Dominating marketplace awareness on a deadline
Exametric

Goal:
To launch Exametric, an emerging workforce optimization technology firm, into the financial services marketplace, and create awareness of the firm as the vertical's leading workforce optimization solution provider within one year of campaign launch.

Approach:
At the time that Stephenson Group and Exametric began its public relations program, Exametric possessed one client and less than $5 million in annual revenues. In order to develop the aggressive strategy needed to quickly drive Exametric's relatively unknown technology to the forefront of workforce optimization solutions serving the retail banking sector, Stephenson Group (SG) moved quickly to deploy several aggressive strategies. Foremost of these was identifying Exametric's strengths and weaknesses relative to its competitors and designing and executing a campaign to position the firm as the performance leader over its competitors.

SG quickly realized that Exametric possessed several significant market differentiators: exceptional technology expertise and academic credentials on the part of its founder; technology that clearly delivered a higher level of accuracy in performance; superior adoption rates; and the early championship of the solution by leading retail bank leader, Wells Fargo.

Exametric's key market challenges consisted of competitors that were wielding substantial marketing budgets and enjoying entrenched industry relationships.

SG completed its evaluation and recommended that, in order to achieve a leadership market position, the following objectives should drive the Exametric campaign:

-THOUGHT LEADERSHIP & PERFORMANCE MARKET DIFFERENTIATORS Created a series of thought leadership program wins, such as bylined articles, in-depth feature story placements and speaking engagements to earn recognition in the marketplace as a superior technology resource.

-CUSTOMER SUCCESS & INDUSTRY ENDORSEMENT Campaign tactics consisted of a series of analyst briefings and relationship-building activities that earned analyst endorsement and inclusion in key research reports; recruitment of key bank customer Wells Fargo to participate in case studies and key industry media interviews; created and deployed an ongoing series of customer results and customer wins to key media and analyst targets.

-CONSISTENT AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE Creation of a consistent message strategy via a "one voice" platform across leadership, marketing and sales team members. Created and implemented a platform of key messages for use by company, sales and marketing spokespersons. Managed key message and content creation for the company web site and marketing materials.

Results:
In approximately one year's time, SG delivered the following results:

Coverage by key industry, technology media and analysts, including: Computerworld, Information Week, CNET, CBS Marketwatch, American Banker, Bank Systems & Technology, Bank Technology News, ABA Banking Journal, 1to1 Magazine, Community Banker, MicroBanker, Credit Union Management, Credit Union Times, and other publications. Additional analyst coverage featured by IDC Financial Insights, TowerGroup, and others.

Gartner has also selected Exametric as a leading solution provider, and included it in its prestigious sector analysis report of top technology vendors

Expansion of customer base: Exametric's sales and marketing team deployed media wins and key message points as part of their customer acquisition strategy, earning a total of fourteen customers, including two of the North American marketplace's largest banks. The customer installed base is currently 13,000 branches nationwide - approximately 10% of the total marketplace.

Targeting of new market verticals: Exametric is now recognized as one of the leading workforce optimization solutions for the financial services vertical; it is evaluating entry into new verticals, notably retail services and fast food. SG has conducted an analyst briefing and knowledge acquisition campaign to help drive the decision-making process.