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SPOT LLC (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globalstar)
Trailblazing Technology Leadership
The Opportunity:
SPOT LLC, a subsidiary of Globalstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: GSAT), provides emergency notification technology that allows users to communicate from remote locations around the globe. The company engaged Skyya Communications in mid-2008 to launch their first product, the SPOT Personal Tracker, the world’s first satellite messenger targeted for the outdoor enthusiast market and to redefine the personal navigation (PND) and personal locator beacon (PLB) markets. A secondary goal was to transition from the outdoor market into the much broader consumer electronics market.
The Challenge:
SPOT’s sole product – SPOT Personal Tracker – had less than one year of marketing support behind it when Skyya was contacted. With ineffective, scare-tactic slogans and lack of product and company brand consistency, coupled with outdoorsman-only product marketing and messaging, the start-up needed full PR horsepower to achieve their business goals – and on a conservative budget.
Additionally, CE companies including TomTom, Magellan GPS, and Garmin had already achieved a market leadership position in the PND market. What’s more, a host of established technologies posed significant competitive challenges for SPOT, including personal locator beacons (PLB), Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRB) and Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT).
With this, SPOT challenged Skyya with the hefty task of quickly establishing the company as the only provider of 100% satellite-based GPS tracking and rescue services.
The Skyya Approach:
In less than a month, Skyya ramped and executed, resulting in a comprehensive PR plan, timeline and strategy. Skyya leveraged our expertise in GPS, LBS, mobile tech and consumer electronics, as well as key media contacts in the consumer electronics, influential tech blogs, and business press for a rapid ramp and go-to-market approach.
The team immediately began a highly strategic consumer tech PR campaign “influencing the influencers” and leveraging customer testimonials to tell the human interest side of the product story, as well as consistently winning industry awards for helping build market credibility.
Key to this strategy was to distinguish SPOT from other well known GPS competitors, while emphasizing SPOT’s unique value proposition. Skyya executed aggressive local and global outreach to a broad audience by targeting consumer electronics press, outdoor publications, IT media and analysts, as well as blogs and other traditional media.
Educating the marketplace was also key, and Skyya began by highlighting the non-emergency functions and everyday use of the product by tracking the number of non-emergency messages SPOT users were transmitting monthly. Skyya branded and launched “SPOT Rescue Alerts,” an emotional and ongoing news campaign of survival stories, and preemptively initiated a crisis communications program in the event that a SPOT user did not survive his/her emergency ordeal, which unfortunately had occurred in the past.
The Results:
Skyya orchestrated and timed a successful campaign that was critical to building awareness among the consumer electronics (CE) press and business press, and building momentum among the outdoor/adventure press and retailers. Key results include:
- National TV broadcast coverage on The View (ABC) and CNBC’s On the Money, CNN with Miles O’Brien, The TODAY Show, and on FOX News’ Tech Tuesdays.
- Secured more than 50 articles from the product launch and numerous product reviews including: Yahoo! Tech, the San Jose Mercury News, the New York Times, Good Housekeeping Magazine, Men’s Health, Best Life, Financial Times, Wired.com, and more.
- Skyya also ran a digital lifestyle campaign that resulted in press coverage in the following outlets: DailyCandy, AskMen, Departures Magazine, Forbes Traveler.com, and The Robb Report.
- It is important to note that the DailyCandy coverage led to the single highest spike in Web traffic and sales in the company’s history.
- U.S. retail footprint increased to 4,000 points of distribution.
Skyya also maintained a steady drumbeat of industry award wins for SPOT including:
- The Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award - Consumer Electronics (2008)
- The Good Housekeeping VIP (Very Innovative Product) Award (2009)
- TIME Magazine’s All-Time 100 Gadgets of all Time (November 2010)
In addition to elevating SPOT to a leadership role in its category in the U.S., Skyya was instrumental in working with global agency partners on content creation for local territories to maintain and police the brand’s core attributes and value proposition across all geographies.
The Update:
Since Skyya helped launch and aggressively promote the first SPOT product in 2008, we have helped the company subsequently launch 3 additional new products, we’ve generated more than 300 press articles, and the company continues to receive industry awards and accolades. To-date, the company has sold more than 250,000 SPOT units.
For more information please visit www.findmespot.com. |
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