How do you take a century-old technology provider to government agencies and commercial entities and arm it with media assets strong enough to secure top-tier coverage? How do you grab the media’s focus away from tech and data juggernauts like Google?

That’s what Unisys was up against in April 2011, as the company aimed to refresh its image and re-enter the industry as a leader in new technology in cyber security, cloud computing, mobile applications and social computing.

To assist with the transformation, Unisys tapped Lewis PR to position the company as a provider of mission critical IT by increasing thought leadership and brand awareness.

To highlight the solutions Unisys offered, the campaign melded strategic media outreach with digital outlets and platforms. The communications strategy, then, was to develop a compelling story to share news about the company’s updated services with influencer communities in both the mainstream media and the social-media universe. For Lewis PR, that strategy brought one word to mind—infographics.

 

ABOVE THE WEEDS

Unisys’ media relations strategy before the campaign was focused on its own technology solutions, rather than looking at the broader trends, says Nicole Tanenbaum, account director at Lewis PR. “We wanted to up-level the message Unysis was going out with—not just being down in the weeds with the tech rats,” she says. “We knew the overall result was to focus on the digital aspects of its communications programs through the placement of infographics within a mainstream outlet.”

 

BUSTING OUT

As the PR team of five (two people from Unysis and three from Lewis PR) began the campaign, it researched how it could insert Unisys into stories covering issues that the company’s solutions solved. The team also looked to identify publications in which Unisys had not previously been covered.

The team’s greatest challenge would be to battle larger, more-influential companies that were already addressing key trends such as cloud computing.

To drive Unisys’ thought leadership, the company had to find a way to contribute opinions and research from the company in the conversations that competitors were already leading.

The team turned toward sharing Unisys’ message via compelling, high-level data to capture the attention of the media reps, business publications and consumers through infographics.

CREATING NEW ANGLES

It was important to create new PR angles and content that would highlight Unisys subject matter experts (SMEs) as thought leaders and emphasize Unisys’ approach to bring modern technology to organizations large and small.

To do so, the team leveraged the company’s bi-annual commissioned research study, called the Unisys Security Index (USI), to showcase its original insights. Each year, the USI captures global and country-specific consumer perception of pressing security issues. To create buzz and promote social media sharing of the research, the team developed infographics to make the story pop and hook the public and press to share Unisys’ findings.

“The results of our research can be complex, and we find infographics to be effective ways of summarizing and presenting the findings in a visually impactful way,” says Jim Kerr, VP of corporate global public and analyst relations, Unisys.

 

TACTICAL STEPS

â–¶ Media Outreach: The team researched a list of outlets that Unysis considered “dream hits,” which included top-tier blogs and outlets such as Forbes, GigaOm, Mashable, TechCrunch, The Atlantic. In order to break into these mainstream outlets, the infographics would need to stand out from the pack.

â–¶ Designing Assets: Brian Compton, creative director at Lewis PR, says his team handles infographics differently depending on the content involved. “If the client comes with an asset like a data set, it’s a matter of us massaging that data into a narrative and packaging it for top-tear media and a wide array of audiences,” Compton says.

â–¶ Pitching for placement: Cyber security is such a hot topic that Unisys didn’t have to pre-pitch media outlets before the infographic was designed, Tanenbaum says. “We knew there would be interest based on the content,” she says. “Having the asset completed works best because once you secure the media’s interest, they’ll likely want it right away.” Blame it on the shrinking newsroom, but editors are greedy for media assets that can serve as the crux of a story.

“We also aim for exclusives and talk to the clients beforehand for first and second targets,” Tanenbaum says.

 

SECOND GO-ROUND

Two months following the USI launch, Unisys had its second major survey announcement, which provided insight on the Consumerization of IT. The team worked to develop a second infographic and placed it in one of the most widely read technology blogs, GigaOm.

Following the success in 2011 the Lewis team created an infographic for the 2012 release of the Unisys Security Index. The challenge: develop a storyline different from the one created the year earlier. “In 2011, we gave the overall security concerns, reworking the executive summary into an infographic,” Compton says. “In 2012, we took one element of the USI (mobile security) and used that as the foundation.” The 2012 version was placed on Forbes.com.

