Case Studies

Nissan Hits the Slopes with the Oriella PR Network

Auto manufacturer Nissan approached the Oriella PR Network help it become the car brand of choice for Europe's winter sports fans. Oriella's brief was to promote Nissan's take-over of four top European resorts, and its sponsorship of the Freeride World Tour - an extreme skiing and snowboarding competition held across Europe and North America.

The Oriella PR Network seized the opportunity to take Nissan out of the automotive pages and place the brand into the influential lifestyle pages of aspirational glossy magazines, newspaper lifestyle sections, broadcast and social media sites for the first time. Its campaign emphasized the importance of the car in memorable winter holidays, and positioned Nissan as the must-have brand.

In all, the campaign generated over 100 articles and blog posts and a total audience reach of over 187 million people.

Strategy & Tactics

To make the message appeal to the target media, the Oriella PR Network ensured editors and social media influencers experienced the thrill and innovation of Nissan's winter sports story for themselves.

We identified key editors across Europe, flew them to Freeride World Tour events, and gave them a white-knuckle experience which would translate into stand-out coverage. The press events included: snow-drives in innovative Nissan Qashqais; flying to untouched backcountry slopes; showing them something they had never seen before, close-up - the extreme freeride sport; letting them experience life through the elite athlete's eyes on the FWT competition slopes - as well as a buzzing after-party.

Brands2Life, leading the campaign from the UK, crafted a European strategy and created content toolkits to help the rest of the team deliver stand-out coverage. The toolkits included pre-written media pitches on topics ranging from snow sports careers to health and beauty, interviews with Freeride World Tour participants, video assets and photography.

In addition, the Oriella team implemented a fully outsourced, self-managing network model, coordinated by Brands2Life. This approach ensured real consistency of delivering Nissan's messaging to local media, and provided Nissan's European communications team with regular, detailed progress reports and coverage updates.

Results

The campaign exceeded expectations on every level. Not only did the Oriella PR Network take Nissan's story far beyond the automotive media, key messaging objectives were achieved as well. 'Exciting' was the most used key message to describe the sponsorship.

The PR programme delivered 108 clippings in our key target media throughout Europe, including:

  • Germany: 33 articles with plenty of blogging coverage
  • Spain: 19 articles including trusted regional titles; El Mundo and El Commercio
  • Italy: 16 articles including Italy's highest circulating lifestyle magazine - For Him
  • UK: 14 including the key national media; The People, Financial Times and Guardian

Additionally, the number of pieces with Nissan photography outnumbered those that didn't by two to one, and three out of four clippings included the URL to Nissan's campaign microsite.

BitDefender Taps Oriella for US and Brazil

BitDefender is the creator of one of the industry's fastest and most effective lines of internationally certified security software. Every day, BitDefender protects tens of millions of home and corporate users across the globe - giving them the peace of mind of knowing that their digital experiences will be secure.

Headquartered in Romania, BitDefender engaged Horn Group in the U.S. as their agency of record; six months later Oriella partner VIANEWS was brought on board to launch BitDefender in Brazil.

Together, the agencies were tasked with the following goals:

  • Differentiate BitDefender in a crowded marketplace * Build brand awareness in technology and SMB markets
  • Help launch BitDefender's new operation in Brazil

Strategy & Tactics

To differentiate BitDefender in the US, Horn Group created and innovative content strategy that included video, social applications and games. Horn Group's PR and interative teams worked together to create several videos in multiple languages to be included in the launch of the BitDefender 2011 products. The agency worked closely with the client to develop the script and creative direction to bring the visuals to life. This series of videos are now seen by customers around the world who install BitDefender 2011.

Horn Group also produced a Flash-based game/contest centered on finding hidden items within the 5 existing videos provided by BitDefender. The look and feel was drawn from BitDefender's branding, as well as other specified sources. BitDefender promoted the 'scavenger hunt' as a contest on tech blogs and forums with the outcome of an iPad drawing

In Brazil, BitDefender engaged Oriella partner VIANEWS to help make the BitDefender brand stand out in the competitive sector of information security in Brazil. At the time, dozens of brands already operated there and BitDefender was entirely unknown in Brazil.

Tactics included:

  • Helping the company understand the local Brazilian culture
  • Advising BitDefender's executives on relationships with the media and social networks in Brazil
  • Making BitDefender quickly known by journalists, bloggers, tweeters and analysts in Brazil
  • Establishing the BitDefender spokesperson as athought leader in AV industry
  • Developing relationships with key online influencers within tech communities
  • Close coordination with Horn Group in the US for consistent global messaging

Results

In just six months, BitDefender went from unknown brand to notable force in Brazil. VIANEWS secured 10 favorable product reviews, 19 media interviews, almost 400 articles in the press and more than 650 post in social media. Twitter followers grew to 890 in the region, with more than 1,100 new followers across all the major social networks. The branded content campaign in the US won awards for design innovation and helped BitDefender engage its customers and differentiate in a crowded market.

