advertising programs
• Social media strategy and execution
• Database marketing with quarterly e-newsletters and email nurturing
• Partner co-marketing campaign and activity plan

 “TREW’s marketing expertise and knowledge of the embedded space make them a trusted advisor to help us drive awareness and demand, as we continue to grow our business and market share,” said Jason Clarke, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Crank Software. “They have a proven track record developing and executing strategic marketing plans that focus on results and we’re excited to have them as an extension of our team.”

Click to Tweet: New from @TrewMarketing: @Cranksoftware Selects TREW Marketing for Embedded Industry Outreach http://ow.ly/feA6c

About Crank Software

Crank Software is an innovator in embedded user interface (UI) solutions that bridges the gap between UI design and embedded systems to deliver a competitive advantage by streamlining the development lifecycle so their customers can get their products to market faster, with higher ROI, and lower total cost of ownership. Today, time is wasted in the development lifecycle because the design goes back and forth between UI designers, user experience designers, and embedded systems engineers. The Crank Storyboard Suite enables stakeholders to work in parallel. Storyboard manages the entire UI lifecycle—from UI design to simulation to being optimized for the device.

About TREW Marketing

TREW Marketing, headquartered in Austin, Texas, is a full-service B2B marketing firm uniquely serving leading engineering and scientific companies that target technical markets. TREW uses decades of specialized experience to create custom marketing programs that help customers efficiently and effectively achieve their business and sales goals. With goals and objectives defined, TREW then takes an integrated approach using a wide array of marketing services, including brand identity, positioning and messaging; website strategy and design; content development and publishing; search marketing; public relations and social media strategy and execution.

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Looking for additional insight? Check out our guide: Smart Marketing for Engineers

Remember when you were young, and there was that kid who spent more time dissing you or others than making something of themselves? Maybe you wanted to let them have it, but you knew (or maybe your parents gave you some advice) that it was best to take the high road and focus on your strengths and success.

There is some wisdom in this childhood scenario for grownups running businesses, product lines, and service areas, who are competing for awareness, customers, and marketshare. In every market, every town, every application space, you are going to face competition. And that’s a good thing – for companies and consumers. But maybe you are considering making a move to directly market against your competitor. Is this a good idea? The answer is, maybe, but be careful.

Let’s look at a a recent example to help illustrate some upsides and downsides for consideration: Microsoft’s recent ad campaign against Google in the mainstream business press. Here is one of their ads:

Microsoft ad, Text to the right

What I like about this ad:

1. They effectively create fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about breaches in personal security if you use Google’s products: “…the way they are doing it is making it harder for you to maintain control of your personal information.”

2. They were timely. The ads hit just as Google announced it was trimming down its privacy policy and sent a letter to the U.S. Congress

3. The tone is serious, professional, and clear: you can’t trust Google, and we’re doing it better.

4. The ad is designed to catch my eye and call out the controversy, and it did: I immediately saw it was a Microsoft ad directed at Google and I wanted to know more; it’s easy to read, my eyes are drawn to the product boxes, and I got the message – FUD about Google.

Three things I don’t like in the ad:

1. The language they used in certain areas. They took several “below-the-belt” jabs that I don’t think were needed, such as “Google is getting ready to make some unpopular changes to their most popular products” or “…Those changes, cloaked in language like ‘transparency,’…are really about one thing: making it easier for Google to connect the dots between everything you search…”. I know they’re trying to create FUD, but I believe they could have gotten the point across without taking these direct jabs. Because they did, they lost a little of my respect along the way. It seems some in the media – who influence the market and their customers’ perceptions – agreed:

In a later ad, they modified their tone and I liked it a lot more: “If you’re not comfortable with the potential of private email content or information in your private documents being used to serve you ads, we’d encourage you to explore our award-winning alternative: Hotmail and Office 365.”

2. Giving airplay to Google. As with any direct campaign against a competitor, you are growing their awareness with your dollars. Thanks to Microsoft, I became much more aware of Google’s security policies, and certainly was not going to trust Microsoft’s word alone. So they caused me to study Google even more by raising the issue. In the end, by creating this fear with users, Google may have gotten more traffic from this campaign than Microsoft.

3. There was no credible call-to-action to drive me to learn more about Microsoft’s presumed “more secure” approach. They were clearly just exploiting their competitor’s weakness, but didn’t have any technical, researched, or third-party information (white paper, webpage, etc) that I could visit to learn more. They just pointed me to microsoft.com and touted their competitive products. Lame!

