KnowNow

KnowNow, an early-stage Silicon Valley company providing event-driven integration solutions, changed its company direction and product strategy in early 2005. Long known for its solutions used to quickly and easily connect complex back-office databases, KnowNow saw a unique opportunity to create new revenue streams with its proprietary technology when it became clear that the use of RSS—the underlying technology behind blogs—to distribute content was more than just a passing trend.

KnowNow's staff of crack engineers quickly created an enterprise-class product to provide unfettered distribution of critical events across the enterprise. Employees could now subscribe to critical events and be alerted immediately when something happened that required their immediate attention. Being alerted to critical business changes reduces the chances that decisions will be made with old or outdated information—all without having to use the overtaxed email channel where that much needed information has been known to languish. KnowNow tasked PAN with quickly securing mainstream business press coverage for its new product and strategy with a bare minimum of market proof points.

The Approach

KnowNow's event-driven enterprise syndication server technology was in use at only one beta site, ING Groep, a global provider of business and banking services based in the Netherlands. ING's internal KnowNow champion was half a world away and held the lofty title of Head of Global e-Business, a job which left him little time for media interviews. In circumstances such as these, PR practitioners usually get only one chance to make something big happen.

PAN's media strategy leveraged the limited time of KnowNow's internal contact at ING to one key member of the U.S. business press, packaging a strong case for KnowNow's technology. PAN identified Pete Barlas of Investor’s Business Daily as its target. Mr. Barlas' reputation for being able to understand emerging technologies in short order and his willingness to pitch startup stories to his editors made him the perfect fit for KnowNow's challenge. To win him over, PAN had to make a compelling case for KnowNow's solution and its benefit to the enterprise. Since KnowNow's technology was so new and untested, PAN also had to provide additional analyst validation of KnowNow's product to add depth where there was once only speculation.

With PAN's carefully crafted pitch, Barlas jumped at the opportunity to do a case study on an old-economy financial services provider using new economy tools to address its communications problems. But it was only through dogged determination that PAN was able to connect everyone needed to ensure the story made it to print.

Working on ING's European schedule, PAN was successful in connecting ING's representative with Barlas who is located in Los Angeles. Simultaneously, PAN identified and secured a briefing for KnowNow with ZapThink, a progressive and media savvy analyst firm. While ING spoke to Investor's Business Daily, KnowNow turned ZapThink into a champion for its technology. In turn, Barlas spoke to ZapThink for the industry perspective.

Finally, to round-out the story, Barlas interviewed KnowNow CEO Michael Terner. Through every step of the process, PAN stayed in close communication with Barlas to ensure his understanding of KnowNow's technology and ING’s benefits from it was clear. With three interviews completed, PAN and KnowNow waited breathlessly for the coverage to appear.

The Result

The result was compelling. PAN secured a stand alone case study that ran in Investor's Business Daily on February 16, 2005. The piece, "With Email Systems Stumbling, Electronic Info Feeds Take Root," covered a full half page of the publication and went into great detail on the benefits ING had derived from KnowNow's Enterprise Syndication Server. The print and online versions combined reached a total audience of nearly 1.1 million business readers.

In keeping with the firm's practice of providing "Service after the Sale™," PAN quickly converted the resulting coverage into electronic files that KnowNow's sales people could merchandise to prospects and that is now helping them generate additional sales.

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