The Cloud continues to be one of the hottest technology themes across all enterprise organizations, and that’s no different for government agencies at the Federal, state and local levels. Then-U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra even announced an Administration-wide “cloud first” policy three-and-a-half years ago requiring agencies move some of their systems to a cloud-based service, and while budgets are in flux, that remains a priority for agencies. I read a recent article from IBM around top technology trends shaping the government’s future, and cloud computing was right behind mobile devices at the top of the list.

While there are conflicting reports across the public sector regarding the extent to which spending Cloud spending will grow in the near term, there is no uncertainty that the underlying spend figure is massive. As a result, companies in the cloud services business face opportunities and challenges in effectively marketing their offerings to federal agencies.

At the top of the list of challenges that makes government agencies a tough sell when it comes to moving to the cloud is security. Agencies require assurances on who has access to and controls their data, and about how they will get it back if a cloud provider goes out of business, is acquired or simply disappears. Messaging that works for the commercial sector might not resonate with government executives, while concepts around hybrid approaches might be a better solution.

My partner Don Goldberg recently wrote a blog post around Ten Tips for Marketing to the Government. Thinking about cloud service providers, some of these apply. Here are five that really need to be considered:

1- Dedicated Government messaging that is clear and easy to find is essential. Agency decision-makers will not sort through corporate messaging to discern what might be important to them.

2 – Speak the language of Government. Their needs are different than the needs of commercial enterprises. Understand their pain points and realize that mandates and mission requirements are driving a lot of the decision making. At the same time, don’t become consumed in ‘defensive messaging.’ In other words, companies become so sensitive to agency cloud concerns that messaging assumes a defensive posture that attempts to negate pre-conceived notions around security and control. These pain points are important, but don’t lose sight of putting forward positive messaging on all the benefits the Cloud can deliver.

3- Easy-to-find government specific landing pages are a must. If decision makers don’t quickly find information that is directly relevant to them, they will move on to a competitor’s website. We all too often find government subpages buried deep into a site, and masked with an all too obvious government façade that will only serve to completely negate the hard work of your sales and field marketing teams dedicated to this market

4 – Get involved in the community. If you are just getting started and don’t have case studies, getting involved in the community is important. Carpet baggers don’t succeed selling to the Federal government. It takes a dedicated, focused effort and commitment to the community.

5 – Think about many marketing avenues to get your message out. Buying some radio or sponsoring one event is not enough. Work with specialists who understand the government market and how to drive an integrated message into it – the impact of your spend will be easy to measure.

 

Sourcefire, one of the world’s leading security software enterprises, enlisted Bluetext to help it address numerous marketing and positioning challenges as it delivered a new generation of solutions in a crowded and competitive market. Our first task was to gather insights through a comprehensive global brand experience audit of how its brand is used and deployed, including a thorough market analysis. From that discovery process we were able to anticipate near- and long-term needs for the company. These insights allowed us to design a new corporate visual identity system and digital platform that would represent Sourcefire’s current and emerging brand.

Challenge

The Sourcefire corporate marketing team faced a number of challenges and opportunities as it headed into its next phase of growth. Many of these, such as brand control and identity consistency, were simply the result of the brand’s successful growth and rapid expansion. Others were tied to ever-changing and advancing technologies, and the effect these were having on the evolution of the overall cyber security marketplace as well as the impact on end-user wants, needs and behaviors.

Solutions

Bluetext’s first task was to conduct a comprehensive global audit of how the Sourcefire brand was being used and deployed, including the types of branding situations it faced in the market and its anticipated future needs. This analysis ultimately led to practical, real-world recommendations that would apply to the identity system we would develop.

Bluetext designed a series of illustrations consistent with a new brand attitude architecture we designed. The four dimension illustration series was used throughout hundreds of assets for Sourcefire with both a white base and black base design system, following research that the black and white option would be advantageous for Sourcefire marketing.

