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EVENT AT A GLANCE
Objectives: Demonstrate the IoSafe Solo’s unique characteristics in a tangible way, attract 48 press attendees to the demo, and generate subsequent media mentions.
Strategy: Host an off-site demo event to put the Solo through a hellish trial by fire and flood.
Tactics: Invite targeted media contacts to attend the “demo of a lifetime.” Stagger demo scheduling with the International Consumer Electronics Show in order to generate buzz before, during, and after the show.
Results: Sixty journalists attended demo events, 25 percent above goal. The demo events also generated hundreds of media stories and more than 62,000 product-search results.
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 o say that the IoSafe Solo is just another piece of computer gear is a little like calling the Terminator just another droid. Not only can this external hard drive withstand the occasional fall, coffee spill, and power surge; it can also survive more — shall we say — extreme calamities.
Absentmindedly plop the IoSafe Solo in the swimming pool and forget about it for three days? Not an issue. Wake up after a long night of Red Bulls and rum chasers to find your Solo baking in your hobby kiln at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit? No worries. Inadvertently smash it with a ball-peen hammer during a do-it-yourself home-improvement project gone wrong? It’s all good. According to company execs at IoSafe Inc., you can abuse the Solo in these and countless other ways, and the data stored on it will remain perfectly protected.
Throw an attractive price point into the mix (the 500GB version retails at $149), and the IoSafe Solo probably sells itself, right? Not so fast. While you can talk yourself blue in the face pitching prospects on sweet features like the Solo’s disaster-proof chassis and virtual impregnability, talk alone is rarely enough to convince would-be buyers to purchase your product.
This was the issue facing IoSafe, of Auburn, CA, earlier this year when it launched the Solo, a “disaster-proof,” 3.5-inch external SATA hard drive that the company likens to an “aircraft black box for personal data.”
Getting the launch right was critical for the company, which has historically provided disaster-resistant storage to the government and industrial sectors. “This was the first time we were entering the consumer market, and to get it right we knew we’d have to inspire confidence in the Solo’s ability to deliver,” says IoSafe CEO Robb Moore.
Since IoSafe’s informal data showed its target customers tend to conduct extensive research before making a decision to purchase, the company wanted the product launch to generate as many positive product reviews and press stories as possible from highly reputable media sources.
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“The hope is that you can get enough published stories out there so that when people are doing research in your product segment, they’ll not only find you, but also view you as credible and relevant,” Moore says. The problem? Both Moore and John Wernke, IoSafe’s vice president of marketing, knew that building buzz and generating media coverage wasn’t easy, particularly when trying to break into a well-established industry segment such as the consumer hard-drive market.
Early on in the Solo’s development cycle, the IoSafe team decided that if it wanted to make a substantial splash with influential members of the press, the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas was the place to be. “CES was always part of our development cycle, and we worked very hard to get the product ready in time for the show,” Moore explains. “We saw it as a chance to achieve hyper-efficiency because it’s the one time of year when you have 4,000 to 5,000 consumer press reporters gathered together in one place.”
While it was intent on launching the Solo at CES, IoSafe’s team had several concerns about exhibiting at the show. The challenge, Moore says, would be finding a way to be heard above the din of other technology vendors at the event, highlight the differences of IoSafe’s product versus every other external hard drive out there, and prove that the company’s seemingly outlandish claims about the Solo’s capabilities were anything but. “The question for us was, out of literally thousands of other products that would be at CES, how can we stand out?” Moore says. “Even though we have a unique product, there are many very established brands in the external disk-drive market already, and we’re the new guys.”
A fire-and-water demo on the show floor was out of the question, given that most show organizers tend to say “no” for fear of liability. “We’ve approached shows in government and industrial sectors before about conducting demos and been turned down, ” Moore says.
A regular booth wouldn’t do the trick either, he says. “We knew we didn’t want to do a plain-old booth from the start. We’d already been through that experience with past product launches, and we knew that we’d end up getting stuffed in some corner somewhere, and we doubted how much press we could attract that way.”
So several months before the show, the company decided to bypass the CES show floor altogether and instead invite members of the press to attend an off-site demo event that would allow attendees to witness the Solo being used and abused in manifold ways.
GENERATING INTEREST
With visions of a wicked product demo dancing in their heads, the IoSafe team set about getting reporters to commit to attending the event. Their first step was to identify the company’s top 100 press targets — reporters the company identified as proven, highly respected writers who cover consumer storage. “We wanted to target the best, most respected members of the media. If you do a search for external hard drives on Google, you will see these people’s bylines,” Wernke says. After sending out an e-mail invitation announcing the off-site event to these contacts and giving them first dibs on reserving a demo appointment, IoSafe then blasted out the same e-mail to the remainder of its press list to ensure that all demo slots would be filled.