WebEx, a Cisco Systems, Inc. company, delivers on-demand applications for collaborative business on the web. Helping customers meet ambitious goals for marketing, sales, training, and support, WebEx provides solutions for organizations of all sizes. The company engaged with several Oriella partners to drive a consistent message around the world.

More than Web Conferencing

Founded in 1996, WebEx quickly established itself as the leader in web conferencing solutions. But since then, the company had expanded its solutions beyond web conferencing to include customized on-demand applications. Oriella partners were tasked with raising awareness for WebEx with an emphasis on its full suite of products and establishing the company's leadership in the on-demand marketplace while maintaining a consistent global message.

Strategy & Tactics


The messages and themes were the same, but localized delivery unique. Each region is different, so tactics that work in the US may miss in Germany. Taking direction from WebEx Corporate, the Oriella PR Network adapted initiatives to meet the needs of the market while keeping a consistent theme.

Major initiatives


  • Owning "on-demand": a thought-leadership campaign promoting WebEx heritage, expertise and vision in the SaaS space
  • Clean the air, one meeting at a time: a "green" campaign persuading business professionals that meeting online is a more efficient way to meet and helps reduce environmental pollution
  • Future of the workforce: a flexible working campaign promoting online meetings as a an effective way of supporting remote working and enabling busy professionals to collaborate where ever they are based and to be more productive.

With monthly calls across the all agencies, the global network stays informed of what others are doing, brainstorming on ideas and swapping best practices. In addition, it gives WebEx Corporate consistent reporting across the globe and a one stop shop for getting answers.

Results


Following the "owning on-demand" campaign, WebEx has become widely recognized as one of top three on demand providers:

For the "green campaign", we have supported this corporate initiative with creative campaigns including plant a tree promotion, media roundtables and the WebEx Carbon Calculator

The successful "Future of the Workforce" campaign results in top tier media results spanning the globe:

"The value of the Oriella PR Network is in its tight integration of PR processes and workflow. It's harder than it seems to find a network of like-minded agencies with the same vision and approach to helping clients effectively develop, coordinate and execute global communications programs. Oriella was built on more than a handshake."

Rick Faulk
Former Chief Marketing Officer at WebEx


Oriella Partners

Micro Focus, a FTSE 250 listed company, provides innovative software that allows companies to improve the business value of their enterprise applications.

In 2002, Brands2Life was tasked with these original communications goals:

  • Re-launch Micro Focus with an emphasis on highlighting the benefits of unlocking the value held within legacy systems and reposition COBOL in the Java, .Net & Web services spaces
  • Educate on the status of COBOL as a future-proof technology
  • Generate regular coverage across the trade, business, national and vertical press
  • Reach C-level decision-makers as well as the core IT audience - support direct and indirect sales
  • Ongoing support for public relations framework

Since then, the objectives have evolved to include these objectives in 2007:

  • Highlight the benefits organizations can realize by modernizing their existing systems, rather than looking to 'rip and replace' them
  • Raise the profile of Micro Focus as a successful company on the FTSE 250, after it became the first software company to float on the Stock Exchange in April 2005, since the dotcom bubble burst
  • Support ongoing events and acquisition news
  • Educate the market on the needs for COBOL skills in enterprises before existing engineers reach retirement and for IT graduates to have business acumen

Strategy & Tactics


Our strategy has been to drive the debate on the relevance of COBOL in today's global economy and to present Micro Focus as a software market leader and as an authority on IT infrastructure.

Specific tactics have been deployed to achieve this:

  • International campaign management on INSEAD project to encourage global businesses to acknowledge the value of their core IT systems
  • Briefing campaign with 'inner circle' of tier one media
  • Core 'Drumbeat' media relations campaign with 'win everything' approach to IT trade features and reviews
  • Thought leadership campaign (opinion pieces, rapid response)
  • Product launch news generation
  • Roundtable debates
  • Research projects
  • International conferences
  • Customer case studies

Results


Since September 2002, the Oriella team has generated more than 650 pieces of coverage for Micro Focus, including 150 pieces in 2007 alone and 20 pieces of national coverage. The CIOs Dilemma campaign generated almost 45 individual placements.

In the German market, PR-Com landed high-profile placements like:

"PR-COM is by far the best PR agency we've ever had."

Bernhard Gölitz,
Country Manager DACH


Oriella Partners