So, was it effective? Were readers inspired to check out Microsoft’s products? Did the gains of directly exploiting Google’s weakness outweigh the costs of all those ads in very expensive outlets and potential harm to Microsoft’s brand?

Maybe, maybe not. I’m sure the product teams at Microsoft would justify it, but as a consumer, it didn’t inspire me to buy Microsoft, although I will say today, between this campaign and all the mainstream media coverage on the topic, I am more weary of Google than I used to be.

Instead of taking this risky, expensive approach, consider instead some alternatives as you plan your competitive attack:

1. Increase investment in search marketingaround keywords where you directly compete. Place ads, create landing pages, and generate targeted content that drives clicks and organic search to your site vs. your competitors.

2. Don’t call your competitor by name. Rather, generalize with “other + your category”, such as “other service providers”, “other test integrators”, “alternative IT consultants.” You can also indirectly refer to your competitors by using their branded colors. This is a less direct way of calling out your competitors, while still getting the message across.

3. Create comparison tables of specs with your company name in one column, and “competitor 1″, “competitor 2″, etc in follow-on columns. As long as you can back up your data if someone asks, and you are accurate in your depiction, you can communicate your point without giving a nod to competitors by name.

4. Start a FUD campaign around your competitors’ weaknesses by focusing on your strengths. For example, for an enterprise software integrator, a campaign could be “Five Questions You Should Ask When Selecting an ERP Integrator”. Create a white paper, short video or webcast, and push out via social media and your blog to educate the market in a sound, professional manner what they need to consider.

5. Devise a geographic attack. As a challenger with less resources than the market leader, you will not be able to go head-to-head matching the leader’s products, advertising, and price promotions. Instead, be more strategic than your opponent and identify shifts in regional market segments that cause gaps to develop, then swiftly fill those gaps before your competitors do.

6. No matter what, do NOT compete on price. It diminishes your value, lowers margin, and is hard to get the market to move away from once you’ve started

To end on a light-hearted note, here’s the very funny, albeit very risky General Motors TV commercial that ran during the 2012 Superbowl touting Chevy vs. Ford trucks.

http://youtu.be/XxFYYP8040A

Do you like the Microsoft ad? The Chevy commercial? Have you tried some of the suggested alternative tactics? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below. In the meantime, here are a few additional resources to check out for more on this and related subjects:

Allocate Google Pay Per Click Budgets for Maximum ROI

5 Steps to Writing Effective White Papers

Looking for additional insight? Check out our guide: Smart Marketing for Engineers

Summary:

See how an IT company with an emerging product in an undefined space used a number of different PR tactics to improve a key performance indicator – feature article coverage – by more than 125%, and achieve record web traffic and target media engagements.

Challenge:

The company wanted to create awareness of a new product in a quickly evolving, noisy, and undefined IT/networking space with aggressive competitors.

Goal:

The goal of the product launch was to create product awareness, garner media coverage, and begin to build relationships with key editors and analysts in the industry.

This was the most successful product launch in the client’s company history. As a result of this launch and ongoing outreach, the company now has a strategic and measured PR program, it’s visibility and coverage have increased,  and it is gaining on its competitors.

Campaign:

TREW Marketing sought to create a PR program for this IT company that would quickly address their known challenges – their product was emerging in an undefined market, the market is fragmented and crowded with many tools providers, and their primary competitor was aggressive in its messaging. To achieve success and address these challenges, TREW created a tiered media list of publications and editors, drafted targeted high-quality content, reached out to prioritized media, executed a major product launch, and now continues to build on the newly-established relationships and company awareness.

Step 1: Develop a Targeted and Tiered Outreach List

TREW sought to develop a strategic media list for the IT company. Developing the list involved extensive research including tracking competitor coverage, searching for new publications, categorizing journalist beats, and identifying the data and articles that had been the most influential for the IT industry. This research resulted in a list of more than 25 media contacts who write for an audience relevant to the IT company’s existing product offerings and soon-to-be-launched ground-breaking new product.

To prioritize efforts with journalists, TREW ranked journalists as high, medium and low priority, and established interaction goals with each group of journalists. TREW, with the help of the IT company, then executed both proactive and reactive outreach  based on occurring events such as new articles, blog posts, and company and industry news, and introduced the IT company to the journalist when the company and its expertise could be helpful.

