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Siemens USA faced several major challenges — and opportunities — as it sought to become better known in the media, notes Bud, the company's former vice president of public relations, and Jacob, public relations director for Siemens Information and Communications Mobile LLC.
First, there was the confusion with Seaman's First, a furniture company whose slogan was "See Seaman's First." Siemens also was a balkanized organization that focused on trade publications reaching end-users, not C-level executives. It was perceived as a German conglomerate rather than a U.S. player and it employed no cogent communications planning.
Bud and his team decided Siemens should "be a source, not a subject" by becoming more of a resource to journalists. They took the $18+ billion U.S. operation, with 13 operating companies and 120+ business units, and developed four core messages that focusing on innovation, the power of "One Siemens," financial strength and pride of association.
They began a broad outreach to the business press with editorial board meetings, desk-side briefings and lists of expert resources at Siemens. They also blanketed the broadcast media with an innovative video package approximately every six weeks that transformed a typical video news release (VNR) and incorporated third-parties so that broadcast outlets could use them when running a story on mobile phones or some other Siemens product.
Siemens also began an aggressive "grass tops–grassroots strategy" in communities where the company had operations to develop a cohesive government and community outreach initiative.
Most importantly, Siemens imposed measurable targets and employed measurement tools that evaluated actual results against targets. It also tracked competitors' coverage. The proprietary Web-based monitoring and analysis program could be accessed by anyone in the company who could retrieve information based on the person's password-protection authority.
The measurement program allowed Siemens to easily target key markets and track the coverage generated in those markets.
Jacob outlined what Siemens did when it launched its new SL56 mobile phone in the fall of 2003 and sought to position the trendy slider phone as the ideal phone for fashion-conscious, high-end consumers and business users. Its challenges: It had to compete with launches of other new mobile phones, break through to the new fashion industry audience and deal with a similar design introduced by a competitor.
Siemens used Fashion Week as its venue, placing the phone around the necks of models, and it beat its competition to the punch with its launch. Jacob also sponsored a Vogue party and gave guests VIP gift bags with a phone in them to build buzz. Siemens also held a phone designer press tour, using the head of its design group in Munich to talk about the phone's materials and other features through the use of storyboards. Other events, including trade shows, also helped promote the phone.
The results: 35 million media impressions with a reach of 88 million — and the phone's market share rose to 3.5 percent from zero.
Genentech's senior director of corporate relations related how humanizing the research company's scientists best communicates what Genentech does, especially since the science of its drugs is very complicated. "Everything at Genentech is based on science and our scientists are the rock stars," she said.
Mary and her staff use innovative media strategies to tell its story. When its colorectal cancer drug Avastin was approved in January, the home page of the company's Web site immediately sported a photograph of an unassuming middle-aged man in a rumpled shirt. He was Napoleon Ferrara, who with a team of scientists identified and cloned a gene — VEGF, for short — that plays a critical role in blood-vessel formation. Ferrara demonstrated that an antibody directed at VEGF could suppress tumor growth and that antibody became Avastin.
Mary emphasized that everything at Genentech — from the CEO's passion, to its mission statement to the corporate strategy — is based on the science. And its scientists, Genentech's ambassadors, regularly do interviews, backgrounders and briefings with the media.
Genentech also embraces patients who sign up for its clinical trials and who benefit from its therapeutics. Occasionally, it links up its scientists with patients who have benefited from their drugs. "It's a darn good story," she says.