Kulesa Faul has a long history working with clients to meet their business objectives—whether defined by growth, revenues, exit strategy, customers or other milestones. The following examples demonstrate a proven ability to connect PR to larger business objectives.
Building NEC’s Enterprise Storage and Server Brand in North America
NEC Corporation of America and Kulesa Faul joined together in June 2008 to increase brand recognition of NEC’s premier enterprise storage and server line, while maintaining industry momentum across all 16 of NEC Corporation of America’s diverse business units, which includes everything from digital cinema to biometrics. With only one month to ramp up, the agency was charged with launching three server an storage products in three consecutive weeks. The team continues to leverage the momentum from these launches with a comprehensive communications program that includes a Global Analyst Summit in Japan, strong thought leadership from NEC executives and strategic partner and customer outreach.
Results: In close collaboration with NEC’s PR/AR team, Kulesa Faul successfully launched three new products in three consecutive weeks, resulting in more than 70 press and analyst briefings and over 35 pieces of coverage in top publications. The team is currently focused on continuing to build the NEC brand in North America through aggressive thought leadership outreach, strengthening relationships with key press and analysts and leveraging NEC Corporation partner momentum and customer successes.
Getting the Message to Social Media Outlets and Online Networks
In February 2009 Kulesa Faul worked with cloud computing customer, Appirio, to promote the launch of a new application for Facebook. Appirio wanted its news to not only stand out from other industry noise involving Facebook, but also to spread ‘virally’ among press, analysts and bloggers. Kulesa Faul developed a media strategy that involved the use of ‘on-demand briefing packets’ -—an easy, unobtrusive way for Appirio to provide news and important press materials to bloggers and important industry people without having to impose on their time.
Results: On demand briefing packets, which included links to Slideshare presentations, screenshots and product demo’s, were assembled and delivered to appropriate bloggers and editors in advance of the product announcement. The launch results included 18 separate stand-alone articles on Appirio, a feature story in TechCrunch, more than 20 Twitter posts on the news, and over 1114 views of Appirio’s Slideshare presentation. All of this contributed to Appirio reaching its highest website traffic numbers to date.
Penetrating the Blogger Community Asterpix was challenged with pioneering a new, relatively unheard of market—Interactive Video. Kulesa Faul worked with the company’s CEO to position Asterpix and generate buzz around hypervideo (hyperlinking/moving objects within video). In just a few short weeks, Kulesa Faul not only succeeded in getting Asterpix exposed to a wide press and blogger audience, but helped them triple their closest competitors coverage.
Results: Since launching a little over a year ago, Asterpix has received coverage in more than 4,000 blogs around the world. In the process, Asterpix established its reputation as a blogger and reporter favorite with features in Fast Company, Mashable, Techcrunch, Wired, Scobleizer, and Network World, among others. Most recently, Asterpix beat out over 10,000 entries to be named a 2008 Webby Award honoree in the Best Practices category, along such established websites as Yahoo mail, ESPN.com and CNN.com
From the Garage to the Boardroom For over five years, Kulesa Faul partnered with AvantGo to evangelize the idea of the “Mobile Enterprise” and grow buzz around the company’s popular mobile Internet service, in order to establish the company as a pioneer in the modern un-tethered enterprise. The team worked closely with press and analysts to build the mobile enterprise category, targeting key verticals including pharmaceutical, healthcare, sales and field force automation. When the company launched a product targeting pharmaceutical sales professionals, Kulesa Faul delivered results in all of the leading vertical publications, including a cover story in Pharmaceutical Executive.
Results: The 1998 company launch resulted in a media blitz with over 100 articles in the first 60 days. PR and word of mouth alone drove membership to 1 million prior to the purchase of a single ad, and to over 8 million within 5 years. Kulesa Faul established AvantGo as a breakout company to watch with accolades including Fortune Cool Company, Red Herring 100, and Computerworld 100 Emerging Companies to Watch. AvantGo became widely recognized as a leader in the “Mobile Enterprise” and “Wireless Web.” The same Kulesa Faul team represented AvantGo from startup to IPO to a subsequent acquisition by Sybase, and continued to represent the brand post-acquisition, working as an extension of the Sybase/iAnywhere team.
