Influencer Relations Rebuilds Confidence and Brand Through Vision and Consistency

1. ISILON CASE STUDY
Influencer Relations
Rebuilds Confidence
and Brand Through
Vision and Consistency

2. “ Isilon’s problems aren’t over…
it must restore confidence among
Summary
Once a darling of Wall Street, data storage systems provider
customers at a time when it faces Isilon had weathered several blows to its business and
credibility when the company engaged McClenahan Bruer
much more competition than it
”
in February 2009. With game-changing new products
did a year ago.
in the pipeline and its leadership team rejuvenated,
Dave Raffo - Journalist, Isilon was more than ready to open a new chapter in its
Search Storage, April 2008 checkered history. Customers and influencers would need
to be convinced.
Working together, Isilon’s precise business execution
and McBru’s disciplined strategy for communicating
a vision eliminated lingering doubt in the market. The
effort spawned an unbroken string of positive coverage
in national business weeklies including the Wall Street
Journal, and drove stock prices up tenfold, and set the
stage for a highly visible acquisition.
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3. Situation
In late 2006, Isilon recorded the best opening for a storage products in anticipation of customer needs – Patel
technology IPO since 2000 as its shares rose 77 percent often spoke of the company’s “insane customer focus.” A
on the company’s first day as a public venture. raft of well-targeted new products filled the R&D pipeline,
positioning Isilon to grow its business beyond traditional
Unfortunately for the company and its shareholders, there niches and dramatically increasing the company’s total
would be little good news in the two years that followed. available market.
Through 2007 and into 2008, internal auditing and an
SEC investigation found overstated revenues. A threat of However, perceptions of the “old Isilon” continued to linger.
delisting from NASDAQ was followed by a restatement They weakened the company’s standing among potential
of earnings, which showed customers, who rightfully
much of the company’s found little to like in Isilon’s
The company had new management, new
reported sales momentum to reputation and doubted
products and a fresh commitment. Now, time
have been a work of fiction. the company’s long-term
Legal action from the SEC to purge perceptions of the “old Isilon.” viability. These perceptions
and a class action from also had a significant impact
shareholders soon followed. The company’s once-heralded on industry journalists and analysts, who had closely
position as a disruptive innovator in the IT marketplace observed, and in many cases chronicled themselves, the
had been replaced with perceptions of ineptness and poor company’s meteoric rise and near-fatal fall. With a brilliant
governance – if not outright malfeasance. young founder returned to the CEO’s office, its corporate
house now well in order and a refreshed product lineup
Under these trying circumstances, Isilon founder and ready to be sold, the company’s chief obstacles to success
former CTO Sujal Patel took over as CEO in October 2007 was be its damaged credibility and poor reputation. Adding
and proceeded to clean house. Eleven top executives to the challenge, Isilon’s brand awareness had significant
were replaced. The corporate culture was infused with room for growth, as studies later confirmed.
a wholesale commitment to innovating market-leading
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4. Strategy
With the business still feeling the effects of its prior anticipation of the ways in which digital media consumption
missteps and its share price hovering at the $2.00 level, would change how enterprises must store, manage and
Isilon came to McBru for strategy and tactics to take its make use of data. The successful return of a founder to
new, positive direction to market. When strategic planning the CEO’s office underscored the notion that the company
began, the company saw its strengthened product roadmap had started down a singular path to success that others
and a considerable investment in sales infrastructure as struggled to match. The strategy was quickly agreed
its key assets to winning back a skeptical marketplace. upon: Isilon would embark on a comprehensive influencer
Both parties agreed that influencer relations would be relations program, aggressively targeting industry media
the primary vehicle to boost awareness and preference. and analysts with a revealing, long-term vision for the
But with market perception still highly unfavorable, company, its business and its technology.
McBru recommended a longer-term perspective and
a higher-level message. Rather than depend solely on Execution
a technology story to woo back a disgruntled industry, The strategy was executed with a goal of infusing all
McBru saw an opportunity for a press materials and influencer
broad-based influencer relations interactions with the Isilon vision.
After crafting the strategy and core
program focused on delivering This vision would serve to unify
platform, McBru conducted briefings,
an aggressive new vision and and give context to business- and
product innovations for the launches and a tour for top influencers. marketing-level messages, being
company and the industry. deployed in addition to, rather
than at the expense of, those messages.
As pioneers of scale-out storage, Isilon could assert its
insight into the factors driving the marketplace – the Messaging was an important element of executing against
explosion of digital data foremost among them – and the strategy. McBru constructed a core platform, including
how its products outpaced the competition in addressing business, category leadership and go-to-market messages
market trends. Its first-mover position showed a prescient aligned to customers and purchasing influencers from
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5. the CIO level to junior level storage administrators. That
platform served as a touchstone for all press- and public-
facing materials.
The team’s first opportunity to put the strategy to the
test came quickly, as Isilon was poised to announce
several new products. McBru directed and implemented
a product launch that illustrated how the strategy would
be executed over the long term. The launch targeted key
media and analysts from across IT and vertical industry
media, as well as a long list of industry analysts, for face-
to-face, pre-launch briefings as part of a road tour to major
press centers in the U.S. McBru targeted a “who’s who”
list of key influencers in IT media and analysts, with an
emphasis on those who had visibly soured on Isilon. Patel
joined the tour to lead many of the briefings personally.
and the company’s commitment to moving forward.
The tour was the ideal opportunity to bring disaffected
journalists and analysts back to the table and reinvigorate Level-setting the business story – Offering an in-depth
those relationships by laying out Isilon’s roadmap and understanding of the state of Isilon’s business would
demonstrating its execution against vision. The launch’s provide a platform for demonstrating future success and
role in manifesting the visionary strategy hinged on: execution against the business model. Share of market
segments, goals for business and category growth, and
Hitting the reset button – the presentations to press market opportunity for new products were up for discussion.
would explicitly acknowledge Isilon’s past missteps, the
organizational and policy changes made to correct them, Laying claim to the future – the launch briefings went
5

