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former Vice President Marketing, ONStor
ONStor Goes Green, Competitors Envy
| Project: | Thought Leadership Campaign: Greening of the Data Cente. |
| Challenge: | Reverse the perception that “greening” of the data center is just a passing fad, and help ONStor to rise above the noise of its larger competitors to establish credibility and visibility for the company and its products. |
| Results: | Secured comprehensive feature coverage in more than 45 stories in 20 top IT publications including InfoWorld, InformationWeek, Network World, Business Solutions, Data Center Journal, Byte & Switch, and Greentech. The coverage spanned a five month period and continues to grow, was overwhelmingly positive, and positioned ONStor as a thought leader in the increasingly vital green data center movement. |
“Greening” the enterprise data center was becoming a favorite topic of IT trade publications and the analyst community, however it was being commonly referred to as not a “real” concern and somewhat of a fad. ONStor has extremely energy-efficient products (scalable, clustered NAS gateways) that not only cut down on power consumption, but they also are extremely space saving which also adds to cost-savings. The Trainer team set out to demonstrate that high power consumption and lack of cooling capacity in the data center weren’t just problems for IT but for business; that “greening” wasn’t going away as vital issue; and that it could be effectively addressed by deploying ONStor products.
Trainer’s “green dream team” went to work on how to demonstrate ONStor’s “eco-nomics” and over a five month period took a rolling thunder approach to the project:
- Issued a news release responding to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative which calls for computer makers and their customers to adopt technologies that significantly reduce energy consumption. The release outlined how ONStor’s products bring quantifiable savings to businesses as compared with traditional direct-attached and networked storage environments. This was sent and pitched to IT trade publications and “green” technology news outlets.
- Issued a second news release leveraging the information above and repurposing it for the IT reseller community. The message was centered around how ONStor products could help reseller’s customers to “go green.” This was sent and pitched to the IT reseller press.
- Invited the company to create a “GO Green with ONStor” logo that could be used in all collateral pieces, at tradeshows, and on the company’s website in order to reinforce the message.
- Helped coordinate with their marketing department to integrate the “green” theme into all outbound efforts, including providing ideas for use during marketing events – from green drinks and custom drink books at VIP customer dinners, to giving away planting seeds in their tradeshow booth.
- Created a survey, validating the questions with the analyst community, constructed the online survey, and interpreted the results. The survey was emailed to ONStor’s prospect and customer database and netted nearly 400 responses.
- Issued a news release about the startling results of the survey and positioned them so they would effectively communicate ONStor’s message that this is a widespread issue with IT departments (the survey results proved this) further demonstrating there is a huge demand for products that address the issue. The news release was sent and pitched to IT trade publications and “green” technology news outlets.
- Encouraged ONStor to join professional organizations that other large manufacturers have joined, such as the Green Grid and the green storage initiative started by the Storage Networking Industry Association, in order to further establish the company’s commitment to the issue in the public eye.
- Trainer secured comprehensive feature coverage for ONStor in more than 45 stories in 20-plus top IT channel publications including InfoWorld, InformationWeek, Network World, Business Solutions, Data Center Journal, and Byte & Switch where the CEO was commonly quoted and the company’s products were referenced. The coverage spanned a five month period and was overwhelmingly positive and positioned ONStor as a thought leader in the green movement.