Staying One Step Ahead of the Competition In the summer of 2007, Cenzic’s top two competitors were acquired within weeks by HP and IBM. The company was concerned about market perception due to the fact that they were remained independent. By closely following the industry and maintaining excellent relationships with industry press and analysts, our team heard that there was “talk” of acquisition of a third competitor, SPI Dynamics. Kulesa Faul sprung into action, drafting a response with the client to positively position the acquisition as market validation, while implying that independent web application security vendors would thrive. Kulesa Faul also secured a pithy customer sound bite stating: “acquisitions kill good products.” In a surprise twist, Watchfire was acquired before SPI Dynamics, but prepared with our statement, Kulesa Faul was ready when the unexpected news hit. Kulesa Faul not only proactively sent the statement to press, but immediately hit the phones to top-tier business and IT media contacts to offer Cenzic executives for comment.
Results:Cenzic and/or its customer were mentioned in 27 articles about the acquisitions including The Wall Street Journal, InformationWeek, InfoWorld, CIO and USA Today. In total, Cenzic executives were quoted in 50 percent of all resulting articles. Kulesa Faul was successful in positioning the company as a viable player in the space and hammering key differentiators. Kulesa Faul continues to practice “guerilla PR” tactics with Cenzic and has been quoted in a number of security issue stories including those on the Best Western Hotel Breech, Cyber Warfare and Microsoft Patch Tuesday.
Cracking the Code for PR Success In November 2006, Borland Software announced plans to spin off its developer tools group as a separate organization focused exclusively on developers, while Borland put all its focus behind the Application Lifecycle Management business. In the months leading up to the announcement, Kulesa Faul worked with Borland and its new entity, CodeGear, to establish a communications platform that would publicize CodeGear’s commitment to enhancing the productivity of individual developers and teams and prove to the world that it delivers the best developer products on the market.
Results: Kulesa Faul and CodeGear collaborated on a number of initiatives to "bang the drum" for CodeGear, including successfully launching the first enterprise class IDE built on open source, JBuilder 2007, as well as helping to relaunch the famous "Turbo" brand. Kulesa Faul supported these initiatives by issuing strategic press releases and developing creative media strategies around products, issues and CodeGear’s "All-Star" executive team. Collective PR activity resulted in hundreds of stories for CodeGear. Kulesa Faul also played a significant role in helping CodeGear's JBuilder 2007 product win an InfoWorld IDE highly competitive comparison review with IBM Rational and Sun NetBeans.
Jazzing up the image of $2.3 billion Software Provider Seeking creative thinking with high-quality results, Compuware, a $2.3 billion software provider, formed a long-distance relationship with Kulesa Faul in the spring of 2003. The agency was initially tapped to re-launch its enterprise development tool, OptimalJ, and gain mindshare in an already mature development tools market. Kulesa Faul immediately went to work, planning a carefully orchestrated series of press activity around JavaOne, with executives on both coasts simultaneously unveiling survey results and new products to more than 40 target press and analysts. Ongoing one-on-one press briefings resulted in hits like this one in Computerworld.
Results: Kulesa Faul applied PR strategy to capture new market share for Compuware, not only for OptimalJ, but for the company’s extended product lines as well. In the first year of re-launching OptimalJ, PR was responsible for a 600% growth in media clippings. Through a series of provocative executive-bylined articles and rolling thunder press releases, Kulesa Faul successfully increased Compuware’s visibility and secured coverage with each new product launch.
