McBru Product Launch Case Study - Isilon
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Isilon executed a successful dual product launch strategy during a key industry trade show, resulting in 32 briefings and 21 feature stories in relevant publications despite prior media coverage. The unified storage platform, which introduced support for both file and block storage, positioned Isilon favorably in a competitive marketplace, attracting positive reception from industry analysts and influencers. The campaign bolstered Isilon's growth narrative, underscoring its innovation amidst a noisy IT landscape.
McBru Product Launch Case Study - Isilon
- 1. ISILON CASE STUDY A Nimble Strategy Scores Coverage For Back-To-Back Product Launches.
- 2. Summary Fast on the heels of one very successful product launch, scale-out storage leader Isilon had another new offering to bring to the market. Timing for the new launch would be dictated by a strategically aligned industry trade show, presenting the communications team with the opportunity to tell a timely story. But it would be a challenge to bring key media and analyst influencers back to briefing table just weeks after an extensively covered product launch. Isilon and McBru carefully crafted and persistently pitched a launch story that, despite prior coverage and the noise from the trade show, resulted in 32 briefings and 21 feature stories in trade and business publications. Research & Planning In highly competitive, crowded IT markets such as data storage, innovative new products provide singular hybrid press tour – equal parts face-to-face road tour and opportunities to boost awareness and portray competitive phone-conference briefings – to earn maximum impact differentiation to buyers and influencers. The summer for what was the company’s most significant product of 2010 found Isilon ready to launch not one, but two announcement in more than a year. Hard-to-please such products. industry press covered the news well, with 18 positive articles from those briefed and a highly favorable response In June, McBru served in support of the launch of the from the analyst community. Isilon’s SmartPoolsTM automated data tiering platform for scale-out storage. McBru developed and managed a 2
- 3. Immediately following the SmartPools announcement, a new launch plan was confirmed: go out and do it again, and do it bigger. With the addition of iSCSI functionality “ In short, Isilon now enables users to consolidate both file- and block-based across its product line, Isilon was poised to announce applications into one shared pool of another industry first among scale out storage providers virtualized storage. Now that makes by storing and managing both structured (or block-based) things a lot easier, doesn’t it? No more and unstructured (file-based) data within a single file separate apps for separate workloads. system. To that point, the nine-year-old company had built its business solely on file based data; the new functionality would position Isilon squarely within a highly desirable A storage engineer’s dream, no doubt. Chris Preimesberger, ” eWeek target market for storage consolidation – a market largely driven by the booming adoption of server virtualization across the enterprise. Execution Isilon and McBru targeted the announcement for to announce their own groundbreaking products and August 31, during the annual VMworld conference in make limelight-stealing acquisitions. Rather than peg San Francisco. The timing would help ensure that the the success of the launch on breaking through the “Unified Storage Platform” announcement, as it would escalating noise level surrounding VMworld, the launch be called, would be seen in its proper context as a boon would rely on a phone tour to begin three weeks prior to virtualization users. However, McBru advised that the to the conference, despite the fact that many of the launch team reach out to, and brief, industry press and influencers targeted for briefings had just been briefed analysts well in advance of the conference. VMworld as part of the SmartPools tour. has grown to become one of IT’s biggest annual events, attracting leading press and analysts from around the To break through to influencers who might otherwise world and giving the industry’s biggest players a platform claim fatigue, McBru developed tightly focused launch 3
- 4. messages that made abundantly clear the unique value propositions, market positioning and newsworthiness of the Unified Storage Platform, and took those messages “ to high-value media and analysts with a campaign of Pushan Rinnen, research director at aggressive, proactive pitching. A deep team of experienced Gartner, agrees that this gives Isilon a Isilon spokespersons was recruited, giving McBru the right leg up on the competition. The most mix of executive vision, technical depth and sales channel significant aspect of this announcement expertise to deploy for each briefing depending on the is that Isilon will be the first major influencer. For each briefing, a McBru representative scale-out storage architecture vendor facilitated the proceedings, both to help ensure a focused to offer file and block support with dialogue and to capture any coverage opportunities that iSCSI, so it will bring to the market the might emerge. Press and analysts agreed to receive launch ease of use of scale-out NAS into the materials under embargo until the August 31 launch block storage arena, she says. ‘The key date, allowing McBru to direct the bulk of coverage to thing is the simplicity of Isilon storage land within the VMworld timeframe while giving writers systems can now be applied to the ” ample time to develop and source stories before finding block side of the world.’ themselves caught up in the VMworld time crunch. Steve Wexler, Network Computing Results In managing and executing the Isilon Unified Storage Platform launch, McBru recorded qualitative and quantifiable results to rival any announcement in Isilon’s history. The tour generated 32 briefings with top media from general IT and business publications to storage and vertical outlets, as well as industry analysts ranging from IT heavyweights such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC to 4
- 5. influential boutique firms specializing in storage. The tone of the briefings was extremely favorable, as well-targeted spokespersons built affinity with influencers, fomenting “ Isilon customer John Welter, vice president of technology at Calgary, more engaged and productive briefings and ultimately, Alberta-based North West Geomatics impacting the tone of media coverage. Ltd., was an early adopter of the vendor’s iSCSI and said he’s using it Twenty-one feature stories covered the launch news, to consolidate onto a single storage with top properties such as Network Computing, eWeek, platform. He had been running a Dell SearchStorage and CRN among those who wrote, with the MD3000 direct-attached storage (DAS) bulk of the coverage landing during the VMworld timeframe. Message penetration rated extremely high as the majority of writers captured the virtualization and consolidation Dave Raffo ” system for block storage. SearchStorage.com contexts of the announcement in their stories, and the tone of the coverage was uniformly positive. Most importantly, the success of the Unified Storage Platform launch added considerable momentum to what had become a breakout year for the company, supporting its solid growth curve in a highly competitive, extremely noisy marketplace. 5
- 6. Elise F. Burke Director of Marketing and Sales direct: 503.546.1017 mobile: 503.459.7545 elise@mcbru.com www.mcbru.com LET’S START SOMETHING. elise@mcbru.com www.mcbru.com www.mcbrublog.com @mcbru McClenahan-Bruer McClenahan-Bruer McBru McClenahanBruer McBru McClenahanBruer