Situation / Challenge

SAIC was entering the $30B commercial language service market for the first time, and wanted to strategically position themselves as a credible player. At the same time, they wanted to differentiate their hybrid machine translation technology from other well-known companies in the market. To gain recognition for their new product, Sage created an integrated marketing and PR campaign with a product launch at the 2011 SpeechTek Conference.

Approach

Sage identified key points around SAIC’s “hybrid” solution and distributed them under embargo to reporters attending SpeechTek and at targeted media outlets.

To drive traffic to the SAIC booth and website, Sage developed linguistic quiz cards featuring QR codes that directed people to answers on a specially built and designed SAIC microsite. Sage also designed and oversaw the booth display and an informational animated sequence to further engage conference attendees and ensure “buzz” around SAIC’s new offering.

Sage leveraged the conference launch with an extended PR campaign including proactive social media outreach to the freelance translator community enabling SAIC to participate in online conversations in strategic, established online blogs and podcasts.

Results

SAIC made a large splash at SpeechTek, drawing large crowds during its live demonstrations and the linguistic quiz cards drove 150 unique visitors to the SAIC microsite. Multiple qualified business opportunities resulted from the conference.

SAIC’s solution launch was featured in key business, analyst, and technology publications such as the Washington Post’s Capital Business, InformationWeek, Speech Technology, Speech Strategy News, Business Insider, CNBC.com and CommonSense Advisory.  An extended PR campaign included a contributed feature article in MultiLingual Magazine and a one-hour interview on NPR’s The Computer Guy for a total of 19.2 million impressions between print and interactive media.

The integrated public relations and marketing campaign was successful in communicating key messages to SAIC’s target audiences. The media frequently mentioned SAIC’s “hybrid” solution and cast the company as a credible competitor of industry heavyweights such as Google and IBM.

Coverage