Losing a client can be a tough pill to swallow, but knowing that the loss is due to the client’s successful transition or achievement of a significant milestone can provide the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down easier. Such was the case with Mobidia, a leading provider of mobile measurement and analytics and one of Communiqué PR’s valued clients over the past eight or so years.
Coming off an enormously successful 2014—which saw placement for Mobidia in over 180 articles and in many national press outlets such as Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, FierceWireless, TechCrunch and Telecompetitor—we were saddened last month to receive word that our firm would no longer be working to drive awareness of its mobile data platform and consumer app, My Data Manager. The company was in the final stages of negotiations around the terms of an acquisition, and we recently learned that Mobidia was joining the corporate family of its direct competitor—App Annie. We had always known that acquisition was an end goal for Mobidia, so while we experienced the disappointment of an unexpected breakup, we were also excited for our friends at the company and proud that our work contributed to this next stage in its life cycle.
Our relationship with Mobidia began in 2008, providing project work to the startup, which at the time wanted to promote its data software platform to mobile telecoms in order to increase network efficiency and enhance subscriber and service policy solutions. During this early stage of our engagement, we helped the company drive awareness by providing strategic counsel, developing press releases around the performance results of its software platform carrier trials, and conducting outreach to media around key news. We also implemented an analyst relations campaign to help increase the company’s profile leading up to Mobile World Congress 2009, securing briefings with eight analysts and analyst quotes that Mobidia Senior Vice President Chris Hill considered “instrumental” in helping the company prepare for its campaign at the event. For more about this effort, check out “Mobidia & Our Results Working with Industry Analysts.”
Over time, our work with Mobidia expanded in conjunction with mobile subscribers’ increased reliance on data-driven tools such as smartphones and tablets. Responding to this growing cultural trend, Mobidia pivoted its marketing efforts from targeting telecoms, with which it had successfully built strong relationships, to providing tools to wireless subscribers that help to monitor data usage and prevent bill shock. In 2010 we helped Mobidia build its foundation by developing key messages, successfully continued our analyst campaign, and began positioning executives as thought leaders by placing byline articles about solutions for mobile operators to manage the growth in data traffic.
Mobidia’s main commodity both for industry and consumer audiences is the data it gathers from users of its My Data Manager app. Capitalizing on this valuable information and the rise of mobile apps, we continued to expand our strategies, incorporating the pursuit of awards and proactive pitching to journalists who actively write using mobile usage data. By employing this mix of strategies and building on what we had learned from previous years, we were able to drive increased coverage for Mobidia year over year, culminating in the previously mentioned 180 articles in 2014. In addition, we secured 10 briefings with journalists and analysts in 2014—excluding company or product news—many of which contributed to increased sales of the company’s data.
While we will miss the opportunity to continue achieving great coverage for Mobidia, we are proud to know that our efforts contributed to its reputation as a respected leader in the mobile data space and, ultimately, an attractive acquisition for App Annie. We look forward to watching as Mobidia’s role in the App Annie family continues to evolve and wish the team all the best in the future.
To learn more about the strategies we employed on behalf of Mobidia over the years, we have highlighted our work and key milestones for the company in numerous blog posts available on the Communiqué PR website.