"Sally spent significant time with me and my staff, understanding our business, vision and objectives … " explains Rich Morrison, VP International, Information Management Associates (IMA) Inc

At the time of Sally Goodsell's appointment, IMA's VP Marketing, Glenda O'Neill, commented, "Sally Goodsell was chosen because of her extensive experience and exposure to the European software market and her proven track record. Sally will assist us in meeting our goal to maintain a closer relationship with our current customers, remarketers, strategic business partners and the dynamically growing market place.

Some real disasters were occurring with the distributor and dealer. Despite the fact that these deals were often worth half million dollars, the distributor would not release the user company names or contact details and forbade IMA to make direct contact with them. Therefore, IMA did not know who their customers were so could not contact them for PR and sales reference. The distributor would not undertake any publicity, claiming that he had no budget.

Meanwhile, the European call centre market was burgeoning and competitors were stepping in. IMA realised that the distributor was not selling anywhere near enough product to keep pace with market growth. From a position of being the established market leader, IMA was starting to lose market share.

As for the Netherlands, although the business population is small, it was proving to be one of the leading markets for call centres in Europe, owing to the multi-lingual and multi-cultural skills of the Dutch people. The rest of Europe was taking note of this energetic country's approach.

The dealer was meeting his target and growing at a good pace for a Netherlands company, but not fast enough to match the call centre boom, because he was not prepared to invest marketing budget or time. So IMA's growth in the Netherlands was limited by the perspective of a small minded local dealer who took a small company attitude to market expansion and could not see that there was a window of opportunity that would not stay open for ever.

IMA could see that there was enormous potential in the whole European call centre market. Recognising that the distributor and dealer were not keeping pace with the potential sales, IMA decided to expand their European operations to include selling direct. They also decided to open a London office. IMA approached Sally Goodsell (SG) to research their current and potential markets and to launch a public relations campaign that would use the press as the prime communications vehicle.

Sally Goodsell's first task was to discover who the users were, in spite of the intransigence of the distributor. SG worked with the legal department to ascertain the names of the users, then phoned these companies to establish the location of their call centres in Europe. Eventually, SG got through to the call centre managers across Europe. A script had been developed that ostensibly asked about interest in a user meeting but also elicited information on the users' product plans. Once contact has been made, she found that, as expected, IMA's customers were continually re-assessing their software in comparison with that of competitors. The distributor's policy meant that users had not been kept informed of the developments in IMA's corporate vision and offerings.

Although SG's schedule of calls were essentially cold, she was able to obtain a considerable amount of feedback and produced a 100 page report of vital European marketing information. This was read by all the senior executives in the US headquarters, from the president down.

IMA was not the only company to start to see the limitations of the Netherlands dealer. SG discovered that one of the larger Dutch customers had recognised the market potential and had itself started selling IMA's software, not only in the Netherlands but also in Austria. Speculative marketing such as this could now be harnessed to IMA's own efforts.

The pan-European press launch

The dilemma that faced IMA was that no journalist had heard of the company, although the products had been successfully sold in Europe via the distributor for some years so they were not news. IMA now wanted to sell direct, which is not particularly fascinating for the European media. The challenge was to create an interesting story, from this unpromising material, that would persuade the press to publicise the new expansion.

Large pan-European press conferences only work if the profile of the company is so high that journalists can justify giving up a whole day to travel to another European city, or in the case of a conference in their own capital city, a fairly long period around lunch. Unlike America, major press conferences in Europe are rarely held at trade shows and in any event the type of call centre show that IMA normally attended was not suitable.

This is a real Catch 22 situation because in order to make your company well known enough to attract journalists you must first launch it via a press conference.

SG recommended a strategy which combined the research and production of very interesting press material and a pan-European press tour preceded by an extensive telephone campaign, followed by press interviews and general distribution of material.

