The Cloud Communications Alliance is a one-of-a-kind, for-profit alliance created by eight of the most notable service providers in the enterprise VoIP market. Eager to capitalize on their common technology platforms and leadership in a crowded marketplace, the CEOs of these eight companies viewed their alliance as a way to set themselves even further apart from their VoIP competitors and more effectively operate against the entrenched bureaucratic, ILECs and cable companies.

The members of the alliance wanted to brand their initiative with a simple, powerful, memorable identity that would allow them to launch in a very public manner and attract the attention of competitors, customers and investors alike. After interviewing a number of competing firms they selected Idea-ware to develop all marketing for the alliance and Summit Group Communications out of Salt Lake to handle all Public Relations.

Both Idea-ware and Summit immediately recognized the potentially revolutionary nature of the alliance: By aligning their networks and their operations these eight companies would effectively provide the first integrated, coast-to-coast alternative to the 100 year old Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN - something that has not existed since the breakup of “Ma Bell” almost 25 years ago. But even more importantly, we recognized an alliance of providers could push the evolution and adoption of this new breed of communications - “cloud communications” – even further and faster than they could by themselves.

Idea-ware interviewed all eight CEOs and developed a range of options for an integrated corporate identity. Ultimately, the group settled on the simplest and most straightforward name – “Cloud Communications Alliance” – because it afforded them the opportunity to define the concept of “cloud communications”, fully embrace it and fundamentally own it. Agreement among the CEOs was unanimous.

Once the name was selected, Idea-ware went to work on copywriting and branding, developing a new logo and website while Summit turned its attention to developing the public launch activities and briefing reporters in advance of a launch at the Cloud Computing show in New York on April 19.

Working around the clock, both teams finished their preparations as the CEOs of all eight alliance partners began arriving in New York. The successful brand launch garnered the attention numerous press and industry analysts as well as prominent investors.

As Clark Peterson, CEO of Telesphere and the first Chairman of the alliance states, “Idea-ware’s branding work successfully established the alliance and its members as the unequivocal leaders of the rapidly emerging new paradigm called “cloud communications”. And their ability to exceed the branding expectations of eight very experienced and opinionated CEOs – in such a short period of time - was truly remarkable.”

Logicworks thought they had the description of their business down to a pretty simple statement: “We’re a complex managed hosting company focused exclusively on multi-server environments that require high-availability infrastructures and replicated/redundant databases.”

That statement was more concise than most managed hosting companies.  The problem was, Logicworks’ largest competitor - Rackspace, with its tagline “Fanatical Support” - had virtually cornered the market for brand awareness. Logicworks was planning to recruit a very senior industry veteran CEO to lead its next phase of growth and begin to aggressively invest in marketing. The challenge was to find a concise, powerful message that captured all of Logicworks unique value in five words or less.

Idea-ware came to SoHo to help this Manhattan-based innovator find that message. We met with the staff, including sales and engineering teams to get a sense of the personality of the company. We interviewed key customers to determine what drew them to Logicworks, and away from larger competitors. And we probed those competitors looking for areas of weakness to exploit.

Then we sat down to get creative…

We came up with a half dozen or so themes or directions we could take the message – each complete with several paragraphs of high-level messaging and potential taglines - and presented them all to the executive team. As a group, we ultimately ended up settling on the theme called “Hard Stuff” and the phrase “We Host The Hard Stuff”.

In just five words we managed to separate and position Logicworks apart from its competition who focus on a broader range of solutions and often “water down” their technology and expertise. The phrase also neatly captured the tech-enthusiast, NYC-centric personality of the company, and wrapped it all up in an edgy, memorable and easily brandable phrase.

Logicworks incoming CEO, Rick Ellenberger, quickly embraced Idea-ware’s work.  As the former CEO of Broadwing, a $2.5B Fortune 500 broadband infrastructure provider and president of MCI’s $10B Business Markets division, Rick possessed a proven track record of building powerful marketing and sales-driven brands. Together we’re continuing to refine the message and make it a guiding principal of Rick’s new course for the company.

As Rick says, “Idea-ware got right to heart of what makes Logicworks unique. And their impact on this company at this time will be legendary.”