Micro FocusBrand and post-acquisition

strategy, Stage One.

• This document has been formed after discussions with Steve Moore, creative copywriter of Micro Focus

• It is intended as a wrap-up of the knowledge shared so far and to make the case for a potential brand refresh, to be undertaken in two parts. It represents the first part of the Blend strategy. [See next slide]. It also sets out an updated full product listing and supporting post-acquisition notes in Appendix 1.

• The first stage is to undertake market research and review the current Micro Focus and Borland creative estate. This will enable the creation of a brand strategy for the parent company.

• This strategy will enable Micro Focus’ clients, prospects and employees to share a common, high value view of the organisation in line with its market position.

• The strategy can then be expressed as a cohesive visual and tonal identity. This identity will be encapsulated in comprehensive brand guidelines. These will be implemented by dedicated Brand Guardians to consolidate the brand strategy.

• This refreshed identity will resonate with internal and external audiences, help secure the company’s presence in the marketplace at a time of transition and ensure more consistent and professional communications going forwards.

Background

Blend• This is the process by which I will use every element of the strategy mix – analytics, research,

background knowledge and market insight – to develop a unique way forward for the Micro Focus brand.

• It is this strategy that will enable any future brand refresh and implementation work to take place.

• The Blend process is broken down into a number of different layers. This is the traditional structure, but there is a degree of flex that would enable us to follow a different model if that was required, ie key stakeholders unable to attend workshops. More here.

Brand strategy – how it worksWhile the process is well established, the integral elements will all be unique to Micro Focus.

The Value of a Brand Strategy• Successful brands are built on a foundation of meaningful brand strategy.

• This strategy provides the framework for what the company believes in.

• A well formulated brand strategy enables a brand to express itself confidently and effectively. It delivers a higher perceived brand value. 

• A solid brand strategy is needed to translate company values confidently to new acquisitions and partners as well as to brand advocates.

• A considered brand strategy will resolve the current communications challenges presently faced by Micro Focus.

• It will also create a roadmap for ‘folding in’ any brands that Micro Focus may acquire in the future.

The stages of a brand strategy

Stage One - Exploration• Steve has already undertaken a representative survey with internal stakeholders

and is creating an audit of current content. This, and my independent research, will help to define our brand territory.

• This insight will enable us to craft differentiated brand messaging and create/reinforce an identity that addresses the needs of your internal and varied external audiences.

• This process will lead to the implementation of new brand messaging, will look at the potential for a rebrand/brand refresh that will support your visual communications and express them through current marketing channels.

• There are questions: Micro Focus has other brands in its ‘family’ [eg Borland/Accurev] and others it is in the process of acquiring – do these brands fold in or stand outside? See Appendix 1 for more information.

Example of a successful brand strategy – Chat University

Chat University – case study• Pre web 2.0 business offered basic, out-of-the-box chat software to uni market

• Competitors offered custom built chat software with better features

• Uni’s felt compelled to communicate with prospective students using current technology, but were intimidated by the learning curve

• Chat U developed a brand strategy focused on intensive customer support and education

• The brand then repositioned in order to refocus and take market share

• They recruited staff not for tech skills but for understanding of customers’ mentality

• The Result: Chat U signed up over 400 universities and sold for millions to the world’s leading education software conglomerate

• Not through best product, but through best Brand Strategy

Audiences - TLC• Give your customers some TLC: In order to understand your customers, you need to think

like them.

• TLC stands for Think Like your Customers: we must understand who our audiences are, and the problems they face.

• We can then relate that knowledge to our products, to ensure that our brand values and key messaging resonate with them clearly and effectively, to simplify sales conversions.

• We presently understand the Primary audiences for Micro Focus to be enterprises, namely IT firms, Insurance and Finance Houses, Banks – essentially mainframe or data center owners, anyone involved with accessing core information through enterprise applications.

• Within those firms: CEO / CIO / IT Managers

• More audience analysis is expressed in Appendix 1.

