The Story
The following case study explores how Red Fan Communications supported a company rebrand after 15 years of operating beneath a previous business name and to attract outside investment post-announcement. After onboarding in February 2023, Red Fan quickly kicked into high gear to announce the new brand ahead of a major industry conference in March. Red Fan developed a robust set of rebrand communications that informed internal and external messaging and landed the fresh brand several embargoes and several industry podcast interviews. Three months after the announcement, the brand was acquired by the largest IT consulting company in the world.
Nextira sought a public relations and communications partner to support the launch of a rebrand after 15 years of operating under a different name. With just over four weeks until the announcement, Nextira called upon Red Fan Communications to plan and execute a media relations strategy ahead of launch and build brand momentum following the news.
Founded in 2008 by Jason Cutrer, Nextira began as Six Nines IT. Seeing a need for a skill set like his to help incorporate IT infrastructure into the viticulture business, Cutrer originally opened up shop as an IT services and consulting company for wineries in Northern California. His innovative nature, keen eye for opportunity and knack for reaching potential through problem solving grew Six Nines IT from scrappy beginnings into one of the first companies in Amazon Web Service’s partner network.
Over the next fifteen years, Cutrer’s leadership and future-forward vision guided Six Nines IT from a one-man cloud consulting and migration company to a team of more than 70 employees providing advanced cloud intelligence, proprietary and turnkey solutions, AI/ML and HPC engineering and managed engineers, immersive futures services and more. With time also came the need to evolve and redefine the brand to better align with its growth.
Challenge
After working with a creative agency to develop a new brand name, aesthetic and website, Nextira approached Red Fan Communications as a PR partner to support its rebrand announcement. That announcement would coincide with the annual Game Developers Conference—a keystone industry event less than five weeks away from the start of Red Fan’s engagement. No stranger to working on tight timelines to report major company news, Red Fan developed an actionable media relations plan and tailored recommendations to raise Nextira’s public profile. Red Fan’s familiarity with navigating the unique challenges of mature tech businesses making pivots and the agency’s relationships with gaming industry media secured Nextira’s trust in partnering with Red Fan.
Solution
To prepare for Nextira’s rebrand launch, Red Fan conducted a robust media landscape review of the cloud, immersive futures and predictive enterprise industries to gain insight into trends, inform a media plan and devise engaging pitch themes for brand launch. Following this research, Red Fan produced a comprehensive press kit for the rebrand launch, including a press release; custom pitches and media lists; media training for company spokespeople; a fresh brand boilerplate and qualifier; internal and external-facing rebrand FAQs documents; audience-specific messaging for rebrand communications; a brand fact sheet; a brand style guide, and executive bios.
Following the rebrand announcement, Red Fan established and executed a plan to maintain Nextira’s media momentum that would assist in attracting outside investment. Activities included two subsequent press releases and accompanying campaigns, weekly media ingests to inform relevant industry news and a proactive pitching strategy to position executives as industry thought leaders.
Results
On a deadline of just over four weeks, Red Fan leveraged its media relationships in gaming and tech to secure four embargoes for Nextira’s rebrand announcement—including Axios and GamesBeat at VentureBeat—and produced a range of internal and external-facing messaging resources that were used across Nextira’s website, client and partner communications, social media and thought leader platforms.
Over the course of Red Fan’s four-month engagement Nextira saw a share of voice increase from 0% to 8% and 9% against industry competitors and executive leaders (respectively), 481 million in aggregate readership, and $903,000 in ad equivalency from press release coverage. Between March 15 and June 10, 2023, the effectively unknown company earned 308 media mentions and CEO Jason Cutrer collected an impressive 159 media mentions. Red Fan also secured several dedicated podcast episode interviews for Cutrer.
Within three months of the rebrand announcement, Nextira was acquired by the largest IT consulting company in the world.
