Putting a human face on a technology product launch

Product launches are the stuff marketing campaign dreams are made of. There are your typical campaign tactics—advertising, media relations and maybe even a tour du jour, as we like to call it at Hodges, where you take your product on the road for a series of launch events. But for a recent product launch, our client wanted to take a more educational, behind-the-scenes approach, one that leveraged the advantage of an owned platform to push out messaging.

Tridium, a B2B IoT software technology company, was gearing up for the launch of its Niagara 4 software, which featured significant changes and marked a significant departure from the look and feel of the last iteration of its software. With such a momentous product launch at hand, Tridium looked to Hodges to help drum up excitement and build anticipation among its highly engaged community members, especially since a major target for the product was existing customers.

Keeping in mind the approach we wanted to take (less salesy, more informational), we worked with the client to launch an owned content channel featuring a series of articles that would serve to highlight the work that was done on the product by the actual team members who had a hand in building it. We wanted to go beyond the high-profile members of the organization who typically serve as spokespersons for the brand and really talk to and introduce the brand’s community to the people responsible for creating this remarkable software. It was a way to talk about the product, its features and benefits that was stripped of marketing hyperbole and instead told the story of how the product came to be at the hands of the talented team members responsible for creating it.

Our team worked with Tridium on a series of interviews that included members from its engineering, product marketing and cyber security teams to tell the story of Niagara. We also had an excellent partner to help us design a beautiful landing page on which to host the content. A new article was released each week featuring a different member of the team, which was promoted via the brand’s social channels and email marketing. The resulting series gave its audience an inside look at what went into making the software that powers the Internet of Things.

The article series garnered widespread attention and praise from the community and succeeded in generating excitement around the new product. Social channels have driven 943 clicks to the site, and a total of 567 social engagement (comments, likes and shares) across all platforms. To date, the articles have drawn 3,440 clicks to the site from email and the articles have been viewed a total of 6,162 times. The sales teams also continue to use the series as a selling tool for potential customers.

Paulyn Ocampo

Since joining THP in 2008, Paulyn has helped execute strategic plans for clients like AMF Bowling Centers, Allianz, Tridium, Silgan and The Peterson Companies. A Norfolk native, she earned her undergraduate degree in mass communications, with a concentration in public relations from VCU.

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