Competitors• IBM [although we also work with them at times]

• Hewlett Packard [see above]

• Other IT brands in the Enterprise space

• More Competitor Analysis needed in Blend 2.0 [see later in document]

What we do in a nutshell• Knowing what we do broadly and then distilling it into effective Brand

Messaging is key. This will also form graphic direction, as well as our key messages, web keywords for onsite SEO and organic search and will help to establish our USP.

Broad messages condensed into nutshells:

• ‘We make your stuff work better’ 

• ‘We get you more out of what you already have’ 

• ‘We bridge the old with the new’

Micro Focus Brand Values• These have been explored through initial brand research and the survey’s

open and closed questioning. This research will inform the next phase of this project [Stage Two]

• We will take these findings and aggregate them into meaningful data which will, in turn, be processed into the rebrand brief.

• These will form our understanding of the company’s brand and positioning and all brand touch points will be influenced by these key outcomes.

• In short, these brand values will underpin everything we do from this point onwards.

Brand Positioning • Our brand positioning will be a statement of intent for both internal and

external stakeholders. By answering the questions below and reviewing our current data, we can establish our positioning and express our brand positioning with confidence:

• Q. Brand Perception: how do we want to be perceived by our customers and what is our competitive advantage?

• Q. Brand Promise: what is our commitment to our customers?

• Q. Brand Purpose: why do we exist? What is our mission?

Examples of inconsistent brand representation

Trying to shoe-horn in two brands with no clear ‘family’ brand strategy leads to dissemination of brand message and looks and confuses the reader.

The use of the elephant is a classic brand ‘error’: taking a ‘dry’ subject matter and [literally] standing it on its head with no supporting narrative is confusing. While it may work in the context of an appeal with the bandwidth to explain the metaphor, it does not work as a random image.

This may appeal in terms of an eye-catching image for a trade show handout, but where is the ongoing narrative and rationale? What is the relationship between breakdancing elephants andsoftware?

Every brand has a story to tell – but this isn’t it. The processwill uncover what that story is and express itconfidently, with foundations in place.

Present Brand Challenges • The brand is presently diluted through lack of consistency expressed visually [see previous slide] and tonally between the elements of

the brand family

• Nothing ‘hangs together’ from a marketing perspective. The Visual COBOL video content, for example, lacks a coherent theme.

• Lack of brand awareness internally - if we don’t understand ourselves, how do we expect others to?

• Siloed creativity, no central cohesion leading to ad hoc branding appearing on collateral and low value perception

• Lack of infrastructure to deliver effective communications and no brand ‘policing’ beyond final sign-off against poor-quality brand guidelines opaque and an individual perception of brand values.

• Dancing elephants, or other metaphorical creative devices, need a story and rationale

• Out-of-step brand evolution: Borland is much further along the path of brand refresh than the parent company.

• Future uncertainty: are the most recent acquisitions going to be folded in to the Micro Focus brand family?

Why Micro Focus should develop a Brand Strategy

• Create an identity that personifies everything the company stands for.

• Eradicate the inconsistent collateral that contributes to low value brand perception.

• Enable people to concentrate on their core skills and responsibilities – ie delivering campaigns – confident that it can fit within an overarching, joined-up strategy that represents the brand/s.

• Build internal advocacy.

• Reflect the model of successful companies.

• More coherent and targeted sales messages = more chance of conversion.

• Better, more dynamic marketing collateral with rationale, narrative, tone of voice leading to competitive advantage.

• A key time to assess and refresh the brand is when entering entering new markets 

What we do - broadly• Micro Focus helps its customers significantly reduce application

development and operating costs, increase the flexibility and value of information technology resources, and better manage the risks inherent in both mainframe and open-systems development and deployment.

• Micro Focus International creates innovative software that enables companies to develop, test, deploy, assess and modernize business-critical enterprise applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk.