Finally, to complete the comprehensive new design system, Bluetext developed a comprehensive digital strategy spanning a responsive user experience design system, an enhanced Drupal content management system, partner and resource portals, and comprehensive brand identity guidelines building on the knowledge acquired from the brand audit. This tool set not only enables Sourcefire to effectively manage its brand consistently among internal stakeholders and external partners, but also serves as a touchstone, continually reminding all audiences of the brand’s strategic intent.

Results

Cisco acquired Sourcefire for $2.7 billion within one year of the completion of this engagement. By any measure, that would be considered a pretty good result.

If you have any doubts about where the business opportunities are growing in the technology market, come on out to the annual RSA information security conference in San Francisco this week and you will see a vibrant, action-packed explosion of companies showing off the latest developments in cyber security. Bluetext is out here this week, and the buzz is tremendous. RSA had to expand into a whole additional wing of the downtown Moscone Center just to house all of the vendors who are participating this year, and every night of the week there are dozens of parties and receptions.

Of course, the abundance of RSA participation underscores the central challenge for marketing and communications executives at companies here: How to break through the clutter and reach target customers in the face of hundreds of competitors. The simple answer is there is no simple answer. We’ve been spending hours walking the floors, talking with editors at the major publications, and chatting with many of the folks here from a wide variety of companies. There seems to be a consistent theme to what we’re hearing.

Reporters and customers don’t want to hear about the technology, they want to learn about how you have helped customers solve their cyber security challenges. The fact is, at the business level they don’t necessarily understand the technology, but they do know that they need to make a business case for any solution they want to consider. For those of us in the marketing and communications arena, this isn’t surprising. Talking about the market challenges and how a company has helped its customers is always a more compelling approach than describing the underlying technology, no matter how new and cool it might seem.

What we’re also hearing is that editors and customers want to know how that solution fits into the larger market trends that they are focused on, ranging from the move to the cloud to the aftermath of the Target security debacle from last year. They need to understand how they can meet their own market requirements and how they can avoid being the net poster-child for security breaches.

One of the hottest topics this year is around security automation; the ability to take measures across an organization’s network in near real-time to thwart attacks. It currently takes hours or longer to detect security events, and can takes weeks and months to resolve the attack. With automation, that can be handled in minutes. It also allows resources to be better allocated because they no longer have to respond manually to every threat. Bluetext’s client CSG Invotas is getting a huge amount of interest in its automation technology, but it’s clear that other competitors are using similar messaging—whether or not they can deliver on that promise.

And that offers the second lesson from RSA: Messaging needs to be both similar to the market space but differentiated from competitors. That might sound like a contradiction, and it’s no easy task. But the point is that if there a market trend that you are addressing, that must be made clear. Yet at the same time, how your solution is different from everyone else’s and why it is the best solution also needs to be part of that message.

Clear, concise and compelling messages, and telling your story through the customer’s eyes. Those are the two main marketing messages we’re getting from RSA.

Everywhere you turn, people are talking about responsive design. It is a critical website solution for providing your customers and prospects a seamless experience across all devices and making it easy for you to manage one web infrastructure.

With a responsive website, businesses can be in front of consumers at every step of their online journey. A user viewing a website on the go via a mobile device can have the same powerful experience as when sitting in their office.

Responsive websites provide continuity between different viewing contexts, remaining completely agnostic to the type of device used and the size of the screen it has.

Unfortunately, a mobile version of your website isn’t good enough anymore. Responsive websites simplify internet marketing and SEO. Instead of having to develop and manage content for multiple websites, businesses with responsive sites can take a unified approach to content management because they have only the one responsive site to manage. The same applies to analytics and strategy development and deployment. A responsive website means there is only one set of analytics to examine and a single strategy to develop and deploy.

Responsive websites are easier for consumers to find than traditional or mobile sites because they come up higher in search engines’ rankings. Google recommends responsive web design because having a single URL for desktop and mobile sites makes it easier for Google to discover content and for Google’s algorithms, which are constantly changing, to assign indexing properties to content.

