Creating Market Recognition for a Successful Exit Strategy

This company was providing triple play quality of service (QoS) and / experience (QoE) solutions for service providers worldwide and wanted market awareness increased to compete with other upstarts and established vendors. The solution had a unique competitive advantage in being able to determine QoE based on what actual users perceive video quality to be rather than best-guess estimates based on measuring certain network elements.

The goal of this company was to establish a market position for the unique “user perceived” measurement over traditional measurements in order to interest a buyer for the company. With Emissary Communications on board, a strategic PR and marketing program were set that included complete media and analyst relations; events and speaking opportunities; developing new collateral content (product briefs; presentations; advertisements; etc.) and a new website.

On-Going Efforts

Continual PR and marketing were necessary to establish a position for this company’s products and to differentiate it from competing companies. This started after company messaging and a new website were completed for the client.

During the first year, nearly a dozen news releases and multiple contributed articles were put to use garnering more than 200 media impressions including: Audio DesignLine; Broadcast Engineering; CNET blogs; Digital TV DesignLine; EE Times; Light Reading; Network Computing; Network World; Telephony; VAR Business; Video Imaging DesignLine; etc. One contributed article, in Network Systems DesignLine, was voted in the top 8 most read stories of that year. The flagship product also received Frost & Sullivan’s annual Product Differentiation Innovation award and FierceIPTV’s Fierce 15 Top Emerging IPTV Players award. Analyst efforts also drew attention with company profiles from tier one research firms such as, the 451 Group; Gartner; IDC; OSS Observer; etc.

Results

The company won several industry product awards and had significant and well read articles in the media. Ultimately, as was the goal, the company was acquired by a public company which used the acquisition to set up a new product line for QoE solutions.

Emissary was also later retained by the acquiring company to manage PR and marcom for the new division.

Go to case study 6.