LIMITLESS success means constantly moving our center to the edge. Learn how we unleash our full force to be The Best Agency You’ll Ever Work With.
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PROFESSIONAL CONFESSIONALS
SUCCESS STORIES
WHAT WE DO BEST
NOTE FROM OUR CEO
A NOTE FROM OUR CEO, BARBARA BATES
BREAKING
THROUGH
INTEGRATED STRATEGY
SERVICES:
• Executive thought leadership • Reputation management • Global campaign engagement • Change management • Leadership consultancy
Insights drive strategy. We use a mix of primary, secondary and desk research to develop insights and deliver winning strategies. When you are heads down doing the day-to-day hard work, it can be difficult to see what’s ahead. That’s why we’ve rounded up a brain trust of strategy leaders that are embedded into teams to address business challenges, take risks, push big thinking, and drive big results.
MARKETING
• Persona research • Branded content • Influencer marketing • Display ads • Paid social • ABM
We are experts in social, content and influencer marketing. Digital is the new order and content is its currency. Bottom line - our in-house marketing specialists use a mix of paid, earned and owned strategies to help brands attract and build lasting relationships with customers and influencers across a journey.
BRAND
• Brand research • Brand positioning • Messaging • Naming • Visual identity • Employee branding
We love making brands shine. Emerging and transformational tech brands – brands who grew up fast, changed business direction, or are mired in complexity come to us to distill their story. We use a mix of art and science to extract emotive messages that define your brand’s unique value and position. From brand strategy to naming and visual identity, we’ve got you covered.
MEDIA & INFLUENCER RELATIONS
• Reputation management • Thought leadership • Product & technology briefings • Crisis communications • Events & awards programs • Speakers & awards programs • Executive communications • Content development
Our teams engage with hundreds of influencers on a weekly basis. Top technology and business reporters and analysts rely on us to connect them with industry leaders. More than 25 years in the industry means we’re ready to tap into this network for you.
CLICK TO WATCH
CREATIVE & VIDEO
• Illustration • Interactive content • Social media creative & video • Brand explainer videos • Product demos • Motion graphics & animations • Explainer videos • Docu films
Our in-house creative team not only produces anything from simple illustrations to full-fledged interactive design in support of campaigns, but now also offers full-service video production! With our exclusive partnership with Irresistible Films we produce everything from bite-sized social videos to documentary films globally, on-demand, and at scale.
DEVELOPMENT
• Analytics • Web strategy • Web development • Interactive content • Apps • UX research
Hotwire’s team of digital strategists has worked with clients to create, redesign, or optimize web platforms. We also have a range of curated developers on deck to build anything from microsites to apps in support of communications campaigns
MEASUREMENT & ANALYTICS
• Social & media monitoring • Global measurement design and reporting • Performance tracking • Trend tracking • Social & web analytics • CEO dashboard • Digital brand health check
If anyone were to tell you that they’ve got this down, they would be lying. We know this because we’ve been committed to cracking the nut on communications measurement and analytics for years now, both through our own efforts and by working with professional bodies including AMEC, PRSA and the PRCA. While we don’t claim to have it perfect, we are pretty proud of what we offer. What’s more, we are not afraid of partnering with the best to ensure we deliver value. And nothing speaks more loudly on this than our partnership with Kantar to deliver a world class measurement dashboard to you.
CAPABILITIES
SOLUTION
CHALLENGE
RESULTS
Within the first 30 days, Hotwire landed coverage in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg, The CEO Show and Cheddar TV. Young’s keynote speech, that Hotwire developed, was such a hit at The Next Web, it was later accepted for MWC. In the next 30 days Hotwire continued to secure opportunities with top media including NPR and NBC: Press Here. Hotwire also developed content for The Next Web, Forbes, McAfee's blog and social posts for Young to strengthen his thought leadership platform.
THE RESULTS
Hotwire established a credible and compelling platform for Young. Going one step further, it created a story arc that helped establish his reputation not only as a thought leader in tech, but as a thought leader in business and society. Hotwire captured his voice and vision immediately, securing Young a keynote speech at The Next Web. Hotwire delivered the strategy, content and connections that made what was initially a project into an ongoing annual program.
THE SOLUTION
McAfee had one of the strongest brand names in security, until it was acquired by Intel, became Intel Security, and vanished from the market. When Intel spun McAfee out again last year, the company had to re-establish its position in a noisy security market and convince its audience it was still relevant. The existing agency had not been able to create a platform or develop storylines for Chris Young, McAfee's new CEO, that would be covered by top-tier media. It was essential that Young's vision for the company was well communicated and understood by the market.