Responsive Design in the Future

Responsive design is still in its infancy, and the future looks extremely bright. All of our websites are responsive today, and our developers are exploring emerging areas of responsive design by testing a multitude of integrations that are now available.

As the internet transforms further into a platform of services and user interfaces that tie those services together, leveraging responsive design principals will allow companies to integrate a plethora of back-end services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services, and then present the integrated data to users in an integrated manner. Expensive back-end solutions are no longer a requirement to integrate legacy systems with business partners.

One thing is certain, you don’t want to fall behind and watch your competitors launch responsive websites while yours is still stuck in 2012. The time to get responsive with your web design is now.

Critical Elements to address when thinking about a re-brand?

• Do you really know the audience you want to influence with your brand and what they think of your company? If the answer is, “We think so but are not 100% sure or in agreement,” start with research into your customers and prospects to understand your brand starting point. Determine the channels they use to interact with your brand. Do they visit your site via a mobile device but you have not optimized for mobile?
• Don’t rebrand for the sake of re-branding. What are the corporate goals you are trying to accomplish? Are you launching a new product or service line? Have you slowly transformed your market but your current customer base does not know it? Do you need to energize your employee base?
• Analyze and agree upon your story and message. Many people can design a great logo, but it is the story behind the logo and brand initiative that is critical.
• Use the rebrand as your chance and excuse to re-introduce yourself to current customers.
• Think about all the brand elements to drive consistency. A new logo without a matching website experience, family of templates, new business cards, office signage, etc. can really fall flat. Make sure you design a corporate style guide that is strictly followed across the board, and can be expanded to business partners and other audiences.
• Start with your internal audience to roll it out. Your employees are your number one brand ambassadors. If they are excited about the brand and message you will immediately have a fleet of people ready to share it.
• Measure the impact of the rebrand. What are the key performance indicators you are measuring? Are you getting more meetings? Are you getting more website visitors? Is there a better understanding of your brand six months after launch? 12 months?
• Is your rebrand designed to scale as you enter new markets or expand with new products?
• Are there international considerations now or in the future related to your brand that you need to address?
• As you think about all of these, remember that planning is critical. A strongly mapped out strategy will get you the required results you desire for your brand.

 

The Republican National Convention has wrapped up in Tampa, Florida, after last night’s big speech by Mitt Romney. And perhaps more than anything else, the week was an attempt by the GOP to shape its own brand and message on its own terms. So how’d they do? For answers, let’s bring in Don Goldberg. He’s a branding and marketing strategist with BlueText in Washington. He says the goal was to attract the women vote and bring in more young people. “What they needed to do was put up a bunch of good spokespeople who could could send those messages to those audiences,” Goldberg says. “That’s the kind of thing that we would tell them to do if they were a company.” He says Sen. Marco Rubio, who was the main person to introduce Mitt Romney, is very charismatic and therefore appealing to young voters. At the same time, there were a lot of mixed messages, he said, especially in actor/director Clint Eastwood’s appearance in which he appeared to be lecturing an empty chair meant to represent President Obama. That didn’t appeal to either of the target audiences, Goldberg says. Hear more details in the audio above.

Bluetext is very excited to announce that it has been chosen by the Meridian International Center as its official Branding and Marketing Partner for Meridian’s 44th Annual Ball and Global Leadership Summit, to be held October 12, 2012. The Annual Ball has been named one of the top five social events of the year by The Washington Post, and attracts more than 1000 political, diplomatic, and business leaders from the Washington community. This is the first year for the Global Leadership Summit, and one of our assignments is to help make that a valuable and memorable event.

“We look forward to working with Bluetext to prepare for the 44th Annual Ball and Global Leadership Conference,” said Greg Houston, Meridian’s Senior Vice President for Development and External Affairs. “It’s vitally important that those who attend and enjoy the Ball every year recognize the value that Meridian brings to the global community, and Bluetext will help us develop and convey that message.”

