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Novell
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PR for the PR People
22 Apr 2011 by nbrown / No Comments
Like most agencies, we at PAN strive to secure the best media placements for our clients. PR, as most of you know, is a very fast-paced industry and, with numerous accounts operating at 150 mph day-in, day-out, it can be hard to stop and reflect on how truly great some of the campaigns we develop are. Yet every once in awhile, a campaign comes along that calls for a moment to pause, reflect and shout from the rooftops how it met the client’s expectations while also demonstrating the agency’s media relations savvy. Such is the case with Novell’s Dister Awards. Launched last July to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Novell’s SUSE Studio, the Dister Awards campaign sought to rally the Linux developer community and ISV’s (independent software vendors) to create software appliances using Novell’s SUSE Studio program and then exhibit them in the SUSE Gallery.
The campaign wrapped up in December and two key elements made it the success it was. First, it didn’t follow a traditional “PR path.” That is, its success wasn’t beholden to clips or press release pick-up; rather, success was measured by the number of appliances built, downloaded and utilized by ISV’s, which translated to sales leads. Second, the campaign didn’t exclusively involve Novell’s PR department. PAN worked with a variety of different people globally, including folks from product marketing, social media, the open source community and the Linux Foundation. Even Novell’s CMO weighed in on several of the initiatives.
As further validation of the Dister Awards success, this month’s PRWeek, our industry’s top trade, recognized the campaign with a full page case study in print and online, which you can view here. As PRWeek mused in their take on the campaign, “[The Disters] campaign clearly illustrates the power of tailor-made programs to drive business results…It was very smart to involve multiple departments internally at Novell….Business results are apparent, while the campaign also established solid relationships that should continue to deepen and pay off.”
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