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Marketing Promise
Generating buzz — before your products are out of the gate
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Business New Haven
1/25/1999
By: Matt Straznitskas
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One of the biggest contributors to the economic resurgence of the New Haven region has been the growth of high-tech companies. Down on Long Wharf, CuraGen has become one of the fastest-growing genomics research and development companies in the nation. Meanwhile, over on Church Street, a small Internet software developer called Metaserver has hopes to revolutionize the way companies go on-line.
The state has placed a lot of confidence in the high-tech sector. In turn, the pressure is on these young companies to succeed by transforming their high-tech promises into tangible products and services.
From a marketing standpoint, this presents a unique challenge: How do you market promise without a product? In order to grow, these firms need investment capital and energetic employees. But without a product to point to, how can they lure the money and talent they need?
Branding is an approach to marketing that has become popular over the last decade. It is a technique that focuses on a company's reputation and image to form a positive perception in the minds of target audiences.
One advantage that high-tech companies often have is that their brands are so new, there are seldom any negatives associated with them. On the other hand, the newness of their brands also usually means that they are unknown; little or no public awareness has been established.
As an example, CuraGen recently launched an outdoor advertising campaign to increase its awareness in the local market. Having gone through a public offering earlier this year, CuraGen has begun to gain recognition on Wall Street. But the company was a virtual unknown in its own back yard - the place where it needed to turn to recruit new talent.
Working with them, our company developed an advertising campaign with a single image and the message: “No Limits.” The result? A significant increase in traffic to the CuraGen Web site by both potential employees and investors.
In today's channel-surfing, Web-clicking, page-turning world, creating a brand image is no easy task. All media - print, television, radio, Web - must be considered and all of the messages must be integrated. In determining what media is right for what message, companies need to look at several factors, including: Who is the audience? Where do they get their information? What action do they want the target audience to take?
For CuraGen, an outdoor billboard to direct prospective employees and investors to the company's upgraded Web site was the right solution. For Metaserver, branding challenges required a more aggressive approach.
Metaserver's business environment is based on immediacy, and major players rely almost exclusively on the Web to reach business prospects. To succeed, Metaserver needed a Web site to reflect the technological savvy of the company's core product.
The company's site (www.mserver.com) was launched October 19 and has already gone a long way to enhance Metaserver's brand image. The site has been upgraded to include animation and audio, and will soon include a multimedia presentation to provide an interactive look at the Metaserver product..
If your company has more promise than products, building a successful brand image could be a key to success. By tapping into the creative essence of that promise, you can create a brand that is not only unique in the marketplace, but also serves as the cornerstone on which all of your communications messages can be built. BNH
Matt Straznitskas is president and founder of BrainBug (www.brainbug.com), a creative branding and advertising agency based in Hartford.
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