The Challenge

Pressured by rising local competition and a lack of budgets to throw at advertising or major trade shows VMware needed a creative PR campaign that would lift and differentiate the brand to the German market.

The Strategy

Playing on the theme of VMware’s rapid elevation in the IT industry  AxiCom created the “VMware Takes Off” campaign – a pun driven claim that was both highly pertinent to the message needing to be communicated, and also fun and engaging for the business community.

Most importantly, the campaign stretched across different channels, including PR, trade show branding and digital execution.

•  Press tour to six German VIP magazines in January 2009.

•  Innovative helicopter press event at CeBIT.

•  The “VMware takes Off” branding was used extensively throughout CeBIT to create a vibrant visual campaign.  Throughout the show floor, “VMware Takes Off” was evident and the logo and its message were recognized by each and every CeBIT attendee.

•  Press conference with a guided walk on top of the world famous roof of Munich’s Olympic stadium with a concluding lunch in the Olympic tower’s restaurant.

•  Digital approach to communicating the “VMware Takes Off” message to customers by creating a web site linked from the German VMware homepage with a lottery. Prizes were raffled off for sending in ideas, showing how VMware is differentiated from the competition

The Result

•  6 title stories as result of the January press tour
•  62 Clippings about the VMware-News, announced in Cannes and during CeBIT
•  11 articles about the final event
•  On top of that 24 print articles, more than 50 online news and one Video-Podcast
•  A total of 10,500 potential customers accessed the lottery site with 212 submitting ideas.