6. Results
Based on coverage alone, Isilon and McBru’s first product
press tour was a great success, outstripping the results from
any of the company’s prior launches. More importantly,
the success it achieved in resetting relationships with
key influencers served to conclusively put their negative
perceptions of Isilon on hold, allowing the company the
precious opportunity to prove itself against the aggressive
expectations it had set forth. And the company executed,
marking milestone
after milestone against
the roadmap to which
it had laid claim. The
Isilon communications
to great lengths to educate influencers on Isilon’s first- team leveraged those
mover position in scale-out storage and its early bet on milestones, including
unstructured data as the wave of the future, including key product and business
an assemblage of proof points as to how the market news opportunities,
was poised to meet Isilon’s direction. With that context to continue conveying
in place, Isilon clearly communicated its business Isilon’s vision and extend
objectives, including specific timeframes and deliverables it forward. At the same
on its product roadmap. These become the milestones time, McBru continually seeded the core messages
to which the influencer relations program could return, supporting that vision through ongoing influencer relations
time and again, to demonstrate Isilon’s execution and the and social media programs.
prescience of its vision.
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7. Isilon Stock Price
From mired to acquired, McBru helped Isilon drive up share prices
10X, leading to a big acquisition by EMC.
Indeed, McBru’s analysis of the media coverage showed
overwhelmingly positive viewpoints about the company
in 2009 and 2010, whereas 2007 and 2008 had seen
negative stories arrive by the dozen. Moreover, during
In the time since Feb. 2009, Isilon marked a host of major the course of the McBru influencer relations program,
milestones. The company was placed in the Leaders’ the agency measured dramatic improvement in both the
quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for network volume and the tone of coverage from journalists across
attached storage providers, heralding its competitiveness the spectrum – while coverage in early 2009 was largely
with companies including IBM and EMC. In Feb. 2010, neutral in tone, coverage in 2010 shows a significant
the company announced Q4 2009 as the first profitable uptick in journalists’ affinity for the company and its
quarter in its nine-year history for which it earned coverage visionary messages.
across local and national business press, including The
Wall Street Journal – Isilon’s first positive press in such
outlets in nearly three years.
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8. The company’s execution against its stated vision fueled
other, much more salient benefits as well. Isilon exceeded
expectations with quarter-over-quarter growth in revenue,
margins and profit through Q3 2010. And while its share
price was moribund at the $2 level in early 2009, as of Oct.
2010 the company’s shares had surpassed $29. Before
the end of that year, the company reached its ultimate
business objective when it was acquired by storage giant
EMC Corp. for $2.25 billion, or $33.85 per share.
Obviously, tremendous credit for Isilon’s story goes to
the visionary leaders and hard-working sales, marketing
and operations professionals whose dedication and effort
saw the company through its
darkest hours to earn its greatest
McBru helped Isilon develop and
successes. Isilon was able to shed
the lingering effects of its public convey a new vision that pointed
failings, establish a leadership to a rich future.
position in the market, and achieve
a remarkably lucrative outcome for its investors – and
for that, credit belongs to a disciplined communications
strategy. McBru helped Isilon develop and convey a vision
of a company that thinks beyond products, problems, and
the here and now and instead points toward a future in
which its business model and customer focus leads an
ever-growing market.
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9. 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
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