Rising Above the Noise at Macworld and CES
Kulesa Faul engaged with Data Robotics, creators of Drobo the Storage Robot, less than one month before launching its DroboShare product to a broad consumer audience at two of January’s biggest shows: CES and MacWorld. Kulesa Faul worked with Data Robotics to identify possible challenges up front, taking into account the tight timeframe for booking meetings with press, drafting the launch announcement and supporting press materials, gaining coverage in pre-show guides, and conducting activities that ordinarily take months to prepare. Kulesa Faul worked at an advanced pace and quickly mapped out the best strategy to lift the storage newcomer above the noise level at the company’s two most important events of the year.
Results: With less than one month to prepare, Kulesa Faul developed and executed upon an aggressive pre-briefing and reviews campaign, securing interviews with over 80 media outlets at CES and MacWorld, including BusinessWeek, USA Today, CBS Radio, ABC News, CNBC, and Engadget. Data Robotic’s presence at CES and MacWorld was a resounding success that garnered over 100 on-message press hits and helped to promote the company into the market leader it is today. Since the 2008 launch of DroboShare, Data Robotics has won various product awards and secured opportunities with some of industry’s most well known mediums, such as Good Morning America, New York Times, Wired, ComputerWorld, Gizmodo, PC Photo, Computer Shopper, CNET, Chicago Sun Times and others. These, alongside hundreds of positive press descriptions, have helped push Data Robotics to the forefront of the consumer storage industry.
Love and PR: A Compatible Match Perceived as a niche player, eHarmony’s objective was to break into the top five dating sites and be included in industry roundups alongside Match.com and Yahoo! Personals. With a steady growth in copy-cat competition, eHarmony wanted to launch PR campaigns to drive new membership and increase quality exposure in national consumer, business and broadcast media. Kulesa Faul began by brokering relationships with industry analysts at Nielsen/NetRatings, Jupiter and comScore, and arranging a CEO press tour with influential business reporters on both coasts.
Results: Kulesa Faul worked closely with the eHarmony marketing team to brand Dr. Neil Clark Warren as “The Nation’s Relationship Expert” – national broadcast appearances during this time included CNNfn, CNBC Power Lunch, NBC Nightline, PBS National Nightly Business Report, CNN Headline News and CNN Saturday Night. A large media blitz around Valentine’s Day resulted in over 50 press clips, 17 broadcast mentions and 12 radio appearances. Kulesa Faul leveraged company news, including the first industry patent, to garner coverage in Newsweek, Businessweek, Reuters, AP, USA TODAY, Forbes, Reader’s Digest, Time and The Wall Street Journal. eHarmony ultimately cracked the top 3 and top 5 category list of sites, and unseated the largest competitor dating sites in new subscriber sales and growth for 2004, as reported by independent analyst data, while eHarmony membership grew from 2 to 5 million in one year.
Bridging Thought Leadership and Transactional Data Management for Maximum PR Visibility
GoldenGate Software and Kulesa Faul have enjoyed a working relationship for over two years. The agency was initially brought on-board to increase visibility, evangelize transactional data management for the real-time enterprise, and elevate the technology’s value proposition to a broader business audience. The team meets these objectives through a comprehensive PR program that engages customers, drives thought leadership, and focuses on influential analysts and media.
Results: In close collaboration with GoldenGate’s marketing team, Kulesa Faul successfully launched a new product, GoldenGate Veridata, resulting in more than six stand-alone stories, and secured viewpoint articles in DBTA, DM Review, The Business Intelligence Journal, Connection Magazine, Teradata Magazine, and e-Commerce Times, among others. The team is currently focused on a new product launch, partner momentum and EMEA expansion, in addition to customer successes. Ongoing coverage has contributed to raising the company’s visibility, defining transactional data management (TDM), and attracting new partners and customers.
Winning over the Mid-Market Start-up appliances vendor KACE was looking to rise above the noise of the systems management market. The little-known company engaged with Kulesa Faul in early 2007 and the team quickly went to work to craft a compelling David vs. Goliath story: KACE against the leading technology giants. Over the course of the first year, Kulesa Faul successfully led three new technology release launches, a campaign announcing a KACE virtualization play, and also a company acquisition. Ample time was also put into cultivating relationships and mindshare with key analyst firms and contacts.