Initial thoughts on where we’re heading

• We have more work to do to finally establish a route, but initial thoughts lead us to two options to fix this:

Option one• Fold sub co’s in and form the Micro Focus Group - this would contain all

brands under one umbrella

Option two• Let the sub brands stand alone - Borland, etc - and make Micro Focus less

visible [looking at the new Borland website, Micro Focus seems to be ‘invisible’ now]

Quick wins• Immediately divorce the two looks and refrain from forcing them together,

especially with the Borland web move

• Drop the elephant in the room - and on the DL - listen to what our stakeholders are telling us and what our audience wants to see and what the design brief suggests as a graphic route to develop

• Analyse web stats for intelligence behind the data which will lead to possible restructure of web architecture for mf.com and to incorporate new key message, positioning statements and graphic layout with Web Team buy-in.

• Ensure the quick wins are translated to all departments and collateral briefs once brand guidance is updated

Next Steps – Blend 2.0Establish in one document, all of the following elements. This will inform the potential rebrand brief and the resultant brand guidelines.

• Study of any internal strategic plans or company objectives to ensure all of this fits in with future plans [acquisitions, growth objectives etc]

• More competitor analysis to establish market positioning• Explore options to align brand strategy with desired market position• New Elevator Pitch confirmed• New Key Messages confirmed• Confirm whether we’re going down the Group route or stand alone?• Explore merits of brand refresh, including new complimentary graphic

route and work on groundings for tone of voice support

Next steps Blend 2.0 and 3.0• Build a Brand Family Tree to establish each brand’s position within the family –

use a visual solution to translate present thinking• Create design brief for rebrand• Write a strategic marketing plan incorporating the following• Corporation’s strategic aims• Consolidate Brand Values• Explore Brand Personality • The 3Ps - Confirm Brand value Proposition, Purpose and Promise• Brand positioning statement• Brand tone of voice

Stage three

• Rebrand + new graphic route• Production of Brand Guidelines• Planning for internal / external roll out

Graphic character-based design route

• Brands are exploring the graphic novel route to express brand personality in their look and feel and to translate brand messages effectively [see example from Bacardi overleaf]

• Pleece&Co has had great success in this area and proposes investigating this route for Micro Focus. It would be a genuinely creative solution to the problem of expressing complex propositions and create a genuine USP

• This would follow next steps and be incorporated into the rebrand process, assuming this is launched

• It would allow a brand narrative to build and give Micro Focus a unique look in their industry, with great potential for SoMe activity

Graphic Character based route - Bacardi

Conclusions

• Develop brand strategy – new acquisitions need to know what the Micro Focus and Borland brands represents and stand for – if there is lack of internal understanding, how will new joiners know the story?

• Brand refresh – in order to tackle the present confusion around the brand identity and supporting collateral, use a new graphic direction which has rationale and uniqueness to support brand messaging.

• Tone of Voice – establish a coherent tone of voice in order to express key messaging more coherently, professionally and effectively.

• Key messaging and strap-lines – tease these out through more company personality and character investigation in order to drive new graphic direction.

• Devise and see through a plan - the survey has proved that the current business model has left the Micro Focus people behind – ensure there is a strategic marketing plan in place to pull all of this together into a coherent

• Summary – to move this project on, we need to form a strategic business / marketing plan containing findings from this scoping document, then follow with a creative brief for the rebranding project

Appendix 1

Micro Focus in a post-acquisition world

Product Information and market opportunities

• In the post-acquisition Micro Focus world, it’s important to list our products and align them with market opportunities, as well as identifying potential disruption. This will also help in forming strategies’ for the Group and the primary, individual brands

• Aim – to create a cohesive expression of product information under a unified brand umbrella group or strategically formed individual branding

• There follows a full product listing for all areas of the post-acquisition business

Post-acquisition company products – Micro Focus

• Visual COBOL x 4 products

• Enterprise Developer x 3 versions

• Enterprise Test Server

• Enterprise Server (+ Enterprise Server for .NET)

