Juniper Networks Business Press Campaign Lands Seven Significant Stories in Six Months

The Goal: Since its successful initial public offering on June 25, 1999, Juniper Networks has been known as a darling of Wall Street. Still, business press were reluctant to look at Juniper Networks beyond the story of its stock performance. A&R Edelman needed to convince the business press of Juniper Networks' true worth and educate them about Internet infrastructure market. Accomplishing this goal would require A&R Edelman to elevate Juniper Networks' profile to the same level as the company's better-known peers, Nortel and Lucent. A&R Edelman ould also need to push the angle of Juniper Networks upstaging more established rivals such as Cisco Systems.

The Scenario: Juniper Networks made a name for itself by building a unique Internet infrastructure designed to manage the applications and traffic flow of tomorrow's Internet. The company makes Internet backbone routers for the largest networks in the world—networks requiring Internet traffic to move at speeds up to 10 billion digital bits a second. In comparison, Cisco's fastest commercially available routers can handle flows of only 2.5 billion bits a second. With Internet traffic doubling every four to six months, products that can support data and video over networks like Juniper Networks are in high demand.

Despite this demand, stand-alone business press coverage of Juniper Networks and infrastructure issues was limited. When mainstream business press did write about the company and its market, the descriptions of what Juniper Networks did were often inaccurate. Coverage focused on market valuation and did not convey the full scope of the company's strategy, products or market potential.

The Approach: A&R Edelman developed a comprehensive business press outreach program for Juniper Networks in February 2000. First, A&R Edelman identified the obstacles to solid press coverage and analyzed market perceptions of Juniper Networks. Then A&R Edelman developed a new set of messages that addressed the obstacles and market perceptions. The new messaging sought to communicate a more accurate, compelling story to the business press. For example, instead of avoiding or minimizing comparisons to Cisco, A&R Edelman took the opposite approach, stressing the direct association to Cisco would only give Juniper a larger, more valid presence in the minds of the business press.

Other key messages included:

• positioning the market as one led equally by two and only two players—Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems;
• distinguishing Juniper Networks' executive management as visionaries;
• differentiating the company from other infrastructure and optical networking companies;
• and establishing Juniper Networks as an Internet network education incubator for employees.

Armed with competitive analyses, real-world customer examples and market statistics, A&R Edelman planned to educate the press about the Internet infrastructure market and drive home the bottom-line—that Juniper Networks' technology was critical in supporting continued Internet growth.

Attempts to attract key business writers and editors' attention and meet with them face-to-face spanned a wide range of approaches, all ultimately focused on developing and building long-lasting editorial relationships. Meeting in unconventional locations such as the Metropolitan Art Museum and responding directly to press articles covering the Internet infrastructure market were two such methods.

The Results: Within a six-month period of executing the business press outreach program, A&R Edelman placed stories about Juniper Networks in seven business publications, including Forbes, FORTUNE magazine, The Financial Times and the Industry Standard. A&R Edelman's creativity and persistence created additional opportunities for ink:

• When a face-to-face meeting with FORTUNE magazine got cancelled just minutes before the scheduled time, A&R Edelman took advantage of the cancellation and secured an interview with Investor's Business Daily, resulting in a prominent full-page company profile on Juniper Networks.
• When a meeting with The New York Times was not leading to anything bigger than an article mention, A&R Edelman arranged a meeting between a Times' editor and Juniper Networks' chief executive officer. During the meeting, the chief executive officer developed an unusual story angle—on-the-fly—that led to a detailed outlook on the Internet infrastructure market. The resulting article described Juniper Networks as "the next powerhouse in communications equipment."
• A meeting with Business Week took six months to schedule. Afterward, the reporter changed beats, but A&R Edelman kept the fire alive by actively pursuing the new beat reporter. A few weeks later, a positive, stand-alone, two-page feature spread about Juniper Networks appeared in Business Week, titled "The Upstart that's Eating Cisco's Lunch."

Coverage reflected Juniper Networks' messaging, set the stage for the successful launch of the company's new M160 product and positioned the company as a leading visionary of the IP infrastructure market. A&R Edelman's business press outreach program also led to an overall increase in the coverage of infrastructure issues by top-tier business publications.

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