Jump-starting Awareness – IPextreme, Inc.

Marketing Challenge:

IPextreme, Inc. had successfully launched a company with a unique business model and had established distributors or company offices in California, China, India, Israel, Japan, Germany, Korea and Taiwan. The company packages, handles licensing of, delivers and supports famous IP (intellectual property) designed by large semiconductor companies and used by system-on-chip (SoC) designers worldwide. Most of this IP had previously not been available in the marketplace, but had been for internal use by the developing company.

These production-proven IP products serve both broad horizontal markets and specific verticals and are packaged by IPextreme into an easily integrated, process-independent format for easy use by the widest range of customers. The customer base and the partner base were growing, but the market for IP was growing, too, and competition was beginning to move towards IPextreme’s business model. In November 2007, IPextreme hired Cayenne to help develop a strategy to greatly increase awareness of the company’s partnership potential and IP portfolio before DAC 2008.

The Cayenne Method:

Cayenne worked with the management team to develop and execute a strategic marketing and communications plan. The plan focused on educating the market on IPextreme’s pioneering efforts to make silicon-proven IP accessible and usable by developers while simultaneously offering a complete business solution that allows semiconductor companies to strategically leverage their internal IP portfolio and expand overall revenue. As always in start-ups, executive time was at a premium, so it was important to relieve IPextreme of the task of writing while also ensuring that the increased exposure stayed relevant to partners and users and also stayed on message.
Successful execution of the strategic marketing plan included:

Creating and executing marketing and communications plans, for the company and for the launch of the Core Store, the on-line IP marketplace.
Developing and disseminating key company and partner-specific messages.
Targeting key industry analysts and publications for interviews.
Presenting joint papers and programs with partners.
Speaking at key industry events.
Drafting and placing a steady steam of articles, opinion pieces and press releases.

Execution of the marketing strategy included wide dissemination of customer successes, joint articles and presentations with customers, a focus on customer successes at conferences, an increase in publication of technical articles and opinion pieces, introducing the new CEO to the editorial community, and the well-received launch of the new NexusRoute product in September 2007.

Results:

By working to make the term “famous IP” synonymous with “IPextreme” and by publishing and speaking on a well-planned schedule, IPextreme was able to more than double awareness and to successfully launch the first on-line IP marketplace with published prices. The marketing plan was successful in broadly disseminating information about IPextreme’s packaging and licensing process, educating the market on the success enjoyed by IP development partners, and educating developers on ease of use, support and integration.

Within seven months, executing the marketing plan resulted in:

Interviews with 6 key industry analysts and coverage in 4 analyst reports, including mention by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor.”
Interviews with 10 key industry editors.
31 articles in 20 industry publications, including front page coverage in EETimes.
207 mentions or press release publication.
Coverage of presentations at four industry events.
Video coverage in EETimes, EDA Café and Technorati.
4 partner-related press releases, 4 customer-related press releases, 1 Core Store launch release and 4 other releases.
Launch of the on-line Core Store covered in 21 publications.

Testimonial:

“I am impressed by Cayenne’s strategic advice, how quickly they get up to speed on company technology, and – of course – results.”

-- Warren Savage, founder, president and CEO, IPextreme, Inc.