Step 2: Plan and Create Quality Content

For the major product launch, TREW created several pieces of targeted content, starting with the news release. Based on TREW research and several launch messaging meetings, the release focused on the product’s unique benefits for the market and application-leading specifications that factually ensured the product would stand out prominently over aggressive competitors who had a larger voice in the market, yet a technically inferior product. In addition, TREW created a one-page flyer that highlighted specific pain points of potential customers and used diagrams and explanations to show how the new product saved time, cost, and set customers up for future success.

Alongside the news release and one-page overview, TREW helped develop the slide content, flow, and messaging that positioned the company and introduced the product. In addition TREW created article abstracts that company experts could write for publications. The IT company presented the slides in run-throughs of the presentation, each time making changes and adjustments so that their messages were clearly and accurately conveyed.

Step 3: Reach out to the Media

A few weeks before the launch of the product, TREW began to contact journalists it had begun developing relationships with since Step 1. TREW introduced the product and invited journalists to meet with the company leadership and technology experts to learn more about the product and how it would meet the needs of the journalists’ audiences.

Since the PR launch process began with researching the best contacts and building relationships, as outlined in Step 1, TREW already had a start on raising the company’s visibility with key journalists which helped ensure they would more easily accept the invitation to hear about the new product at the time of announcement.

Step 4: Launch the Product

The week of the launch, the news release was distributed via wire and the IT company met with journalists across the country. They presented slides, answered questions, pitched article abstracts or offered assistance with other articles where applicable, and TREW continued to watch the targeted publications for places the new product could be included.

Step 5: Sustain the Media Relations Program

With a successful launch underway, TREW continues to build relationships with key media for the IT company. By consistently staying in touch with top media and making valuable offers of expert spokespeople, new content, and company news, overall engagements (i.e., journalist responses) are growing. As TREW and the IT company look to build on this success into 2012, a key focus is on additional compelling content and ideas to strengthen relationships with editors and grow the IT company’s image as a leader in the markets they serve.

Results:

With the PR program development and strategic product launch, the IT company secured 125% more coverage than prior launches. Throughout the launch, the company received:

• Six times more feature article coverage than their top competitor in the launch month
• Strong feature article headlines and product messaging
• Industry analyst quotes in multiple top-tier publications
• Feature coverage in four of the targeted publications
• Article headlines that included key messages promoted through the presentations, news release, and additional information materials

A leading US engineering school with 60,000 engineering graduates and 7 of the school’s 9 departments ranked in the top 10 nationally chose TREW Marketing for its development communications research and planning.

TREW conducted in-depth research – both internally and externally – to gain greater understanding of alumni and donor perceptions of the school and its future. Building upon the research findings, TREW then developed the “Brain” – core messaging for the school’s development initiative and funding areas – and 12-month communications activity plan.

Deliverables:

• Internal survey and meetings with faculty and staff, including the Dean and Department Chairs, to gain insight about the school’s branding, messaging and value perceptions
• Alumni-wide external survey to understand perceptions of the school and development branding, messaging, and communication purposes
• Recommendations for consistent school, department and program marketing to strengthen the brand
• Communications Brain, based on research data, includes:
  • School tagline
  • Campaign “pitch”
  • Tagline, pitch and top three key messages for four major funding areas

Results:

• 35 hours of intensive one-on-one meetings resulting in
  • 7 key findings
  • 14 “big ideas”
  • 25 recommendations

• Survey response rate of over 9%
  • 41% of respondents agreed to be contacted
• Event and internal communications strategies based on survey results/interviews
• Communications Brain to be used as messaging guide for all development communication activities
• Consistency and efficiency gains by using Brain messaging vs. reinventing messaging with each new development or program activity

Comments from School of Engineering Leadership:

The leadership team at the school, including the Associate Dean and Communications Director, commended TREW’s professional, detail-oriented approach, on-time and on-budget delivery. He recognized outstanding results and TREW’s experience working with engineers, making the company a perfect fit with the school.

