Situation

Two years before its IPO, TIBCO Software, a subsidiary of Reuters PLC, was a consulting firm specializing in enterprise middleware infrastructure – consultants without products in a highly complex space that TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadive himself called "boring." We were hired to help the company raise its visibility and position itself for a IPO, providing senior level marketing and public relations strategy and support.

Objectives

• Raise the profile of the company and its category
  
• Build TIBCO into a recognized Internet infrastructure brand
  

Special Connections

• We counseled TIBCO to "productize" its solutions and identified a set of competitors in order to give the media the products and category set needed to create coverage in this emerging area.
  
• We stayed in front of industry trends by evolving TIBCO’s messaging from "middleware" to "enabling infrastructure for the emerging e-business/Internet marketplace"
  
• We worked with Demo to sponsor a "TIBCO Day" that exposed the company to industry influencers.
  
• We recruited the company’s impressive list of partners as media references and framed all news announcements to focus on e-business benefits vs. technology.
  
• When customer references were not scarce, we turned partner announcements at the company’s annual customer events into major trade media coverage.
  
• We ghostwrote a book, The Power Of Now, for CEO Vivek Ranadive and conducted a book media tour during the company’s IPO quiet period that helped Ranadive and his company be very visible during this important time.
  
• We helped build "The Power of Now" into a company vision platform, integrated into all communications, from website design through annual report theme.

Results

• One leading enterprise analyst said she "had never seen a company emerge so quickly"
  
• IDC named TIBCO #1 in its new businessware category
  
• TIBCO media coverage went from one article in the year before we were hired to more than 200 in year 1 with us, 500 in year 2 with us and more than 700 in our third year of working together.
  
• The Power of Now book tour resulted in business coverage in media such as CBS network TV, CNN, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune immediately preceding the IPO
  
• TIBCO achieved one of the 10 most successful IPOs of 1999, reaching a peak market capitalization of nearly $30 billion.