Results:Creative and aggressive media outreach and campaigns helped to dramatically increase visibility for KACE. The Kulesa Faul team secured consistent, high-quality coverage with each new launch and campaign, and as a result coverage increased by more than 400% with key features landed in Baseline, Inc., Network World, and eWeek, to name a few. Kulesa Faul also secured KACE product reviews in Network Computing, Network World, and Windows IT Pro, and helped win multiple industry awards and recognitions including a CODiE award, Most Innovative Product Award at Microsoft Management Summit, Network World's 2007 Companies to Watch List and named a Gartner “Cool Vendor.” KACE has enjoyed a tremendous and steady increase in sales growth quarter over quarter, and signed hundreds of new customers in 2007 alone.
Scaling PR with Corporate Growth Mercury Interactive wanted more consistent visibility among press and analysts as the company grew, and brought Kulesa Faul on board as an extension of the internal communications team. Conducting a full service PR program, Kulesa Faul helped Mercury to grow revenues from $20M in 1995 to $380M in 2002, and rise to the top of the industry. Building a close client/agency relationship, Kulesa Faul worked directly with executives to cull company spokespersons and secure thought leadership articles in top-tier publications. When Mercury acquired Freshwater Software, the company tapped the agency’s expertise to help this small Colorado software company make a big splash, and later fold the brand more closely under the Mercury umbrella.
Results: Kulesa Faul maintained a consistent stream of press coverage for Mercury year after year by meticulously following industry trends and providing comment on other industry news. When there was no “hard” news, our team took advantage of external events, including holiday Web traffic and even the Super Bowl, to make news. Press coverage increased 60% during the agency’s tenure.
Putting a Start-up on the Map
Previously known as a multimedia entertainment company, mSpot’s objective was to position itself as a leading player in the mobile music space, providing the best in music selection, as well as ringtones. Kulesa Faul was charged with building momentum from service launches including Remix, a mobile music player with wireless synching capabilities, and Make-UR-Tones, a customizable ringtone application, as well as collaborating with AT&T and Alltel on new partnership announcements. Kulesa Faul strategized a plan for press activity leading up to and throughout CTIA Spring 2008, focused on announcing these key partnerships, and building relationships with partner PR teams, while highlighting mSpot’s unique services.
Results: Kulesa Faul maintained a consistent stream of press coverage for mSpot by strategically announcing partnerships that highlighted mSpot services the month leading up to CTIA, while also getting partner PR teams to push the respective mSpot services. During the month of CTIA, mSpot was highlighted in more than two dozen pieces of coverage, and was named by one blog as one of the “six hot companies that stopped the show at CTIA.” Beginning with the company launch in 2005 and throughout the three year relationship, Kulesa Faul was able to secure coverage in outlets ranging from Hollywood Reporter and Billboard to BusinessWeek, Time and the Wall Street Journal, helping to put mSpot “on the map,” and culminating in the high-impact activities at CTIA.
Positioning for Success A provider of application management appliances, nLayers approached Kulesa Faul in “stealth” mode, seeking an agency to launch its flagship product and put the company on the map. Kulesa Faul’s challenge was to introduce nLayers to the IT industry in a way that immediately established the product’s credibility within a highly competitive emerging technology market. Kulesa Faul conducted a comprehensive perception audit, market analysis and positioning workshop to fine-tune and differentiate the company’s messages for a crowded market.
Results: Kulesa Faul launched nLayers and its new flagship appliance to press and analysts via a high-impact national media tour, resulting in coverage in Optimize, InformationWeek, Computerworld, eWeek, InfoWorld and Network World. Kulesa Faul cultivated close relationships with analysts to follow industry trends, competition and market perception, in order to refine the company’s messaging as the market evolved and position the company most favorably. nLayers was featured in Network Computing’s September 2005 comparative review of BSM tools, where the company won “Best Value Award” for its price performance combination. nLayers was acquired in 2006 by EMC.