Yesterday, we had the unique opportunity of witnessing one of the great communicators of our time – the 44^th president of the United States, Barack Obama. No matter your political viewpoint, you can’t ignore the unprecedented millions who were personally inspired to get involved and ultimately succeeded in their mission to elect him president. President Obama’s followers truly trust him and they show it. From the 3,851,604 friends on his Facebook page to the record-breaking estimate of over 2 million attendees at his inauguration, it is clear President Obama is committed to communication – from traditional media to new media – and he has driven record-breaking results.

There are great lessons for all of us in business to take from President Obama and others leaders’ committed and innovative approaches to communication. Especially in these very uncertain times, business leaders have a unique and compelling opportunity to inspire employees and build trust, and as a result, lead their markets, strengthen their customer relationships, and beat their competition. Employees are at the heart of your company’s success – they are your most vocal and honest spokespeople, whether you ask them to be or not, and building trust and inspiring this community by empowering them to make the customer experience better than any other in the industry takes great commitment over a long period of time.

Herb Kelleher, co-founder and past president and CEO of Southwest Airlines said it best in an interview with Worth magazine in April 2001: “Employees come first, and if you treat them well, they treat customers well. That makes customers keep coming back, and that makes shareholders happy.” SWA’s performance shows how this commitment pays off, as Fortune magazine reporter Barney Gimbel said in March 2008, “Besides posting its 35th consecutive year of profitability, [Southwest Airlines] was the most punctual, lost the fewest bags, and had the least complaints compared with its peers.”

One of TREW Marketing’s most unique consultation offerings is executive and employee communications. We have led award-winning employee communications programs, and we know first-hand there’s not a silver bullet. We understand the best practices from years on the front lines and bring our collaborative, measured approach to customize programs for our clients, from new, innovative approaches employed by President Obama to the tried-and-true commitment of day-in and day-out global leadership communication.

This is a 2-part series – this post focuses on the founding of TREW and the importance of building trust, and the 2nd post will follow with examples of companies who are committed to building trust and the outstanding results they’ve delivered.

We get asked often about the founding of the TREW Marketing name and approach, so we thought we’d share the story. As we began the more serious discussions about starting our marketing firm – vs. just the “one day we’re going to…” happy hour banter – we kept coming back to two core values at the heart of driving results and differentiating ourselves: trust and authenticity.

While marketing practices continually change and provide new ways to drive awareness and efficiency– from e-mail marketing in the 90′s to social marketing today – people are still people. And if they don’t trust you, your company, or your spokespeople, or if they believe you say one thing but do another, no marketing program is going to change that.

Trust, just as with friendships or professional relationships, is built through consistent and constant communication and interaction over the long-term with all your stakeholders – employees and customers, donors and volunteers, partners and suppliers. So if it’s so straightforward, why did we at TREW see it as not only a core value, but a differentiator? Because we have seen marketer after marketer advise flash-in-the-pan programs with no long-term, comprehensive view that takes into account how all stakeholders are affected. In the end, this approach is not only unsustainable, but can actually threaten your company’s trust and credibility in the marketplace, and as a result, your organizational performance, from sales to fundraising to employee productivity and turnover.

Jack and Suzy Welch talked about trust and effective leadership in their October 27, 2008 WelchWay article, Trust in a Time of Turmoil in BusinessWeek, “Trust is the very foundation of effective leadership; it’s the grease of change…The more authentic a leader shows himself to be, the stronger the connections. Authenticity feeds trust.”

We believe this holds equally true to companies and organizations – large or small. We couldn’t say it any better, except we like to spell it a little funny to work in the “W” in one of the founder’s initials!  True or TREW – in the end, it’s all about building trust to drive results. For more information about our Trust Drives Results Workshop, visit http://www.trewmarketing.com/workshops.html

In a recent Welch Way column in BusinessWeek titled “Trust in a Time of Turmoil“, Jack and Susie Welch suggest that trust can be built, even in a time of crisis, by “taking strong action, provided that action is taken quickly, openly, and straightforwardly.” They go on to emphasize the importance of speed, transparency, and simplicity in responding to a crisis, and that by building trust with your stakeholders over many months and years, your chances of being successful (we would even go a step further and say your chances of strengthening your trust in the marketplace) in the midst of a crisis, is much greater.

This article really struck a chord with us at TREW Marketing since our company was founded on the core values of trust and authenticity. In our crisis communications workshop, we introduce customers to building up their “trust account” through strategic, consistent, and transparent communications programs, so when (not if) a crisis hits, they can begin their response from a position of strength and in some cases, even turn it into an opportunity.