Gutenberg Case Study

Targeted Government PR Campaign to Support Procurement of Task Orders with the USAF

Background: ARRAY Information Technology, which provides a full range of IT and systems integration services to the Federal market, derives a significant piece of its business from the Federal Defense Sector. The U.S. Air Force has awarded ARRAY participation in several major contract vehicles including NETCENTS, Acquisition of Consolidated Enterprise Support Services (ACCESS) and NETCENTS-2. The most recent NETCENTS-2 contract vehicle expands the Air Force's existing NETCENTS contracts with a combined ceiling of $24.2 billion, of which $11 billion will be available to small businesses through small business-only competitions and small business subcontracting requirements. As such, the USAF represents a significant long-term business opportunity for ARRAY. ARRAY tasked Gutenberg Communications with providing visibility and thought leadership for its executives to support the continued procurement of these contract vehicles with the USAF. In particular, task orders would include a range of network-centric supplies and services including hardware and software for networking and various engineering, software development, system integration, security, and telephony services. Challenges: The Gutenberg team would encounter the following challenges:

1) Establishing Credibility for a “Vendor” – The PR team would need to establish credibility for the ARRAY team, including Sumeet Shrivastava, President; Jon Dittmer, Vice President & General Manager, Defense Sector; and Mark Douglas, USAF and Defense Client Executive, or risk being categorized as solely a “vendor” whose comments would be construed as self-serving.

2) Making the Topic Relevant and “News Worthy” – USAF contract vehicles include task orders for highly specific and nuanced functions related to application services, IT integration, supply chain and inventory management, and so one. The team would need to find a larger news hook to effectively support these capabilities and build the appropriate thought leadership for the company.

3) Reaching a Highly Specific Audience – Given the nature of the USAF contract and the federal contracting market, the team would need to tailor specific pitches to both C-level decision makers in the government market, as well as government agency IT practitioners.

Strategy:

The team created a PR strategy that would leverage macroeconomic and Federal IT trends in a way that would create a platform for meaningful discussion of the use of technology in government. This would create an opportunity to establish ARRAY as a thought leader on key topics. For example, the team would leverage the fact that we began 2013 on the edge of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” which many say threatened to push the economy into a dangerous recession. Even while this crisis was at least temporarily averted, the state of the economy and cost cutting in government continues to impact government agencies. Meanwhile, Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the wasteful and dysfunctional fashion in which the federal government acquires information technology systems and services, noting that the federal government spends "about $80 billion annually on IT, with industry experts estimating that as much as 70 percent of new federal IT acquisitions fail or fall behind schedule. The team would leverage this commentary and VanRoekel’s mandate that federal agencies should not rely on increased IT acquisition spending to function, but rather they need to make better use of the tools that are already at their disposal. This would provide a broad platform to address specific needs within the USAF when it comes to application services, IT integration, supply chain management, inventory management, and so on. The team would also position key members of the ARRAY management team in a way that highlighted specific government agency experience, in addition to their roles at ARRAY, so that comments would not be construed at self-serving. For example the team noted that Jon Dittmer has experience leading technology projects at numerous high profile government agencies, including the US Air Force, Department of Defense, and other. And, Mark Douglas has more than 30 years as a Logistics Officer in the US Air Force. Results: As a result of the campaign, the PR team secured numerous placements in the business and federal trade publications, as well as live radio and video interviews and speaking engagements. Recent key placements include features in Federal News Radio, CBS Interactive – TechRepublic, InformationWeek – Government, Supply Chain Brain, FedTech Magazine and WatchIT. In addition, the team secured regular contributed articles from several ARRAY executives in AOL Government, Homeland Security Today, Federal Times, and others, and also secured speaking positioning at key defense conferences such as The Counter Terror Expo, and GovSec / FOSE events. In May 2013, ARRAY secured two major, competitively selected awards to help the Air Force sustain and modernize two top-tier logistics data systems. Other critical task orders are pending, and the team continues to support ARRAY’s efforts from a thought leadership standpoint in the media.