EMC, Mullen Initiate Global Campaign

EMC last week embarked on a worldwide branding effort that broke in The Wall Street Journal and signed its first endorsement deal with a professional golfer.
Print ads created by Mullen in Wenham, Mass., are part of a new global awareness effort for the maker of computer storage systems. The company plans to spend $14 million on advertising this year, according to EMC’s director of corporate advertising Rob Smith.
The print campaign uses the headline “The EMC Effect” with pictures of a hurricane, a building being leveled and a giant boot.
“It’s about the business impact of EMC, not just the technical component,” explained Paul Silverman, Mullen’s chief creative officer. “[EMC] is cutting a wider swathe with a position that is justifiable and understandable in general business terms.”
“It really does mark a quantum shift for us,” Smith acknowledged.
The ads will appear in the March editions of Fortune and Business Week as well as trade publications such as CIO, Information Week and Computerworld. Television spots will break in April on ESPN and NBC as well as business cable stations.
One constant in EMC’s marketing efforts has been the support of golf tournaments. For two years, the Hopkinton, Mass.-based company has sponsored the EMC Golf Skills Challenge produced by NBC Sports, in addition to holding 21 skills tournaments for business executives around the country each year.
EMC also recently finalized a sponsorship agreement with Billy Andrade, who won the 1997 EMC Golf Skills Challenge. As part of the deal, the company has the right to use Andrade in its advertising, and EMC’s logo will appear on the golfer’s shirt throughout the PGA tour, according to Phil Sloan, managing director of the golf division at The Woolf Group in Boston, EMC’s agency for sports marketing.
According to Sloan, efforts are under way to expand EMC’s Skills Challenge franchise to other locales around the world. To support the global campaign, EMC is sponsoring the South African Open and the Australian President’s Cup, and it will be the title sponsor of the EMC Kaanapali Classic, a senior PGA tour event that will air on ESPN, according to Mullen account supervisor Chad Caufield. In addition, EMC is trying to extend its sponsorship to Europe, but specific plans are not yet finalized, Caufield said.