The Masergy team knew that a new breed of CIO was entering the boardroom – these CIOs wanted more from their corporate networks than simply delivering basic network connectivity. They wanted to make their corporate networks more like the central nervous system of their organisation; they wanted the ability to respond to application requirements quickly, whilst keeping data secure and helping employees with mobility and team collaboration with the latest unified communications technologies. Masergy had been operating in the UK market for some time, but needed to boost its profile further to help it reach out to these modern, enterprise CIOs. The company didn’t focus on a specific industry sector, but its ideal customer would be global, large enterprises with multiple office locations. They also need a reputation that would clearly differentiate it against established, larger, but more cumbersome managed service providers. And, they needed to clearly communicate their core products of flexible networks, enterprise security, and cloud communications. Strategy For our campaign, we knew that customer references would be essential for the UK media to consider talking to Masergy’s execs – the large vendors were still dominating share of voice. We needed to turn Masergy’s customers into advocates for its IT products and services. A lot of media and industry commentators were also suffering ‘networking fatigue’ – with a little too much ‘marketecture’ and not enough real-world implementations to write about. We also needed to show the UK media that Masergy could be a strong, trusted voice on SD-WAN, machine learning based cyber security and other innovative networking issues of interest to CIOs. Our approach

• We operate as a locally based member of the corporate content and PR team. That means we work closely with colleagues based in the US; we agree on objectives, PR messages, pitching strategies, content, story angles and media outreach. What we don’t do is operate as a completely independent unit. We’re one team.
• We hold a weekly call with our US based counterparts to discuss current PR opportunities in each country – making sure they reflect corporate aims and to see if there is any shared learning to be had.
• We always work with the US team to localise, pitch and distribute content to the UK media.
• We’re also hands-on in developing new, local content that reflects corporate initiatives, aims and objectives.
• We only target the right media – IT trades, networking and enterprise business media. Our knowledge and relationships with tech journalists and influencers is unrivalled. We always have the enterprise CIO in mind when we’re developing content and working with the media.

  Expanding our remit to France and the Netherlands Following an incredibly successful 18 months, Mantis identified an opportunity to help Masergy expand its PR, content and influencer relations to France and the Netherlands. Masergy’s French and Dutch country managers were keen to mirror the success of Masergy’s UK PR programme in their own regions. Our approach remained the same – we continued to operate as an extension of our US colleagues’ team, but worked with local spokespeople in France and Holland to develop, pitch and secure content that would resonate with CIOs and business leaders in local European markets. We did this by using our knowledge of Masergy, its messages, approaches, and technologies, developing specific, highly targeted pitches that would help raise the company’s profile. We didn’t hide behind emails – we picked up the phone and spoke with the editors and journalists in France and Holland that mattered most to Masergy. Results In just under two years, the Mantis team, working with the director of content marketing and US PR team, has delivered:

• 96 UK press articles, 12 French articles, and 4 Dutch articles, including comments in the Wall Street Journal, BBC News online, and The Times
  • 21 feature comments submitted and published demonstrating how Masergy execs’ can claim a voice on key topics
  • 25 opinion articles written and published demonstrating how the Masergy’s team can drive the debate on networking issues
  • 11 corporate press releases localised and pitched to UK media
• 4 customer stories pitched: Eurostar, Huisman, Pattonair and Canyon School District
• 17 media interviews secured, hosted and completed
• 5 award entries drafted and submitted

Future The Mantis team will continue to provide clever content, PR and communications to support Masergy in the UK, France, and the Netherlands, working as part o the corporate team to localise news, pitch agreed themes, secure media interviews and build the profile of Masergy internationally.