THE CHALLENGE
The Next Web speech and presentation, podcast, photos, blog content, social channel content
PROGRAM ASSETS:
Connect the company story to an executive’s personal story and that's how you make PR gold. To do this, spend time with your spokespeople – get to know them on a personal level – listen to their life stories and understand what’s important to them. This is what reporters want.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP STORIES
McAFEE
PRO TIP:
Within 60 days Hotwire landed features in WSJ, Forbes and other top-tier media outlets. Three years later Hotwire has made the subscription economy trend a mainstream topic by continuing to tell Zuora's story to an even wider audience. Profiles in Forbes, NY Times and Financial Times helped credit Zuora with creating the market – now valued at $100 billion. During Hotwire's work with Zuora, it secured $150M in funding, grew its revenue by more than 200%, was named #28 on the SaaS1000 list, Top 50 Fintech company by CB Insights, #35 on Forbes Cloud 100 list and Hot Topics recognized Tzuo as a business leader dominating the fintech ecosystem.
There were three key elements of our strategy — research the market opportunity and create a library of industry examples being disrupted by the move to subscription based models, craft a simplified corporate narrative that included third party validation and leverage our media relationships with top tier outlets to connect the story to the right influencers. A supporting program of creative proactive pitching around industry trends and issues allowed Tzuo to provide insightful commentary on “news of the day,” helping build his profile as a thought leader.
Zuora CEO, Tien Tzuo, was frustrated with the company’s PR efforts - it was struggling to land coverage about the emerging subscription economy – a multi-billion dollar market he was single-handedly driving. Tzuo needed an agency to educate the market on what the subscription economy was and how it was disrupting the industry.
Subscription Economy Manifesto, Subscription Economy Index, global market surveys, bylines
Keep it simple when introducing new concepts. Don’t assume the media understands all that is happening in your market. Use analogies and get away from “geek speak” to educate different stakeholders.
ZUORA
Early wins with trade media such as CIO, IDG and SC Media, along with broadcast coverage on CNBC and CheddarTV raised Steele’s industry profile significantly. The number of inbound requests for his comment increased from practically zero to almost daily. Hotwire leveraged Steele’s growing leadership position at the corporate and industry level, to raise the profiles of other executives and deepen the bench. Overall, Proofpoint’s U.S. media coverage increased by 68% when comparing the first half of 2015 (282 articles) vs. the first half of 2016 (473 articles). The percentage of coverage within business outlets increased by 216% and trade coverage increased 110%. Proofpoint's revenues grew more than 40% YoY from 2015 to 2017.
Hotwire led a campaign that tied Proofpoint’s new business mission to an extremely relevant and hot trend – a “new way to work.” To own this narrative within the cybersecurity industry, Hotwire created a compelling POV around the new area of security that could be understood by mainstream media, investors and customers. This strategy focused on building a strong executive visibility program, supported by underlying initiatives that reinforced the company’s leadership - threat research reports, product and company news, influencer engagements and content marketing.
Proofpoint was transitioning its product portfolio and re-positioning itself toward cybersecurity – a move away from data back-up. Being a small fish in a big pond, Proofpoint needed to break through the noise and get its story in front of customers and influencers. Its CEO, Gary Steele, had little public profile thanks to being new to the C-suite, which made it even more difficult to pitch his security expertise to top media.
Threat Report (data), bylines
Provide a new angle on a popular trend – it can often produce quicker results than introducing an entirely new idea or category. Anticipate stories that will stay in the news for an extended period and prepare statements and content in advance so you can respond quickly, ahead of competition.
PROOFPOINT
Hotwire took the company from "Is BMC still in business?" to "BMC is asserting itself as an innovator." It is now regularly covered in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg, eWeek and TechTarget. BMC was most recently named a "Cloud Vendors Leading the Charge in 2018" by Information Week.
Hotwire led a three part “volume and velocity” strategy that would (1) increase the volume of news around new products, customer wins, market momentum and commitment to R&D, (2) increase the quality of the announcements and (3) leverage social media to reconnect with BMC's stakeholders and grow influencer relationships. Additionally, Hotwire established a rapid response program to place BMC insights into the news of the day.
BMC, once considered a leader in enterprise systems software, had fallen off the map since going private. It had no plan for keeping its products competitive and relevant in today's IT environment and startups were passing it left and right. Many, including key media, thought BMC was obsolete and to make matters worse, they were in the midst of a CEO transition with no clear voice from leadership.