Using Powerful Media Campaigns to Save the World (One Spam at a Time) Founded by several of AvantGo’s original founders in early 2003, Qurb brought Kulesa Faul on board in the company’s early stages for collaboration. Kulesa Faul introduced the company and its revolutionary anti-spam software to press and industry influencers at a time when the anti-spam software market was beginning to heat up. Recognizing that the product could stand up to any competitor, Kulesa Faul and Qurb launched an aggressive product review campaign, with new waves of reviews hitting with each product rev.
Results:Kulesa Faul introduced Qurb to PC Magazine, which honored the product with the PC Magazine Editors' Choice Award three years running (2003-2005), and PC Magazine Best of 2003. Qurb was widely recognized in every review for its effectiveness, elegance and ease-of-use. In conjunction with PR, Qurb managed to attract high-profile interest, and was subsequently acquired by industry leader Computer Associates in 2005.
Packaging Products for Maximum Buzz
In September 2007, Symphoniq began its search for a PR partner to assist with messaging and a “relaunch” of the company in conjunction with the announcement of a downloadable version of the company’s core TrueView technology – TrueView Express. With an eye toward re-invigorating APM (application performance management), Kulesa Faul helped fine-tune messaging around TrueView Express for maximum impact, emphasizing a free trial, downloadable format, and first-of-its-kind solution for the industry, backed by customer references.
Results: Kulesa Faul secured a total of 30 press and analyst briefings as part of the U.S. launch, 13 news articles (9 unique on TrueView Express) as well as two stand-alone analyst notes. Kulesa Faul continued momentum through a mix of strategic media relations for Symphoniq, thought leadership including placement of an ongoing column in the Sys-Con family of publications, industry recognition including a CRN Tech Excellence Award and named an eWeek Excellence Award finalist, and two additional product launches executed over the next six months – TrueView for SOA and TrueView 2.0 – helping the company to cultivate close relationships with core press and analysts. In a year over year comparison, in the first twelve months of working together Kulesa Faul grew coverage more than 1000%.
Creating a Pioneer in the Online Monitoring Space
TeaLeaf provides software that enables organizations to monitor their customers’ online sessions. Immediately, Kulesa Faul saw a press opportunity to leverage customer stories as well as track peak online activity times and identify trends in the evolving online landscape, establishing TeaLeaf as an expert and pioneer in the online monitoring space.
Results: Kulesa Faul went above and beyond technology trades to secure placement for TeaLeaf in its key vertical publications, including American Banker, (retail pubs, others). Exploiting a customer relationship in the financial services sector, for example, Kulesa Faul successfully delivered this key vertical placement in American Banker.
Bringing the 'Hype' to Biotechnology and Life Sciences Sector Teranode, the leading innovator of informatics software that empowers scientists to automate, manage, and unify experiment data and workflow for R&D, came to Kulesa Faul in 2004 to gain visibility and develop press and analyst relationships in the biotechnology and life sciences sector. Two years later, Teranode has seen coverage in hundreds of publications and newsletters and exposure in several high-profile industry analyst reports, such as Gartner Group’s Hype Cycle for the Life Sciences report and multiple reports from Frost and Sullivan.
Recently, Kulesa Faul helped Teranode promote its Semantic Web initiatives as an early innovator in this exciting new space that is expected to become mainstream within the pharmaceutical industry in the next 5 years.
Results: Through Kulesa Faul’s efforts, Teranode has been featured in major industry publications such as Scientific Computing, Bioscience Technology, and Genetic Engineering News, and secured an on-going bi-monthly column in Bio-IT World Magazine called “Science and the Web,” featuring Semantic Web innovator and Senior Director of Product Strategy for Teranode, Dr. Eric K. Neumann. Additionally, Teranode has received on-going exposure in leading industry analyst reports and has won several industry awards including Bio-IT World Magazine's Top 50 Life Sciences Firms and Red Herring’s Top 100 Innovators. The company also regularly shares its insights at highly esteemed industry events both the United States and in Europe.
