Clean Technology & Digital Services Practice case study
Overview
With more than 1,500 installations in hundreds of U.S. communities and over 30 countries, MIOX is committed to providing customers with the safest water in the world. The company’s award-winning on-site generation technology is safely disinfecting more than 6.5 billion gallons of water per day, serving millions of people worldwide. MIOX is used for potable water, wastewater and reuse, commercial swimming pools, cooling towers, food processing, the beverage industry, and other commercial and industrial applications.
MIOX enlisted the help of Merritt Group to brand the company as a major player at the forefront of the next generation water industry and to move the issue of water purification up the ladder by telling the story of business benefits and savings, innovation and market development.
Challenge
MIOX was challenged with the need to make sure businesses can see the value of their technology and business proposition for its markets. As a venture funded company, MIOX wanted to raise awareness of their technology solution and its broad application to a variety of water markets, including water treatment for the beverage industry, water utilities and areas without treatment infrastructure.
Strategy and campaign
Merritt Group leveraged media relationships in the national business press to help MIOX establish its unique technology and leadership as an up-and-coming company in the water market. The team focused on MIOX’s technology and its economic value proposition in the context of water market shortages, viable and safe alternative treatment and as disinfectant for various contamination.
Merritt elevated the story of water technology, shortage, and policy issues to national media. In doing so, the ripple effect of coverage aimed to cement stronger name recognition. Merritt crafted messages that would resonate and position MIOX as a vanguard in a new wave of companies helping re-invent how we work with our most important natural resource on the planet.
Results
Merritt Group secured an interview with Michael Kanellos, editor in chief at Greentech Media to secure a feature story “Getting off the Water Grid” about MIOX technology and its water business. MIOX was also named a Top 50 Green Startup by Kanellos in CBS’s The Green Eye.
Merritt also secured an interview for MIOX with Fortune magazine senior editor, Michael Copeland, which resulted in the video segment “Pond water to drinking water.”
Our greatest satisfaction comes from generating results for our clients. But it's also nice when our good work earns awards for ourselves.
Verizon Business (DBIR)
With data breaches being a hot topic in the mainstream media, Verizon Business leveraged unique data from actual fraud investigations to develop a 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report to further position the company and its spokespeople as thought-leaders in the IT security space.
In 2006, UK-based mobile email and synchronization solution company, Synchronica, was looking to expand its awareness from Europe to the U.S. Through a series of aggressive campaigns to consumer, business and technology media , Merritt Group has been able to raise the company's visibility around the globe and even introduced the phrase "Synchronica Scream" into the mainstream.
When SPI Dynamics began its 3 year engagement with Merritt Group, the company had minimal mindshare in the security market as a Web application security vendor. The challenge for Merritt was finding a key differentiator for SPI to set them apart from the competition as an industry leader in their market. Merritt helped SPI "own" the issue of secure software development.
At the beginning of Merritt Group's engagement with Pointsec in late 2004, encryption was simply not a topic of interest for the press. Merritt's challenge was not only successfully tie the application of encryption to other relevant topics such as telework in the government to drive initial interest but to aggressively develop relationships with the right set of press and analysts—Pointsec did not have these relationships.
The Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) was formed by the CEOs of several of the largest security companies in the industry to be the voice of cyber security policy in the U.S. and EU. Merritt Group's 4 year engagement with CSIA focused on positioning the organization and its Executive Director, Paul Kurtz, as a leading authority on the cyber security legislative climate in the U.S.
In 2003, Merritt Group was brought on by Microsoft to more broadly establish the global technology leader as a major government IT player, showcasing the company’s deep understanding at the federal, state and local levels. Up to that point, Microsoft’s awareness in the government market had largely been tied to its products. Merritt Group helped Microsoft position itself as more of a solutions company versus a product company, and as a thought leader on government trends and issues.
In early 2007, Booz Allen Hamilton asked Merritt Group to comprehensively study and advance ideas on how to incorporate new media vehicles as part of the firm’s traditional public relations campaign. To raise awareness for the Transformation Life Cycle group, Merritt recommended a podcast series for internal and external audiences, which explored a holistic approach to the constant and complex process of transforming an organization.
Booz Allen Hamilton selected Merritt Group to assist the firm in raising awareness of its technology capabilities among federal IT decision makers. Merritt Group’s award-winning PR campaign has focused on four major objectives which include shaping messaging/positioning; developing strong reporter relationships; positioning executives as industry experts; and coordinating stories to coincide with specific business goals/activities.
Verint Systems, a market leader in analytic software-based solutions, announced its $1 billion dollar acquisition of competitor Witness Systems in May 2007. The deal created one of the 30 largest software companies in the U.S. Merritt Group developed and executed on two distinct campaigns targeting press and analyst influencers in the Business/Financial and Contact Center categories.
One of Merritt Group's recent PR initiatives with Metastorm, a leading provider of software-based solutions for aligning strategy with execution, involved announcing its acquisition of Proforma Corp., a maker of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Process Analysis (BPA) tools. This acquisition redefined Metastorm's position in the market, creating a new category in the enterprise software market.
In early 2005, Verizon and MCI announced a merger to create a new multi-billion dollar telecommunications business unit of Verizon Communications called Verizon Business. Merritt Group helped Verizon Business plan and execute a strategic public relations brand campaign designed to showcase the immediate value of the newly created business unit.