Press releases, surveys, micro-content, Slideshares, salon dinners
Instead of doing one off communications, have an integrated program. Consistent messaging across a multitude of platforms (PR, events, social media, etc.) creates "surround sound" that allows a company to break through the noise.
TRANSFORMATION STORIES
BMC
A 10+ year relationship doesn’t happen without driving business impact – highlighted by top tier coverage, including Forbes Company of the Year (for its transformation from component supplier to consumer product innovator). Hotwire launched the first BlogHaus at CES and secured coverage in every publication from The Wall Street Journal to Fortune and Barron’s to consumer outlets like The Rolling Stone, GQ and The Today Show.
At the onset, Hotwire led product launch announcements, financial media communications, executive thought leadership and tradeshow support. It leveraged CEO Bill Watkins’ somewhat controversial personality to gain media fans and followers that would help Hotwire change Seagate’s "old school" brand into something much sexier. When a new CEO took over (that wasn't as open to working with the media), Hotwire's strategy changed to a trends and issues campaign. This provided context for Seagate’s product news and Hotwire was able to leverage earnings announcements to garner non-financial coverage.
During Hotwire’s ten-year relationship with Seagate there were several challenges – initially it needed (1) to win a larger share of the consumer market, (2) help with a CEO transition and (3) a social media strategy to set itself apart from the competition. Over time, new challenges came up. Seagate faced competitive pressures from new technologies, a second CEO transition and shifting from public to private back to public again.
Earnings reports, blog content
Relationship building with the media should be a priority, not just for the agency, but for key spokespeople. An ongoing, trusted relationship can lead to repeated coverage, inbound media requests and higher quality coverage.
SEAGATE
The New Way to Work campaign was instrumental in raising the company’s valuation and brand before being acquired by Atos in 2017. In its initial rollout, Unify garnered 111 articles, 38.6 million Twitter impressions (trending 2x in one day) and 255,000 website visits. Unify received analyst recognition and became a regular voice in the New Way to Work conversation. The digital magazine attracted 23,000 active readers and was the company’s top performing lead generation program.
Hotwire partnered with Unify’s brand agency to create a strategy that would contemporize its image – the idea was to tie its new vision and product to the emerging “new way to work” trend. It started with an award-winning global launch event that took the form of a digital talk show hosted by influencers in workspace dynamics – and included Unify reps, along with third party voices that reinforced the need for Unify’s new product. Leveraging the influencers in media outreach, Unify’s new brand and vision ran as an exclusive by The Wall Street Journal. After studying the digital habits of Unify’s target audience, Hotwire also created a branded digital magazine on Flipboard – curating NW2W content from across the web and supplementing with an aggressive ad spend to drive traffic back to the Unify site and trial programs.
Siemens Enterprise Communications was spinning off from Siemens’ sole ownership and needed to transform its brand and image. It came to Hotwire with a planned rebrand and a business imperative to grow into new customer segments to increase revenue. However, the Siemens' product portfolio was dated and it needed help launching a new platform (co-designed with Frog) to coincide with its rebrand.
Co-branded research on New Way To Work, digital launch materials, micro-content and infographics, Flipboard branded microsite
The old saying “the medium is the message” applies more than ever. Creatively packaging and delivering your news and content in more dynamic ways means more eyeballs and more traction.
UNIFY
Hotwire created a more press friendly narrative for Nutanix’s CEO – and the company saw a dramatic uptick in business and top tier tech media coverage, including features on CNBC’s ‘Mad Money,’ Bloomberg Markets, Fortune, Barrons, MarketWatch, IBD, Forbes and Business Insider. As a result, it saw a 33% increase in enterprise cloud share of voice within six months.
Hotwire has worked with Nutanix twice – setting it on the fast track for growth and up-leveling its business press presence. To shift the conversation around Nutanix, Hotwire focused on connecting its product announcements, corporate news and user conference, .NEXT, to the mega trends driving the move to the cloud. The key was reframing Nutanix’s place in the overall ecosystem, with its recent entrance into public markets, in a way that was tangible and digestible for its investors.
Following its IPO, Nutanix shifted its focus to bigger opportunities. It began competing with larger companies, many of which were existing partners – this confused customers and worried investors. Having been known for creating the hyper-converged infrastructure category, one of the hottest technology categories in enterprise technology, Nutanix needed to go beyond the HCI conversation and enter the broader cloud discussion. To do so, it had to shift its story from one focused on technical and product capabilities to general business audiences, the global 2000 C-suite and market investors.
