PeopleSoft
Situation Analysis
PeopleSoft Inc. is a world leader in providing eBusiness applications that enable people, customers, suppliers, and employees to power the Internet. PeopleSoft's pure Internet customer relationship management, supply chain management, and enterprise management solutions provide the industries most open and flexible e-commerce platform.
In 1998, PeopleSoft’s presence in its industry sectors was faltering. The company’s lines of industry applications were incomplete, its products were no longer unique or superior, revenues were down, profits had disappeared, and 80 percent of its market share had evaporated. Its reputation as an industry leader was severely battered.
Public relations efforts had reached a critical crossroads. In January 2000, PeopleSoft conducted a national search for a PR agency. Live Wire was the unanimous choice, ahead of five top-20 PR firms.
PR Challenges
- Assessing the media’s perceptions of PeopleSoft, so that the campaign could be designed to address negative, neutral, or positive scenarios.
- Mapping PeopleSoft’s competitive landscape
- Creating an internal communication pipeline and PR messages to guarantee that information was shared company-wide and between business units
- Managing PeopleSoft’s negative image in select industry sectors
- Repositioning mature products that were no longer unique or superior
- Establishing a measurement/reporting mechanism
Campaign Goals and Objectives
- Proactively manage the negative perception of PeopleSoft’s products and reputation within 13 industry sectors
- Reposition PeopleSoft as an industry leader that has systems in place to be more accountable to its customers and stakeholders
- Launch/promote PeopleSoft’s products and services as best-of-breed applications for serving constituents, sharing and managing information, maximizing efficiency and effectiveness, and meeting performance goals
- Build awareness that PeopleSoft’s financial management solutions meet all Federal regulations and requirements
- Promote the benefits of PeopleSoft industry solutions to industries that had been virtually ignored
- Communicate the new corporate vision put forth by CEO Craig Conway
- Create a communication structure that would guarantee all valuable information was being shared company-wide and between business units
Campaign Strategies and Tactics
- To create synergies for a centralized communications plan, Live Wire hosted an initial discovery session with PeopleSoft’s executive management team and PR representatives to gain an understanding of the company’s strategy, brand, key messages and position. In addition, Live Wire reviewed current marketing activity, brand support, competitive factors and barriers to entry and media relations.
- Live Wire recommended a communications plan that incorporated the following strategies:
- Achieve total market focus
- Align all industry sectors under a single PeopleSoft brand
- Develop new industry messaging and positioning platforms
- Leverage new offerings
- Dominate vertical media
- Build and bank on success
Campaign Results
- In the first six months of the PR campaign:
- Live Wire earned 366 media placements, which generated nearly 200 million media impressions in vertical trade publications
- Live Wire wrote and distributed 78 news releases, and achieved over 10,000 points of contact with targeted media in 13 industry sectors
- Throughout the entire campaign (2000-2002), Live Wire’s rapid and dramatic results generated more than 1,500 article placements for PeopleSoft’s industry sectors for an average of 10 article placements per month per industry
- Live Wire’s role expanded beyond media relations and industry analyst relations to include corporate reputation benchmarking and measurement, employee communications and change management, crisis management, financial/investor relations, corporate social responsibility programs and strategic philanthropy
- Throughout the campaign, Live Wire continued to deliver proactive counsel to integrate PeopleSoft’s business communications, to better link and inform its internal and external audiences, and to convey a cohesive vision
Summary
The strategic media relations effort by Live Wire on behalf of People Soft has enabled the company to rise, once again, to a status as a global leader in application software for the real-time enterprise.
Through positive message shaping and the implementation of solid communication strategies, PeopleSoft has solidified its position in the technology market and as a result of its recent takeover by Oracle in June 2005, the combination of these two companies brings together a powerhouse of talent in the enterprise software industry.
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