PR pays off for META Group South Africa

In addition, the company's profile in the media has increased substantially since expanding its PR activities through Livewired Communications, its PR partner.

"The success of METAmorphosis, as well as our increased visibility in the marketplace can be attributed to planning and our integrated approach to PR, marketing and sales efforts," says Eric Cowling, marketing and public relations manager at META Group South Africa. "It has always been important for us to ensure continuity with the brand image in all our marketing efforts. This was even more crucial this year with the launch of our new branding in March 2003."

"So often companies make the mistake of implementing piece meal activities, or leaving their initiatives to the last minute resulting in limited options and little impact. Having various initiatives on the go and never really ensuring they are all working towards the same goal, or dovetailing initiatives to get maximum exposure, can seriously affect the outcome of a company's marketing and sales programme."

Bums on Seats for METAmorphosis

Besides the fact that the topics were relevant and the calibre of speakers were high, the marketing and PR initiatives for METAmorphosis 2003 contributed highly to the conference's success. META Group and Livewired Communications started looking at a PR and marketing plan seven months before the event.

"It was crucial that we spent time identifying relevant media as well as planning in advance below-the-line marketing, advertising and PR activities, timing and initiatives that would take place." says Cowling. "Planning way ahead gave us the time needed to secure media sponsorships, tie up initiatives and marketing collateral, and change tactics if required."

Lara Nel, general manger at Livewired Communications adds: "It is great to work with a client who understands the value of planning and executing well ahead of time. In addition, the fact that we approached media together upfront meant we could dovetail PR with the advertising and marketing plans to get better results."

Nel adds that marketing/advertising and PR firms often don't 'talk' to each other resulting in not exactly the right result being obtained. "META Group handled most of the advertising design and marketing collateral themselves and we worked extremely closely to ensure a collaborative execution."

A strategy that worked well was to tie up a few media, which META Group had targeted with advertising and marketing initiatives, who would get exclusive articles leading up to the event - this was used to create interest around key topics and speakers balanced with topics these media were interested in. "It was important that we promote METAmorphosis but we needed to ensure the information was of interest to the journalists and their readers," explains Nel.

"We held a teleconference before the event which was used to outline some of the key trends META would be talking about at METAmorphosis. This was highly successful in creating media interest for the event," she says.

"In addition, Livewired offered one-on-one interviews with the international and local META Group analysts at METAmorphosis which went down really well," adds Cowling.

The major objective of the PR pre-publicity campaign around METAmorphosis was to achieve a high level of awareness around the conference and assist with raising attendance figures for 2003. As such, the main measurable was to assess the clippings that appeared in the press. In addition, media interviews and attendance on the day were tactics used to achieve a high level of post-publicity and market awareness for META Group.

Lara Nel says, "The pre-publicity we aimed for was to achieve about 19 releases in the media. On analyzing the coverage we achieved an overall clippings count of 39 which included events notifications in various media. We had 15 media attend METAmorphosis and conduct interviews with analysts, and have already seen 11 articles published in the media. With the rest of the four media we expect articles to appear in the coming month."

On the whole, the PR campaign was extremely successful, with overall objectives being exceeded.

META Group's marketing tactics included: an electronic email campaign of invites and teasers to its own database; banners and newsletters through ITWeb; an insertion campaign in targeted print media; and adverts in targeted print media.

On the marketing side, Cowling explained what worked for META Group: "Sending marketing material out early really works. We started advertising and sending out inserts in January through to the beginning of May (the conference was held on 27-29 May) and only stopped briefly during the school holidays."

"Our numbers picked up substantially when the detailed brochures were inserted in selected publications and distributed to our database. These detailed the actual topics and profiles of international speakers and demonstrated the qualifications of these individuals. When you are paying for a conference of this nature, you want to be assured that you are getting high quality speakers," says Cowling.

Higher visibility for META Group SA

META Group has been using Livewired Communications for six years now. However in the last two years, META Group and Livewired have worked closely to increase activities on its various initiatives to achieve a higher impact.

"In line with our business growth goals and an increasingly competitive environment, it was important that we increase our visibility in the market and thus worked closely with the PR agency to see how we could achieve this," says Cowling.

"We combined a number of tactics which worked for us, from traditional press releases, media interviews, teleconferences, and media relationship building," he says. "A big advantage for us is the fact our content is so interesting. Despite this however, we still needed to ensure we consistently got relevant exclusive information to targeted media as quickly as possible."

"We couldn't have done this without the understanding and knowledge Livewired has built up around our business. Their ability to know what hot topics the media are interested in and to target media with the right information made a big difference to our results."

Nel added that consistency is very important in any campaign, and this shows in the media exposure META Group is currently getting. Livewired uses a variety of measurables to assess the results of its campaign, from press coverage to positivity assessments to the impact of establishing personal relationships with media. One indication of the success of its media campaign is reflected in the clippings achieved: in 2002 META Group South Africa had a total of 137 press clippings, all in its target audience - business newspapers and magazines and IT trade media.

Cowlings adds that more South African IT decision-makers are talking about META Group, which is a good indication that the company is getting spin-off from its raised profile. "There is almost a different culture of interaction from our existing and potential new clients," he says. "Companies seem to have a higher degree of confidence and trust in our company which is hard to measure, but is definitely due to our increased visibility in the market place."

"Another important aspect of why the PR campaign is working so well," says Nel, "is the fact that META Group was so willing to get involved in media relationship building. They saw the value of what we were doing and supported our initiatives 100% by making themselves available and by being responsive to the media. This is a great example of how when you work together in partnership you can achieve so much more in your PR results."