.NEXT user conference, b-roll
It’s imperative to invest in speaker and message training when companies transform their market position. Otherwise, spokespeople tend to repeat the old story and the new messaging takes longer to gain traction.
TECH/PRODUCT STORIES
NUTANIX
Hotwire increased the company’s visibility alongside its largest competitors and built credibility that shifted media, influencer and analyst conversations. Placing key executives as thought leaders in trade and business publications on a consistent basis aligned the company with the right decision makers. Hotwire continues to work with Dell Boomi and just celebrated its five-year partnership.
Hotwire shifted its strategy away from one-off product announcements and instead focused on issues that influenced customers, partners and analysts. It used third party research to highlight the demand for Dell’s products along with analyst content and social media to drive leads. Hotwire also developed collateral the sales teams could use in the field, including FAQs, competitive briefs, corporate blog posts, sales decks, employee communications playbooks and social strategy.
Dell Software had nearly a dozen product lines and it had been targeting the same outlets with one-off product announcements. The media often received similar messages and worse, sometimes competing messages. Dell's process needed to be cleaned up and streamlined. And being known largely as a hardware brand, it needed a new story for its software business.
Press release, bylines, Slideshare, social posts, social advertising, infographics
Closing the gap between a company’s mission and its product messages can sometimes be difficult. Create quarterly themes that product groups can tie into to make sure there is consistency across all business units and that those messages support the corporate narrative.
DELL SOFTWARE
Hotwire not only increased the number of media placements, but also the quality of placements thanks to clear and consistent messaging on industry topics like GDPR, ransomware and digital transformation readiness. Commvault is now regularly featured in top trade publications and business press such as The Atlantic, Barrons, USA Today, Forbes and BBC WorldNews. In addition, CommaultGO media attendance almost doubled year-over-year, social engagement tripled and coverage went from 18 to 218 articles.
Hotwire took an integrated approach with Commvault and rolled out a campaign that included press coverage, social media, internal comms, content marketing and events to create a larger than life impression. The cornerstone of the campaign was a survey highlighting IT pros readiness (or lack thereof) for digital transformation that was packaged and released prior to the company’s annual customer event, CommvaultGO. Hotwire also vetted and secured Capt. Sully Sullenberger and Artic explorer Robert Swan as keynote speakers for CommvaultGO.
Commvault had aggressive growth plans and a big market opportunity, but it didn’t have the brand recognition it needed to succeed. And its PR strategy of sending out monthly press releases wasn’t going to get the job done.
Surveys and research reports, social content and contests, issues based thought piece, Robert Swan South Pole sponsorship, videos, podcasts
Pay attention to your customers and understand their needs. Don't just promote – figure out what they want and tailor your messaging to that.
COMMVAULT
Within 60 days we landed features in WSJ, Forbes and xxx. Three years later we continue to help Zuora tell the subscription economy story to an even broader audience, now that the trend has gone mainstream. Profiles in Forbes, NY Times, Financial Times helped credit Zuora with creating the market, now valued at $100 billion. During our tenure with Zuora they landed $150M in funding, grew their revenue more than 200 percent, named #28 on the SaaS1000 list, a Top 50 Fintech company by CB Insights, #35 on Forbes Cloud 100 list and Hot Topics recognized Tien as a business leader dominating the fintech ecosystem.
There were three key elements of our strategy—research the market opportunity and create a library of industry examples being disrupted by the move to subscription based models, craft a simplified corporate narrative that included third party validation and leverage our media relationships with top tier outlets to connect the story to the right influencers. A supporting program of creative proactive pitching around industry trends and issues allowed Tzuo to provide insightful commentary on “news of the day,” helping build his profile as a thought leader.
Zuora CEO Tien Tzou was frustrated with the company’s PR efforts to land key features about the emerging subscription economy, a market he was single-handedly driving. Zuora faced a complete lack of knowledge about this growing trend and skepticism about its importance. It had to educate the market on what the subscription economy was and demonstrate it was a multi-billion dollar market. Without “landing the story” with key influencers, that wasn’t happening.
Subscription Economy Manifesto, Subscription Economy Index, Global market surveys, Bylines
Keep it simple when introducing new concepts. Don’t assume that the media understands as much as you do about changes in your market. Using analogies and getting away from “geek speak” is really important when you need to educate different stakeholders.
GLOBAL HUB & REPORTING STORY
EATON
Following the publication of the article, social media chatter began to escalate. The immediate response addressing the issue across all communications channels helped slow down and eventually eliminate the negative talk track. In the following conference, there was no negative coverage in the 100 plus articles that were published.
