McBru runs back-to-back product launches for Isilon, aligning coverage in tech and business outlets around a big trade show.

1. ISILON CASE STUDY
A Nimble Strategy
Scores Coverage
For Back-To-Back
Product Launches.

2. Summary
Fast on the heels of one very successful product launch,
scale-out storage leader Isilon had another new offering
to bring to the market. Timing for the new launch would
be dictated by a strategically aligned industry trade show,
presenting the communications team with the opportunity
to tell a timely story. But it would be a challenge to bring
key media and analyst influencers back to briefing table
just weeks after an extensively covered product launch.
Isilon and McBru carefully crafted and persistently
pitched a launch story that, despite prior coverage and
the noise from the trade show, resulted in 32 briefings
and 21 feature stories in trade and business publications.
Research & Planning
In highly competitive, crowded IT markets such as
data storage, innovative new products provide singular hybrid press tour – equal parts face-to-face road tour and
opportunities to boost awareness and portray competitive phone-conference briefings – to earn maximum impact
differentiation to buyers and influencers. The summer for what was the company’s most significant product
of 2010 found Isilon ready to launch not one, but two announcement in more than a year. Hard-to-please
such products. industry press covered the news well, with 18 positive
articles from those briefed and a highly favorable response
In June, McBru served in support of the launch of the from the analyst community.
Isilon’s SmartPoolsTM automated data tiering platform
for scale-out storage. McBru developed and managed a
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3. Immediately following the SmartPools announcement, a
new launch plan was confirmed: go out and do it again,
and do it bigger. With the addition of iSCSI functionality
“ In short, Isilon now enables users to
consolidate both file- and block-based
across its product line, Isilon was poised to announce applications into one shared pool of
another industry first among scale out storage providers virtualized storage. Now that makes
by storing and managing both structured (or block-based) things a lot easier, doesn’t it? No more
and unstructured (file-based) data within a single file separate apps for separate workloads.
system. To that point, the nine-year-old company had built
its business solely on file based data; the new functionality
would position Isilon squarely within a highly desirable
A storage engineer’s dream, no doubt.
Chris Preimesberger,
”
eWeek
target market for storage consolidation – a market largely
driven by the booming adoption of server virtualization
across the enterprise.
Execution
Isilon and McBru targeted the announcement for to announce their own groundbreaking products and
August 31, during the annual VMworld conference in make limelight-stealing acquisitions. Rather than peg
San Francisco. The timing would help ensure that the the success of the launch on breaking through the
“Unified Storage Platform” announcement, as it would escalating noise level surrounding VMworld, the launch
be called, would be seen in its proper context as a boon would rely on a phone tour to begin three weeks prior
to virtualization users. However, McBru advised that the to the conference, despite the fact that many of the
launch team reach out to, and brief, industry press and influencers targeted for briefings had just been briefed
analysts well in advance of the conference. VMworld as part of the SmartPools tour.
has grown to become one of IT’s biggest annual events,
attracting leading press and analysts from around the To break through to influencers who might otherwise
world and giving the industry’s biggest players a platform claim fatigue, McBru developed tightly focused launch
3

4. messages that made abundantly clear the unique value
propositions, market positioning and newsworthiness of
the Unified Storage Platform, and took those messages
“
to high-value media and analysts with a campaign of
Pushan Rinnen, research director at
aggressive, proactive pitching. A deep team of experienced
Gartner, agrees that this gives Isilon a
Isilon spokespersons was recruited, giving McBru the right
leg up on the competition. The most
mix of executive vision, technical depth and sales channel
significant aspect of this announcement
expertise to deploy for each briefing depending on the
is that Isilon will be the first major
influencer. For each briefing, a McBru representative
scale-out storage architecture vendor
facilitated the proceedings, both to help ensure a focused
to offer file and block support with
dialogue and to capture any coverage opportunities that
iSCSI, so it will bring to the market the
might emerge. Press and analysts agreed to receive launch
ease of use of scale-out NAS into the
materials under embargo until the August 31 launch
block storage arena, she says. ‘The key
date, allowing McBru to direct the bulk of coverage to
thing is the simplicity of Isilon storage
land within the VMworld timeframe while giving writers
systems can now be applied to the
”
ample time to develop and source stories before finding
block side of the world.’
themselves caught up in the VMworld time crunch.
Steve Wexler,
Network Computing Results
In managing and executing the Isilon Unified Storage
Platform launch, McBru recorded qualitative and
quantifiable results to rival any announcement in Isilon’s
history. The tour generated 32 briefings with top media
from general IT and business publications to storage and
vertical outlets, as well as industry analysts ranging from
IT heavyweights such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC to
4

5. influential boutique firms specializing in storage. The tone
of the briefings was extremely favorable, as well-targeted
spokespersons built affinity with influencers, fomenting
“ Isilon customer John Welter, vice
president of technology at Calgary,
more engaged and productive briefings and ultimately, Alberta-based North West Geomatics
impacting the tone of media coverage. Ltd., was an early adopter of the
vendor’s iSCSI and said he’s using it
Twenty-one feature stories covered the launch news, to consolidate onto a single storage
with top properties such as Network Computing, eWeek, platform. He had been running a Dell
SearchStorage and CRN among those who wrote, with the MD3000 direct-attached storage (DAS)
bulk of the coverage landing during the VMworld timeframe.
Message penetration rated extremely high as the majority
of writers captured the virtualization and consolidation
Dave Raffo
”
system for block storage.
SearchStorage.com
contexts of the announcement in their stories, and the tone
of the coverage was uniformly positive. Most importantly,
the success of the Unified Storage Platform launch added
considerable momentum to what had become a breakout
year for the company, supporting its solid growth curve in
a highly competitive, extremely noisy marketplace.
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6. Elise F. Burke
Director of Marketing and Sales
direct: 503.546.1017
mobile: 503.459.7545
elise@mcbru.com
www.mcbru.com
LET’S START SOMETHING.
elise@mcbru.com
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@mcbru
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