“The trick with infographics is to produce content that provides real value to a reporter while not coming off as too self-promotional,” Kerr says. “It’s a tough balance to hit.”

Kerr says the biggest difficultly in creating interesting infographics—as it is with any piece of communication—is to make the content clear, compelling and memorable.

 

INFO MASH-UP

Unisys earned major digital results in outlets that had yet to cover Unisys to date:

• The 2011 Unisys Security Index infographic saw a Mashable tweet re-tweeted 1,492 times, with more than 300 “likes” on the Mashable article page and over 700 reposts of the infographic on LinkedIn.

• The GigaOm coverage of the Consumerization of IT infographic included more than 300 tweets and more than 100 LinkedIn shares.

• The Forbes.com infographic earned 35,321 total page views; 911 tweets from the Forbes.com site; 664 likes on Facebook; 111 shares on Google+; 873 shares on LinkedIn; and was ranked No. 3 within the top 10 “most viewed” articles on Forbes.com.

 

If given a do-over, Compton says he would have focused more on providing several different types of multimedia assets for earning coverage. A man-on-the-street style video, in which the Lewis PR video team addressed Washingtonian’s security fears using D.C. landmarks as backdrops, “didn’t get the coverage we thought it deserved,” Compton says.

Moving forward, Compton says his team will break down infographics for social media as smaller, one-hit-wonder graphics, and for SlidesShare accounts. “Some publications prefer the slideshows than big infographics,” Compton says.

To avoid being repetitive, the Lewis PR team planning to beef up its efforts with motion infographics and kinetic typography, adding motion and animation and interactive elements. If you think infographics are going away, think again—the level of innovation is about to get higher. PRN

 

CONTACT:

Brian Compton, [email protected], Nicole Tanenbaum, [email protected]; Jim Kerr, [email protected].

Digital PR

Media Relations

Social Media

Unysis’ infographic based on primary research was picked up by major business outlets.

How to Illuminate Infographics

Brian Compton, creative director at Lewis PR, works with inforgaphics every day on behalf of his clients. Below he provides his take on the visual medium:

What are they? For B2B PR, the most common infographics are used as a chance to send lightly branded digital assets into the media as some form of thought leadership. There is enough data and information available these days that most points-of-view can be supported by a collection of facts and figures. Infographics wrap these data points in a narrative that leads the user to a conclusion.

How do you create one? To build one you first create the full content outline by collecting the key data points and arranging them to support the storyline and conclusion. Once that data narrative foundation is there, you:

• Add a catchy or even thematic title

• Wordsmith commentary

• Call out key points

• Describe visualization ideas

• Include a call-to-action

•Drop in a branded footer

• List sources

• End result—content

Supplement this outline with background information like goals, audience, tone and examples of other infographics they liked, and a design team should be able to run with it.

4 Types of Infographics That Attract Journalists’ Attention

Soon, we might need an infographic on the different types of infographics. Brian Compton, creative director at Lewis PR, breaks down the most popular forms of infographics that can catch the eyes of journalists.

1 . Data and Fact Driven Infographics: These are the majority of the PR and blog-driven infographics, Compton says. They take stats and facts and arrange them to tell a narrative or prove a point. The best of these types of infographics use original research to reveal something new to the audience.

2. Process Infographics: “Complex processes and procedures can be simplified by using graphics to show the reader what happens instead of telling them,” Compton says. “My favorite example of this is the timeless water cycle infographic that every one of us studied in school.

3. Timeline Infographics: “One good way to show customers how you are prepared for the future is to recap the past,” says Compton. In an infographic for F-Secure, Lewis PR used a Space Invaders theme to talk about the 25 most infamous computer viruses over the last 25 years. Note: Geeky themes get lots of shares.

4. How To: These are less popular with the B2B community, but can be used in some clever ways to help people understand something, Compton says. In a way, the How-To is a type of “Process Infographic.”