CHALLENGE:

To the outside world, the newest Hewlett- Packard software offering needed to be a single, seamless family of software products. Internally, however, achieving this important sense of continuity for customers required bridging the efforts of several product groups within the company, as well as a variety of partners. “This important launch included product offerings from our virtualization software group and the operating system group, as well as offerings from third party partners and service providers,” said Frances Guida, Manager, Virtualization Programs, for the Enterprise Storage and Servers organization at Hewlett-Packard Co.

Guida needed to ensure that customers received consistent corporate and product messaging and hired an independent marketing consultant to oversee the launch. In addition, she wanted someone who could coordinate communication with analysts, media and customers, and manage the complexity of scheduling sales training, internal briefings and media announcements to maintain messaging, schedule and competitive intelligence. Finally, the project required someone who could shepherd through production all the collateral materials and Web content associated with the product launch, making sure all the pieces had consistent messaging and were on time and on budget.

SOLUTION:

Guida turned to Lawren Communications, a marketing communications consulting firm, already known to HP for its expertise in project management and that had a reputation for excellence and efficiency. “Celia Lawren was able to grasp the key components very quickly and she was very organized and structured. She had a very approachable style in dealing with people across the company,” said Guida. “She was instrumental in helping us obtain and manage information from all of the different groups so that when we presented our announcement externally, we were able to talk about a single HP announcement, as opposed to something that had a bunch of different pieces.”

Over a period of three months, Lawren also coordinated with these different groups to identify content for a unified Web page that would showcase all of the elements of the product announcement in a way that was seamless and logical to customers while meeting the needs of each of the business units. Similar information was needed for an internal Web portal and online customer newsletter. “She worked to identify what needed to be on these pages, to decide how to present it in a way that was on message and to work with various groups both conceptually and practically to decide how to link to more detailed information,” said Guida.

In order to be effective, Lawren wore a variety of hats. “One of Celia’s roles was within the virtualization software team, as she hosted weekly meetings with the involved product managers to discuss deliverables and deadlines—she really dealt with that team from a soup-to-nuts point of view,” said Guida. “She was also a critical member of the larger launch team and took the detailed information from those weekly product manager meetings to represent that business unit at the large group meetings.”

After the successful multi-product launch, HP realized that the role that Lawren played was critical to the company—and decided to hire a full-time person to continue in the role. Clearly, Lawren had set the bar for the position. “Celia stood out in terms of how approachable and organized she was,” said Guida.