We love a good underdog tale and done right it can project a well crafted story into the media spotlight.

Provista UK, a specialist firm handling network and collaboration communications for some of Scotland’s key public and private sector organisations came to us as they looked to achieve the industry holy grail: becoming a Cisco Gold Partner.

Our objectives were primarily to increase knowledge of the firm and what it offers to a national audience of potential customers – but also to establish industry credentials, helping recruit top experts and boost staff morale.

At the start of the campaign, the Hamilton HQ’d firm was a Cisco Silver Partner set to celebrate its 10th anniversary with record figures. The organically grown company now employs over 30 staff, with a revenue of £5.6million and sights set on this year reaching £7million.

It made sense to develop a platform press release, which you can read here, outlining the business success story, creating an awareness among the media for Provista. The story made a quality spread both in print and online in the most widely regarded broadsheet paper in the Glasgow area, but with national sales, The Herald.

Follow up coverage reached a breadth of business and trade titles, including BQ, Deadline News, SBNN and Commsbusiness, ensuring vast but highly targeted reach.

In a tie up with our own long running client, the Scottish Business Resilience Centre, Provista UK set out to host its first ever Cyber Seminar, an open event to be used to broaden understanding of the business and of global giant Cisco.

Taking place at Edinburgh Castle, we were able to secure early coverage for the business playing on the old fortress chosen as the battleground in a very new war. Coverage appeared in the widely respected Scottish Business News Network as well as in Computing Security, providing a nice splash in both business and industry press.

A few months after the initial good news release was drafted and issued we were handed the good news – Provista had joined the 2% of global Cisco companies to become a Gold Partner. We then set out communicating the importance of this to a wider audience in a manner that emphasised and explained its importance.

Having successfully targeted the Herald with the initial platform story – we wanted to turn our attention to getting the story to The Scotsman, with a critical demographic of ABC1 readers, made up of the type of influencers and business leaders that Provista look to get in front of to win new work.

Rather than just rest on our laurels, we also pushed the story out to SBNN, Commsbusiness and IT Europa magazine, letting the world know of its good work.

An extra benefit soon apparent to the team at Provista, was the assistance we were able to offer in providing content to be used for social media and for Provista’s own newsletters.

This story, drafted on Co-Director, Barry Oliver’s trip to San Diego to witness the Cisco Global Summit, was pulled together in part with this in mind, providing a great internal news story to tell the world. An extra bonus was that it also appeared on SBNN, helping subtly underline Provista’s credentials as a small but highly competent SME, at the industry forefront.

Our coverage in hugely respected national titles and industry publications has helped us deliver on the objectives given, increasing public knowledge of the firm and boost its own marketing efforts to tremendous effect.

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