• Enterprise Analyzer (+ Business Rule Manager and Enterprise View)

• Rumba (+ OnWeb and web-to-Host)

Corba• Orbix (x 3 products)

• Orbacus (x 4 products)

• Visibroker

• OpenFusion (x 6 products)

Borland• Caliber

• Together

• Silk Performer

• Silk WebMeter

• AccuRev

• AccuSync

• Borland Agile

• Borland Connect

• GitCentric

Borland cont• Star Team

• Silk Central

• DevPartner

• Silk Central Connect

• Silk Mobile

• Silk Test

• Borland Agile

• Atlas

NetIQ• Note: Product Suites, not products

• Identity and Access Management

• Security Management Suite

• IT Operations Management

• Disaster Recovery

• Workload Migration

NetIQ cont• Unified Comms/VoIP Management

• Novell:

• Groupwise

• Open Workgroup Suite

• ZenWorks Suite (7 products)

• File Management Suite

SUSE• Linux Enterprise Server (x 7 products)

• Extensions suite (x 6 products)

• Cloud

• Desktop (x 2 products)

• Manager

• Studio

• Enterprise Server (x 2 products)

Current principal brands• Attachmate

• Borland

• SUSE

• Micro Focus

• NetIQ

• Novell

Current sub brand• Corba

How product portfolios serve their markets

• Micro Focus offers a range of modernisation tools that enable mainframe owners to bridge the gap between the older technology they have and the new innovations that customers demand.

• The Borland suite of testing tools enable customers to deliver better software faster. These tools offer specialisms, such as resisting website downtime, or full end-to-end management of the software delivery cycle.

How product portfolios serve their markets

• The Attachmate Group brands help organisations to extend, manage and secure their essential business information across 19 million desktops and mobile devices worldwide. Their terminal emulation, legacy integration and enterprise file sync and share solutions enable safe and manageable connection to well-established core systems – a key Micro Focus area.

Most opportunity for market growth

• The Attachmate group, like Micro Focus, appreciates the need for target organisations to maximize the value of their IT infrastructure software. The merger gives the wider group more access to a growing market as enterprise scale organisations look to maximise the business value of what they have and leverage their business logic and data to create future opportunities. This means more options for customers and a wider reach for the new group.

Which brands deliver diversification?

• SUSE has a server/cloud-focused offering as well as a being a Linux operating system

• NetIQ [to a lesser extent Novell] has a strong security offering as well as collaborative software solutions

Products that will compliment Micro Focus products

• Attachmate’s terminal emulation products will offer customers options beyond the domestic Rumba suite of product options.

Products and target audiences• CDMS: Mainframe owners, IT managers, CIOs, CEOs, Systems Integrators,

Development Directors, Development Managers, Business Managers

• Borland: Devs, Developer Managers, QA Managers, QA Analysts, Testers, Test Managers, Software Engineers

Acquisitions and positioning• Because the Borland portfolio sits outside the core product offering of

Enterprise-focused tools, it has never been successfully ‘folded in’ to the Micro Focus brand. Keeping the brands separate has been viewed as strategically advantageous in enabling Borland to target its key audiences within the development and testing markets. Similarly, the diversity of the brands – and more pertinently the products – within the Attachmate Group will require some strategic thinking.

Acquisition risks • Shareholders will buy in, but the risk is that customers might not

• Some products will be more easily ‘re-badged’ than others

• Micro Focus brand won’t have direct relevance to some products, so the risk is brand dilution

• Positioning and messaging essential to get right before making Group ‘badging’ decisions

Acquisition benefits• Entering new markets where previously Micro Focus had no traction

• Diversification and broader reach in volatile market

• Review period will help to identify main opportunities

What happens next?• Feedback and review of this document via Steve Moore

• Create strategic marketing plan – draft

• Create design brief – draft

Any questions?E: gary@pleeceandco.com

T: 01273 921 772