Ink Inc. Media Relations/PR

Avamar Technologies, Inc., software was highly touted by industry experts but the company had to overcome a huge perceptual juggernaut: Avamar’s solution was disk-based and broke from the status quo of tape-based backup systems offered by industry behemoths such Veritas and IBM.

The key to Avamar’s survival was to create a discussion in the trade media about disk vs. tape which had previously not existed.

INK developed a strategy that overcame these obstacles and resulted in more than 36 media placements in 2005 ranging from trade media to national business press.

* Increased revenue by 300 percent
* Increased the customer base by more than 300 percent, including five customers in the Fortune 200
* Increased the solution provider partner coverage by 500 percent
* Had two "major vendors" launch services based on Avamar technology (IBM "Point in Time Backup and Replication" and STK "ViaRemote")
* Expanded coverage into Europe and already have three production customers
* Won four awards for innovation and customer success

Coinciding with INK’s success, over the last year Avamar achieved the following accomplishments:

Key Success #1: Trade Media
INK crafted a strategy that aggressively targeted the storage and technology trades. The tactic proved a great success and produced the following placements:

* BIO IT World .com (2x)
* Byte & Switch.com (6x)
* ChannelINsider.com
* CIO Insight.com
* CRN (2x)
* Computer Technology Review (3x)
* Enterprise Systems(4x)
* eWeek (3x)
* Information Week
* INFOSTOR (2x)
* IT World
* Network World
* Network World Fusion(2x)
* searchstorage.com (12x)
* Storage Magazine (5x)
* Storage Pipeline.com (4x)
* Windows IT Pro

Key Success #2: Turning “boring” technology into a national business story

INK knew that Avamar’s product in and of itself did not have enough intrinsic newsworthiness to the business media. INK focused on trying to tie Avamar and Axion to real news events them.The strategy worked and led to placements in:
BusinessWeek.com
CNBC Europe
NPR
The Deal
The Wall Street Journal

Key Success #3: Transforming Negative Publicity into Positive Publicity

Negative publicity is reality. Companies need to know that it is eventually going to happen for one reason or another. What is crucial is how a company deals with it when it happens.

INK assessed the particular reasons the client received the negative review and worked with Avamar to create a point-by-point rebuttal that revealed misunderstandings of the company’s technology and what Avamar viewed as an incomplete assessment of one area of the market. Through diligent and targeted outreach, INK secured two subsequent stand-alone stories with Byte and Switch, including a feature on Avamar CEO Ed Walsh.

Key Success #4: The Perfect Placement

A number of the hits INK placed included very prestigious media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and NPR—however, none of these are the hit we are the most proud of. The placement that best represents the success of our campaign is the one garnered in a media outlet that is little known outside of the storage industry. The hit, titled “Hospital Ditches Veritas, tape”, was in Searchstorage.com, a key storage trade outlet. Here is why we take such pride in this particular placement: This placement was born from a slow news period forcing INK to develop alternate methods of getting press.

INK studied Searchstorage.com for months and decided to develop possible feature story around the case study for Avamar customer St. Peter’s Hospital. The pitch was custom-tailored for the reporter we felt would be most receptive based on previous stories she had penned. INK secured a series of interviews with Searchstorage.com that resulted in a wonderful, balanced 1000-word placement.