McAfee

McAfee and Lighthouse Analyst Relations deliver exceptional Analyst Relations programme across Europe

As a leading supplier of network security and availability solutions, McAfee creates best-of-breed computer security solutions that prevent intrusions on networks and protect computer systems from the next generation of blended attacks and threats. However, until 2003, McAfee in Europe had achieved little in the field of industry analyst relations. Nick Bowman, Analyst Relations Manager for McAfee, decided it was time to target, and build relationships with, this important group of influencers on his organisation’s European sales.”Our colleagues in North America have been successfully targeting industry analysts for several years, and reaping the business benefits from building relationships with key analysts. It became essential to replicate this success across Europe, but as we were starting from scratch, we looked to an external specialist to partner with us to deliver a valuable and effective European analyst relations programme,” says Nick.

Nick was only interested in working with a consultancy who truly understood the analyst relations’ market: a consultancy that could guide and advise McAfee as to which industry analysts they should be speaking with and why, and to demonstrate how the analysts could influence McAfee’s enterprise sales. Nick also wanted to ensure McAfee’s spokespeople were professionally trained in how to build relationships with analysts, to appreciate what information was required for their research, and how to convey a set of defined messages to the analysts. One of the agencies approached was the Lighthouse Analyst Relations team.

Nick continues, “At the time we started to work with Lighthouse Analyst Relations, the industry analysts did not know McAfee and McAfee did not know who we should be targeting in what seemed a minefield of an untapped market. Lighthouse Analyst Relations had been there and done that - the organisation had delivered many successful AR projects to clients, their team included former analysts who clearly knew the market - and many of the analysts so acted as an important door opener for us - and they committed to help us get up and running quickly with a focused, strategic European AR programme.”

Nick believed Lighthouse delivered value for money, although he admitted it was at the high end of the price range. However, he was happy to pay for the service as he accepted he needed expert advice and Lighthouse could deliver a far faster solution than McAfee could have achieved alone. Lighthouse carried out several elements to the programme: a strategic six-month plan to give structure to the programme, including aims and objectives; ongoing high-level advice; complex methodology to define McAfee’s target industry analysts through Analyst Impact Modelling; benchmarking to track share of voice; analyst briefings; and in-depth spokespeople training.

“We have been extremely pleased with the deliverables from Lighthouse AR - and the subsequent results achieved. We have built and maintained several beneficial relationships with key industry analysts, have a structured rather than ad-hoc programme in place, fully trained and confident spokespeople, and a sales team that’s far more interested in the impact of the analysts on their enterprise sales - and discusses analyst recommendations with their customers,” concludes Nick.