NextLinx India - Positioning and awareness creation to build visibility and equity

The Background

NextLinx Inc., is a seven-year-old company in the US, which plays in the area of Global trade management solutions. The area, is complex and not many players have looked at and addressed this area. The potential for the solution is tremendous as the economies are getting increasing globalized and cross border trade only increasing and not decreasing. The company had entered India in 1999 itself and was witness to a major local management shake-up later that year.

The Brief

The Indian arm's then Director-Operations got in touch with us to find out how we could increase awareness of the company's presence in India primarily to support their local visibility and also to support their recruitment efforts. They were keen on proper positioning of the company but were not exactly aware of what needs to be exactly done.

Our Recommendations

We took the brief, did some research and figured that it is entirely feasible to start on the external communication front afresh, as the company had done nil media activity till then other than an one-off insertion in some dailies. Second, we realized that since the company's Indian operations was not that large and did not have a full-fledged CEO, we needed to excite people about the business area it operates in and sell the future to work around it.

This led us to couple of more decisions like using their Global CEO (incidentally an Indian-American and Founder of the company) as the primary spokesperson as he could sell the vision much better. And to make up for the absence of local initiatives, we decided to focus on the big projects, which the parent outsourced to the Indian arm as the route to gaining ongoing visibility.

What we actually did?

Step1

• Announce formally the commencement of operations of Nextlinx in India through a press release sent to all target publications.
• Immediately follow-it up with a series of interviews in Bangalore and Mumbai with the Global head focusing primarily on the segment, its uniqueness and potential

Step 2

• A series of press releases timed once every 10 weeks about the major projects being won etc.
• Once the initial awareness got established, we changed the cycle to include participation in various features being done on the industry, executive profiles etc. to ensure some visibility is there.
• Currently we are in the process of announcing their new development center in India

The Result

• Comparatively for a company of its size and the size of its Indian operations, NextLinx India obtained far better coverage in leading dailies and magazines including electronic media
• The frequency was maintained though India-specific information was little.
• PR effectively delivered as a communication tool to support recruitment - one of their key objectives