Realising that the European press were not sitting on the edge of their chairs waiting to hear this news, SG developed two press releases. The first alerted journalists to the growth of call centres in Europe; the second discussed the symbiosis between call centres and the Internet. This was a visionary piece which attracted the imagination of journalists. It was important to have this in writing and translated for European journalists because there is less chance to inspire journalists through speech because of the language problems. Each release carried IMA's core product and corporate messages.

Core documents were developed Fact Sheet, Milestones, Corporate Brochure, and Writers Guide and then translated and checked. These formed the mainstay of communications with European journalists, with whom time was then spent discussing ideas that the documents generated. These documents really helped to take the pressure off the executives and press during meetings and saved time so that they could both concentrate on more conceptual ideas.

SG recommended that Rich Morrison, IMA's charismatic European Managing Director, should undertake a series of one-to-one interviews in the key European countries. Rich committed to the schedule and he was supported by his boss, Jim Anderson, IMA's VP of Worldwide Marketing, who came over from America.

"The press that I either talked to on the phone or in person were always complimentary about the extremely professional interaction they had with Sally, which helped me tremendously and in the end contributed to significant press coverage for IMA across our key European markets" comments Rich Morrison.

In principle, pan-European press tours are similar to the ones arranged in the United States, but in practice they are more complex because one is travelling from country to country in unfamiliar territory. All the same advantages of the one-to-one briefing that occur in America are also true in Europe; for instance, the ability to pitch the presentation towards the journalist's area of interest e.g. banking press. Press conferences tend to be very IT, rather than niche, orientated making it difficult to address the varying degrees of technical knowledge of those attending. Paying for an executive's fares across Europe is far cheaper than paying for journalists to fly into a European capital city which is another option.

It should be added here that Rich is American and, contrary to what some PR agencies advise, European journalists are very happy to meet with Americans so long as they know and understand their local markets and have a good, well presented story to tell them.

Rich was the local manager who also had a fresh, open approach to the journalists, which they found engaging. If the company executive, whether American or European, is jaded, bored with the press and pre-occupied with the next sales call he has to make, then whatever options are considered for a press launch are unlikely to have much effect. Boredom cannot generate enthusiasm!

"It was tough persuading so many European journalists to meet with Rich and Jim, particularly as some did not know what call centres were and this had to be explained over the phone, despite the language problems, before I could even begin my pitch. However, I take the view that every positive interaction with the press is an opportunity for me to promote my client so I always welcome every chance to talk to journalists, knowing that this will generate future benefits" adds Sally Goodsell

Press material was translated into the local European languages but an English version was also sent. This is because some technical terms are more familiar in American English. The journalists generally complimented Rich on the presentation of the press material, so the meetings started on an upbeat, positive note.

Photography is more important to the European press than to the American press. A good photo, not a standard studio shot, will often help to buy coverage in the European press, so when you come over to Europe invest in a series of good photographs. They will pay dividends. Photographs in the press kits were labelled in the local European language and English.

The meetings were generally held in first class hotels with good communications within the capital city. Germany was more complex because it is more federal, like the USA, so several German cities were involved and Rich visited the journalists at their publications.

Because of language differences, it is polite to offer to supply an interpreter but our experience was that nobody took up this offer. A few did fax questions and we were happy to answer these in full, attaching various extra visionary articles which we felt added to the story and gave them an extra bonus for taking the trouble to jump over the language hurdle.

Thank you Sally!"concludes Rich Morrison, VP International, Information Management Associates (IMA) Inc.

The press tour produced excellent coverage in each country. The futuristic and visionary tone of the releases gave the simple product information and new office opening announcement a fresh, news angle. SG was able to get coverage in the national press, in addition to the IT, business, call centre, marketing, insurance, banking and management press. The press interviews were as follows:

The press releases were distributed generally and various phone interviews were arranged. Coverage also appeared in:

Belgium

Germany

The Netherlands

United Kingdom

United States

SG's role also encompassed strategic counsel, producing a pan-European marketing plan and alerting the client to the role of analysts, with whom she then arranged contact.