I.C. Angles Communications Post

In December 2017 a community nonprofit organization made a big news splash with a flurry of prominent media coverage around the local hunger issues it was grappling with. This coverage included a front page Guardian article that was featured prominently in Internet news aggregators, such as Google News and Drudge Report. For Second Harvest Food Bank in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties this coverage wasn’t due to luck. It was the result of a comprehensive and well-executed public relations plan. About a year later, now seems like a good time to tell the story behind that story.

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ICangles Communications Post…

A small French technology company was responsible for one of my most difficult communications consulting challenges. They wanted to see an article about themselves in a leading American business media publication, like Forbes, Fortune or the Wall Street Journal. Realizing that goal, wasn’t going to be easy. Not only were they not an American company, but they also weren’t listed on a U.S. stock exchange. So, I couldn’t pitch them as being of interest to readers, because they could buy the stock, or as some interesting made in America story of entrepreneurship or innovation. What’s more, the nature of their business and technology was also an obstacle. The company, Soitec, manufactured silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers for the semiconductor industry. Engineered materials utilized in the semiconductor manufacturing process aren’t exactly the type of topic most Americans frequently discuss amongst themselves, even those inclined to talk about business issues.

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Part Three: From Bundling to a Bundle

For the USB and IoT announcements, the Synopsys product teams had been willing to answer my oftentimes probing questions, collaborate in developing story angles that would be of interest to the editors, and speak to issues that might not be their top priority with an editorial community that has different priorities. Maximizing coverage required not just a spirit of partnership between myself and a product team, as well as the in-house PR team. It also required understanding we have an external partnership with the media, where we need to balance the message we want to communicate to customers, with the interests of the readership editors are serving. But sometimes, internal priorities take precedent over external considerations, and in the third quarter of 2015 that was going to necessitate a bundle of coordination, with some other announcements.

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Part Two: What’s New in IoT

On its face an announcement on a new product portfolio from a leading technology company, addressing the hot topic of the Internet of Things, should be an easy story to garner interest. And the truth was I could easily have gotten a lot of briefings for them from editors and analysts. But briefings don’t always translate into coverage, and those influencers were going to ask the same question I was asking right out of the gate. “What is new here?” It turns out several products in the announcement were “new.” But I pressed, what is new here, in terms of new for editors and analysts, i.e. we have not publicly announced it before? In terms of products the answer now became there was no new product that hadn’t been announced in the past few months. That was going to be our big obstacle.

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Part One: Connectivity Communications

Maximizing publicity around announcements in the technology industry, requires more than just regurgitating to editors why a company thinks their announcement is important, and then leveraging media relationships to schedule some interviews in the hope of an ensuing wave of coverage. To positively shape perceptions, to the greatest degree possible with a savvy customer base, requires some strategic thinking and tactical creativity. In the recent third quarter of 2015, I helped Synopsys, the leading semiconductor design and IP company, to blitz the trade media with more stories from a single company than they probably wanted to hear. But by creatively tailoring our announcements to topics of interest to their readership, we achieved extensive coverage. And first up for some creative thinking in Q3, was connectivity.

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