The e-mail promised reporters the “best product demo of your life,” with text that read: “During our demonstration, we will abuse the IoSafe Solo beyond what sane people might do … and then recover the data.” The e-mail also promised press members food, drink, and plenty of compelling video and photo ops. It explained that IoSafe staffers would pick them up in a limo and transport them to a rented facility a few blocks from the Strip, and that the entire demo — from pickup to drop-off — would last only an hour. “It was a teaser,” Wernke says. “We kept the tone playful and light and gave them just enough info to get them intrigued.”
Not surprisingly, demo slots began filling up quickly. In fact, a full 50 percent of IoSafe’s premium press targets indicated that they planned to attend before the company packed up and headed to Sin City. The only concern at that point, Wernke says, was that those who had reserved a slot would fail to show up. He hoped to hold the drop-off rate to 20 percent. To ensure that no-shows didn’t exceed that minimal level of press participation, Wernke spent the weeks leading up to the demonstration diligently calling and following up with those journalists who had already committed to attend. “We told reporters who booked a slot that we needed their cell-phone numbers to coordinate pickup times,” he says. “That allowed us to text them during CES and stay on top of them to make sure that they kept their appointments.”
Once on site, Moore and Wernke were intent on generating additional interest in the demo among members of the media who had not RSVPed. Doing so was especially important, given that IoSafe was doing nothing on the CES show floor to promote the event or generate brand awareness. To overcome this limitation, IoSafe slotted the first day of demos to begin 24 hours before CES kicked off. This staggered scheduling gave the first round of reporters in attendance an “exclusive” head start to write and publish their stories, which meant that articles about the demo began hitting the airwaves a day before CES actually opened its doors.
“Getting press stories out there in advance of the show was paramount,” Wernke says. “People heard about the demo as soon as they hit the show floor, and that press coverage — along with continual text reminders — made those who had already signed up for the demo want to keep their appointment.” In fact, only 10 percent of prospects who booked appointments failed to show. The early press coverage also attracted additional, previously uninvited reporters who read about the demonstration in the news and contacted IoSafe during the show wanting to see if they could still snag a time slot. “They didn’t want to be left out of the story,” Wernke says.
BUILDING A BETTER DEMO
Reporters who took IoSafe up on its demo offer were picked up on the Vegas Strip in a limo at a pre-appointed time, and then spent several minutes en route chatting informally with key IoSafe execs — which Wernke notes was a great way for his team to get personalized face time with reporters.
Soon thereafter, the limo pulled up to a rented, nondescript suburban house, which was located just blocks away from the Strip and was adorned with a “Demo-Lition” sign above the front door. Attendees’ first stop was in the dining room, where cocktails and refreshments were served, and a laptop, projector, and IoSafe Solo hard drive were set up on the dining room table. At that point, Moore launched into a brief product introduction designed to show reporters how the product works and to give them an inside look at the patented technology that keeps the Solo safe from flood and fire. Next, Moore plugged the Solo into his laptop and downloaded photographs of the attendees (which had been snapped during the limo ride and at the beginning of the product-introduction session) onto the hard drive.
Reporters were then escorted to the backyard patio, which featured a pool. And that’s when the real fun began. First, Moore threw the Solo into the pool and let it sink to the bottom and sit for several minutes before retrieving it. Next, he plopped the Solo into an oven — along with a regular, unprotected, conventional hard drive, which he placed in a baking pan and set on top of the Solo for comparative purposes — and seared both units in 1,500-degree
flames for several minutes. Finally, Moore turned off the gas, pulled the Solo from the burner using oven mitts, and hosed the unit down with water so as to cool it sufficiently to handle — all as reporters watched, awestruck by the Demo-Lition insanity.
Finally, everyone headed back into the dining room, where Moore unscrewed the Solo’s protective case, peeled away the insulation, cut various wires to free the unit’s metallic water barrier, and opened up the product’s shell to reveal a perfectly pristine — and intact — hard drive. He then quickly connected the hard drive to his laptop and successfully opened all of the digital photographs of journalists that had been loaded onto the unit earlier — proving that the hard drive was not only intact, but that the data stored on it was safe and sound. Suffice it to say, the conventional hard drive did not fare nearly as well.
