“Attain knew our market cold and quickly spearheaded an aggressive communications campaign that greatly increased Bharosa’s visibility – a key factor that contributed to our acquisition by Oracle.”
Acquired by:
Company Profile
Bharosa, a global provider of proactive, real-time fraud detection and multifactor online authentication security solutions for the enterprise, was acquired by Oracle in 2007.
Challenge
With their sights set on acquisition, Bharosa executives felt that the company lacked the visibility they needed to attract the attention of the industries largest information technology vendors and achieve their desired valuation. With the multitude of companies vying for attention from industry analysts and media, the company had achieved limited success with their internal PR programs. Realizing that increased media exposure would improve their probability of successful acquisition, Bharosa turned to Attain for help.
Strategy & Tactics
Attain quickly launched a targeted communications campaign that utilized customer, partner and industry leadership news to produce the consistent stream of coverage necessary to increase Bharosa’s visibility within the noisy authentication market. We successfully negotiated news releases with leading customers and partners, including four banks, Oracle and a well-timed release with Microsoft at the security industry’s most visible event to create a “rolling thunder” PR calendar.
To fill the gaps – which occasionally occurred in the absence of customer news – Attain connected Bharosa executives with key influencers at leading industry groups (including the Financial Services Technology Consortium and the Cyber Security Internet Alliance), which lead to the negotiation of several innovative partnership press releases.
With placed editorial featuring storylines tied to hot industry trends in leading publications like American Banker, The Nilsen Report and Card Payment News and introductions to key industry analysts, which yielded references and inclusion in influential reports, we helped Bharosa build the momentum they needed to attract the attention of even the industry’s largest information technology vendors.
Results
As a media darling, the company attracted the desired attention of acquisition suitors. Just nine months after we launched our communications plan, Bharosa was successfully acquired by Oracle.