Hotwire had an extensive crisis communication plan in place from the start. It briefed key spokespeople on how to respond to the accusations by correcting facts, acknowledging mistakes and emphasizing the positives in Anita B's diversity program. Hotwire also commented on the article within the first hour it was published, pinned statements to social channels and proactively contacted stakeholders to rally third party support. During preparation for the next conference, Anita B made sure it had addressed any lingering concerns and shared additional content around diversity and inclusion.
The Anita Borg Institute faced a reputation damaging crisis situation. It was subject of a hostile article by Tech Crunch coinciding with their annual conference, the Grace Hopper Celebration – the largest event for women in technology. The article included comments from disgruntled employees who claimed that the institute did not practice the kind of diversity it preaches.
Press release, event invites, crisis communications plan, social posts
Don’t overestimate the power of speed. Acknowledging concerns quickly often slows down or eliminates a negative story from blowing up.
CRISIS STORY
ANITAB.ORG
Hotwire convinced the reporter ‘the story’ was a non-story and it was killed. The bigger win was helping IAS establish a new quarterly crisis planning process designed to anticipate issues in advance, define the management processes and train global teams. During this same period, Hotwire developed a strategic plan that pushed IAS from #12 on Business Insider’s list of most interesting ad tech companies to #2 – only second to Amazon.
Hotwire stepped in, took over the relationship, streamlined communications and gained back the trust of the reporter. A virtual “weekend war room” was setup – taking advantage of multiple time zones to respond to all questions within 48 hours and provide enough information to shed any doubt on the validity of the study.
An inaccurate third-party report comparing Integral Ad Science (IAS) to its competitors was being pitched to a major ad tech publication. The study made an unfair comparison that would certainly be misconstrued and, if made public, IAS’ reputation would take a serious hit. To worsen the situation, several reps from IAS were contacting the reporter with different information – creating confusion around key messaging.
Virtual war room, scenario plans, communications flow charts, live workshops
While it’s impossible to anticipate every crisis, you can identify the biggest risks and develop a plan for issues most likely to occur. Getting the process embedded into the culture is the single most important aspect.
INTEGRAL AD SCIENCE
Senior Account Manager
JACKIE GRAY
We’ve seen that “all boats rise” when agency partners put the client’s needs first. Sometimes that means we get more of the pie, other times it means we don’t.
HACK:
We know we’ll drive the best results if we can work with other partners, but it feels like key partners caught up in gaurding budget dollars.
AGENCIES AREN'T WORKING TOGETHER
Senior Vice President
HEATHER CRAFT
If strategic goals differ from day to day priorities then we make sure to divide the budget and activities accordingly and we are fully transparent with all stakeholders. This transparency helps set our client up for success with senior leadership by making sure everyone is on the same page.
My client contact has a different goal than his boss. While I get the agenda he is driving, I feel that he struggles to show real progress against business goals.
MY CLIENT HAS A DIFFERENT GOAL THAN THEIR CEO
Account Manager
LINDSAY NOONAN
We helped demonstrate that product pushes can happen, but wouldn’t generate as much interest as a stand-alone. We showed them how to package new products with research or surveys to help with the news hook and context reporters require. We also showed how customer references were almost mandatory.
My client’s product teams were stubborn about pushing product news to drive conversation, but it's turning off media.
PRODUCT NEWS WON'T CUT IT
BECKY POCOCK
We spoke to our client about creating an umbrella story that all business units could tie to. Showing folks how they fit into a broader story increased our chance of getting everyone to play together. Once they saw better quality coverage resulted, better cooperation followed.
I worked with a client that wanted to change market perception, but three business units were each running a different strategy.
BUSINESS UNITS WON'T TALK TO EACH OTHER
VP, Executive Communications
LINDSAY RIDDELL
We helped our client by showing and not telling them how to solve this. Data speaks volumes. Creating a comparative CEO scorecard showed best performing business press programs were most often fueled by a CEO with a strong POV.
We’ve been there when a CEO expected a team to produce top business press coverage but wasn’t willing to have a strong POV or make a bold claim.
MY CEO ISN'T COMFORTABLE HAVING A STRONG POV
We know it takes more than capes to do the job. There is a lot of magic that happens behind the scenes and at every level. Winning requires us to push the status quo, try different things, and really go above and beyond to make things happen. The best agency relationship boils down to moments of real talk and when someone thinks on their feet, leans into a challenging situation and trusts their instinct. Here are just a few of the times we’ve made sparks fly.
BEHIND THE SCENES MAGIC HAPPENS EVERY DAY
THANK YOU!
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