Meru Networks
Building market momentum
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Story Communications began representing Meru Networks in June of 2004,
when the company had gone nine months since introducing its wireless LAN
products. By taking a significantly different approach to 802.11-standard
networking than any of its competition, Meru had developed a demonstrably
superior WLAN system, but because the company was relatively late to market
it had failed to gain the customer or media traction that could promote such
superiority. Story’s recommendations were to clarify and simplify the
messaging about Meru’s technical differentiation and the real world benefits
it offered, to step up efforts to educate the market about these differences,
and to broaden outreach programs to gain more traction with media and analysts
despite having a smaller customer base.
Story began at once by greatly expanding Meru’s media and analyst target
lists, sharpening the company’s messages, and developing a series of bylined
article abstracts to gain publicity for Meru’s approach. Story was immediately
successful, placing three contributed articles (with Converge Network Digest,
Business Communications Review, and Wireless Systems Design) within the first 30 days.
Also during the first month of service, Story aggressively pitched news releases
about management additions and Meru’s newest access point products, generating
stories in 20 different publications, including Network World, Unstrung,
EE Times, eWeek, Wireless News, and VentureWire.
By the end of the first quarter of our engagement with Meru, Story had
generated some 40 articles about the company across a range of industry
publications, had established the company’s Director of Product Marketing
as a regular columnist with two different publications, had placed half a
dozen bylined articles, and had arranged briefings with most of the important
industry analysts in the enterprise wireless space.
After three quarters’ work with Meru, the Story team had doubled the
company’s coverage. In addition, Meru’s WLAN switch was awarded the
Best Of Show award in the wireless equipment category at the 2005
Interop show and also won Network Magazine’s 2005 Innovations award for
its cellular wireless infrastructure.
