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Guest post: News, noise and networking
The Nortel Asia Summit came to a close yesterday. For our final bit of coverage on the event, Rick Seeto, Nortel’s VP of marketing in Asia, has provided us with some parting thoughts on the Summit — why we hosted it and how we think it turned out. Here is his guest post:
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Rick Seeto, VP of Marketing, Asia As we come to the close of our very first all Asia Analyst and Media Summit many of the team are looking forward to the weekend, and deservedly so.
Our engagement opportunity with our top analysts across Asia has been exceptional this week. From key global and regional executives, customer testimonials through to our leading product and solution thought-leaders in Asia, the analysts have been fully participative in the dialog, engaged and opinionated on our messages and forthright in their view on Nortel in Asia across both Enterprise and Carrier segments.
One of the key returns on the day was the time spent with analysts to understand how our capabilities are both received and perceived in the market. Their input, debate and views, put succinctly and factually often proved challenging and humbling, however it is these views that will prove to be an invaluable source of input to us as we plan ahead to drive Nortel to the front of our customer’s minds across the region.
The demonstrations and session topics were designed to challenge their ‘historical’ view of Nortel and to really showcase our move to a software, services and solutions company that can deliver the simplification necessary to address the challenges of the increasingly Hyperconnected world. With comments like ‘this is very cool’ and ‘wow, I didn’t know you guys did this sort of thing!’ the team have been motivated in the knowledge that our capabilities and directions are resonating with a number in the analyst community.
Some excellent connections were made with senior analysts that shape opinions in this region and the follow-on plan will ensure these relationships are further developed to ensure we are providing ample opportunities to keep this community fully up to speed with our direction, capabilities, proof points and engagements. More importantly we will continue to drive our messages more aggressively in the market to ensure all our target segments can take advantage of our solutions and offerings.
In a repeat of the many elements of the day, we kicked off the media session leading with 8 press releases on a succession of customer wins across both Carrier and Enterprise as well as announcing the new Greater China and Asia Pacific leadership. We engaged with our primary media contacts from around the region, and in one place, and I felt we used the opportunity to good effect to help frame and craft the deeper stories behind our customer win releases.
On a self critical note, we need to sharpen our stories to ensure the key points relate to our end customer needs and arm our media contacts with succinct messages that relate to their readers and their readers interests and issues.
Some excellent socialising between the analysts, media and Nortel team, as you would expect, and this has certainly strengthened the human bond between many involved in the Summit and I am sure will result in continuing engagements both formal and informal.
Overall a major milestone in our Asia program to ensure we are heard and our world leading solutions are well understood by a key group of Asia influencers.
Rick Seeto
VP Marketing, Asia