Hosted by Meridian in partnership with Gallup and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, the Summit will feature presentations from The Gallup Organization and from Fred Smith, the legendary CEO of FedEx. This year’s Ball and Global Leadership Summit will be co-chaired by Mr. Jay L. Johnson, chairman and CEO of General Dynamics, and Mrs. Sydney McNiff Johnson. The Summit will convene a cross-section of international and domestic policy makers, corporate and diplomatic leaders, academics, and members of the media to explore more efficient, effective ways to address global economic and social challenges.

While the Ball is well-known in Washington, the inaugural Global Leadership Summit preceding the Ball will bring leaders from Congress, the Administration, the diplomatic community, and the corporate world together to discuss issues that are central to the challenges they are facing. Part of Meridian’s mission is to bring leaders together to interact with and learn from each other, because leaders make better decisions through shared experiences.

We are honored and excited to be working closely with Meridian on this year’s events. Our brand and marketing experience gives us a unique opportunity to help Meridian deliver to its attendees a great understanding of what Meridian achieves for the international community, and how its members can engage with the organization to further that mission. We want everyone who comes to the Summit and Ball to leave there with a greater sense of global purpose, and also to have a great time.

 

The Meridian Ball is one of the most prestigious annual events in Washington. Now in its 44th year, the Ball brings together policy makers, private sector and cultural leaders, and the diplomatic corps to celebrate Meridian’s ongoing efforts to strengthen international understanding through the exchange of ideas, people, and culture.

Traditionally held in October, the Ball in known for its intimate dinners, each hosted by an Ambassador at his or her Residence or Embassy, in addition to a dinner hosted by Meridian at its White-Meyer House. After dinner, all guests convene for dancing, dessert, and dialogue at Meridian House, an architectural treasure listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Ball is well attended by public officials including Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, and members of the U.S. Congress, as well as prominent media figures, foreign Ambassadors, and representatives from the international business and cultural communities.

When I hear from a client that they have no true competitors, I feign acceptance as my BS meter automatically goes off. What I would like to tell them is that they obviously don’t need marketing and branding support since there must be no market for their product or service. But instead I take the opportunity to walk them through a messaging and positioning exercise to help them identify the market that their company does fit into, and then help them determine how they can be the king of that market. At Bluetext we call this the “Sandbox Exercise,” and it is a critical element for effectively branding or rebranding a company.

 

You can’t be the king of a sandbox until you can identify and accept which sandbox you play in. When referring to other potential competitors, comments like “they are too big and not focused on our market” or “we beat them head to head every time” may sound comforting, but my immediate response is to ask how often those competitors are scooping up customers and market share when you are not even on the radar. The actual times that we come across companies that have been in the game for a long time without feeling the heat of true competition are few and far between.

 

So with your feet firmly planted back on the ground, here are a few simple steps you need to think about to find the right Sandbox so that you can be successful in the long run:

 

• Be realistic about your product or service – this is critical for success. It’s delusional to think that any product that sounds too good to be true is the real thing. (Remember the Segway?)
• Determine your true differentiators. What is your brand promise? It is becoming harder to differentiate with words these days, but every brand has attributes that it can leverage to become the king of a Sandbox. We are working with a client now that is extremely passionate about its brand and business, but is also realistic about its competitors. By identifying reference points for prospects in the form of existing brand name customers, and creating a brand that incorporates beautiful, forward-thinking design elements to relay the passion of the team, they will stand out from the crowd.
• Realize that the best messaging and branding will get you nowhere without creative execution that delivers the brand to target audiences with passion and emotion. Don’t expect every potential customer to automatically know who you are and which Sandbox you play in. Allow your brand to work as hard as it can for your business by letting everyone know which Sandbox is yours, and why you are the king. Take every opportunity to hit prospects with an integrated message that is consistent, powerful and persuasive about your products or services.

 

Effective message and branding can take many forms, but at the core of your business is a brand promise. You may never have the same brand recognition as Coke or Facebook, yet at the end of the day, if you can effectively execute on the steps outlined above, you will be in a much better position to deliver value to your customers and prospects – and that should be the ultimate goal of every branding exercise.

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