MAKING A SPLASH
The reporters in attendance, always game for a great photo opportunity and the inside “scoop” on the latest and greatest technology products, responded to the fire-and-flooding demonstration just as IoSafe had hoped they would. “Beyond the obvious fascination and amusement with the demo itself, it all lent itself perfectly for some fun photography and video, too!” wrote one tech blogger after attending the event. “Granted, it’s one of those problems you hope you never have to worry about, but if there ever were to be a flood or fire, I’d certainly feel better knowing my data would most likely survive it!”
Going into the event, IoSafe had planned to run only eight demonstrations (two per day over the course of four days) and hoped to attract six members of the media to each one. But the water-and-flames demonstration created so much on-site buzz at CES that the company added two additional demos to its event schedule and was forced to turn some reporters away after all the available time slots were filled. “Based on the level of interest, we could have done twice as many demos, but there simply wasn’t enough time and we didn’t have enough Solo units on hand,” Wernke says.
In the days during and immediately following CES, the press had a field day writing about the Solo — which is precisely the kind of buzz the IoSafe team hoped the demo event would inspire. Prior to the Solo’s launch, Moore went online and ran a Google search on his company’s product, which yielded about 1,000 hits. Approximately two months after the CES show ended, he says, the exact same search yielded approximately 62,000 hits, including hundreds of media stories written about the IoSafe Solo as a result of the Demo-Lition event — many of which were printed by some of the most popular and reputable media outlets around, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, ComputerWorld, and CNET, among others.
Demo-Lition attendee and Computer Shopper editor-in-chief John Burek went so far as to name the IoSafe Solo “the best tech product” of CES 2009, praising the fact that IoSafe was “willing to put its reputation on the line with, hands-down, the harshest tech-product demo we’ve ever seen.” And it’s that kind of positive press that helped IoSafe take a rented house, a swimming pool, and a unique event strategy and demolish the competition in one flame-and-flood-induced swoop. Demo of a lifetime, indeed. E
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TRIAL BY FIRE AND WATER
IoSafe Inc. knew it couldn’t just issue a press release about its Solo hard drive and call it a day if it wanted to build major industry buzz. So the company invited skeptical journalists to an intense fire-and-water demonstration that put its product through the wringer.
Journalists were given the opportunity to pre-register for a demo and provide their cell-phone numbers to schedule limo transportation.
IoSafe arranged for limo transportation to and from the off-site demo, during which the company’s execs had valuable face time with members of the press.
Instead of a stuffy conference room or boring parking lot, the company rented a nondescript Las Vegas house for the demo.
Staffers snapped photos of attendees prior to the start of the demo, then uploaded them to the Solo via a laptop.
Once the photos were successfully downloaded, IoSafe CEO Robb Moore tossed the Solo into the house’s outdoor pool and let it sink to the bottom.
After a few minutes in the pool, Moore fished out the intact Solo and stuck it in a 1,500-degree oven.
As the Solo began to blister and char, Moore plucked it out of the oven using oven mitts and metal tongs, and hosed it down until it was cool enough to handle.
Moore then brought the charred Solo back into the house and opened it to reveal the unharmed hard drive.
After he revealed the Solo’s pristine hard drive, Moore connected it to the laptop and opened all the attendee photos that had been downloaded.
IoSafe reprised the Demo-Lition event in 2010. This time, the company added a 35,000-pound backhoe to the mix, which drove over the top of the Solo.
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THREE QUICK TIPS
IoSafe Inc. CEO Robb Moore and vice president of marketing John Wernke offer these tips for crafting an off-site demo strategy that captures the media’s attention and convinces them to attend.
1. Provide a respite.
An offer to escape the grind of the show is welcomed by the press, Moore says. “Promising to pick reporters up in a limo, giving them some something to drink, and providing them with a chance to get away from the craziness of the Strip and convention center was a big part of our success.”
2. Give them what they want.
IoSafe tailored its demo to deliver exactly what journalists were looking for: the opportunity to experience something different, an interesting story, plenty of photo and video opportunities, and a chance to write about a product that provides real value to their readers. According to Moore, “Saying you’re going to put your product in a 1,500-degree fireball and throw it into 10,000 gallons of water grabs the media’s attention because they know it won’t be like every other presentation they’ve seen.”
3. Offer exclusivity.
IoSafe waited until after the International Consumer Electronics Show to push a press release about the Demo-Lition over the wires. “Doing so gave the reporters in attendance an exclusive chance to post their stories first,” Moore says. “The first reporters had two to five days to post their video and stories. Then, we blasted the release over the Internet after the show, and it got picked up again, resulting in another wave of press for us.”
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