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We can lend wings to your marketing, and spurs to your sales. |
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From Ed McVaney, Founder/Chairman of J.D. Edwards & Company, which was sold a few years ago to PeopleSoft – and then recently acquired by Oracle Corporation. J.D Edwards was a KBA client for three years. "I’d simply like to state that over the three years we worked together it became obvious that Keith is a creative genius with a way of assembling complex product presentations that helped J.D. Edwards increase sales by orders of magnitude." Ed McVaney, former Chairman J.D. Edwards. From Joe Piscopo, founder and CEO of Pansophic Systems, world leader in IBM utility systems for twenty years. Acquired by Computer Associates. Pansophic was a KBA client for over five years. Dear Keith, I have known you as a business associate and as a friend for over thirty years. All of my recollections about those years are warm and treasured. When I first started Pansophic Systems, Incorporated in 1969 I was 24. I had great enthusiasm and ambition but woefully little knowledge and training about running a new software company. I had no experience at all in marketing or advertising. When we first began our business relationship around 1973 Pansophic's marketing needs were immense. Your expertise served us well over the years to quickly and effectively take care of all those needs well. Pansophic was regarded as one of the software industry's rising stars. Our products PANVALET and EASYTRIEVE became well known around the world as a result of your fine efforts. The skeleton ad for EASYTRIEVE ("Still Waiting For Reports?") won several advertising awards. I am grateful for your outstanding professional contributions to Pansophic's great successes during my career as its founder and Chief Executive Officer (1969-1987). I would be pleased to discuss our relationship with your prospective prospects in the future. From Oak Stevens, formerly President of KDM Associates, currently
Director, KPMG LLP. Keith is one of those rare breeds of consultants that has always exceeded
my expectations. When we were a small unknown systems integrator, his
strategy and execution helped to put us on the map and contributed mightily
to our being recognized by Systems Integration Magazine as being "best
in class" for systems deployment. From Gary Rippen, formerly VP Marketing at Transform Logic, Viasoft,
Intersolv (now Merant), and currently Director of Marketing at NFR Security
corporation. This letter serves as a personal reference for Keith Bates. I have known Keith for over 20 years in the capacity of a valuable business associate and successful president of his own marketing services, advertising and consultancy agency. No matter what was thrown at him, Keith consistently delivered a quality product, without question, within time and within budget. To better demonstrate Keith’s abilities, he was called on by my company to create a worldwide branding and lead generation program that would make an impact in a very competitive marketplace. At the time, my company offered a software product that helped computer programmers design higher quality application programs. Relying on Keith’s excellent marketing and industry expertise, he helped my company discover that even though our product’s features were similar to the competition, our product was actually more powerful because of its “workgroup” capabilities that allowed multiple programmers to work on the same project at the same time (unique to the industry during this period). With Keith’s help, the company repositioned its product as a far more powerful solution that would make a major impact in programmer productivity. The results were a 700% increase in the company lead count and a 50% increase in company revenues. Without a doubt, Keith’s help was very successful for my company as he helped us standout as a competent player among many companies. Fortunately, too, Keith is a friendly and sincere individual. His personality is delightful and has the respect of peers, subordinates and superiors alike. I am confident that Keith would provide any company with the same high level of service and commitment. I would be more than happy to talk with any potential client about Keith's and my successful relationship. From Donald Landgraf, formerly EVP
of Pansophic Systems, President of LPC/Pitney Bowes, currently Chairman/CEO
Instec Corporation. Dear Keith, over the 30 years we've worked together your ads and other collateral materials have had tremendous impact on my various companies bottom lines. In fact some of your ideas have turned out to be award winning. We have some plaques and trophies to prove it. The one that most sticks in my mind was a skeleton sitting at a desk smoking a cigarette. The tag line was "Tired of waiting for reports?" (done for Easytrieve, a Pansophic product). From John Haggard, former CTO at SKK,
President of VASCO Data Security, President of HyperSecur Corporation,
and currently CTO/Director of American Card Technology. I have known Keith professionally since 1987 and every chance I have had to use his services I have thought of him first. Keith is passionate about his work and he has deep skills and experience to pull together complicated variables such as market conditions, many marketing techniques, the human interview process, product learning, etc.; and then to boil all of that down into a concise, comprehensive, compelling story. He then knows how to create, deliver and tell the story. In the past I have worked with other advertising/marketing firms and rarely as a Chief Technology Officer have I felt comfortable with them truly understanding what we did as a business--Keith always took the time to "get it." This quality I believe is one of Keith's greatest attributes. I have always turned to Keith first and in the future I will continue to do so. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. From Rita Shoor, President Shoor &
Company, High Tech PR, voted leading high tech PR agency in US. Where do you look when you need extensive marketing knowledge and experience? When you need new ideas and top-tier creativity? When you're making marketing decisions that could make or break a new product launch? When you want vision combined with realism and creativity combined with a keen awareness of bottom-line considerations? I know where Shoor & Company looks... to Keith Bates. Shoor & Company specializes in high-tech Public Relations. We've worked with Keith Bates for more than two decades on marketing initiatives and projects for clients that run the gamut from small Web entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping their way to success to very large publicly held companies. Any firm in the information technology sector that requires top-tier marketing expertise will do themselves a favor to work with Keith Bates. From Pete Dignan, formerly President
of Thumbscan, President of Inn Room Systems, Vice President Sales of National
Education Training Group (NETg), Vice President General Manager SmartForce,
currently LRN Global Accounts Manager. Over the last 15 years, I have consistently put my faith in Keith Bates ability to take a new technology concept/application and put together a marketing message and campaign that enabled our startups to launch successfully. His concept of a complete marketing program, one that was synergistically interwoven with multiple marketing thrusts, brought the kinds of results that we did not think possible within a relatively short period of time. What is unique about Keith is that he is consistently able to step back from the technology, understand its true benefits from the buyer's perspective and then characterize that in low cost, but highly effective campaigns. Additionally, he enlisted our management's participation so we too were part of the weaving of these marketing campaigns by being able to input our perceptions on positioning and user benefits as we developed the overall sales campaigns. It was a real team effort that Keith's experience and imagination allowed us to navigate successfully each and every time. From Kristin Zhivago, CEO of Zhivago Marketing Partners, a company
that has been helping company owners increase their revenues for 35 years—in
the toughest, fastest moving markets. The excerpt below is taken from pages 304 and 305 of Kristin’s just released book RIVERS OF REVENUE: What to do when the money stops flowing. Comments Jeff Tarter, Editor, Soft*Letter, “No one is better at understanding how customers think.” When your industry or your livelihood is affected by a new technology, don’t resist. Instead, immediately move into hyper learning mode. Read everything you can. Talk to people about it. Learn how it works and what it does. Think about how you can put it to work for you. Think about how you can use it to help others, and find a way to charge for your expertise. That's what Keith Bates did. Keith had a long career as an advertising agency owner. Keith could see that technology was having a profound effect on his industry. While he was comfortable with technology, and embraced each new change, he also felt that the very nature of marketing was never going to be the same. Keith had plenty of time to think about all this while lying in bed with a serious illness. When he was told that the illness would keep him out of commission for months, he shut down his company and retired. He thought he'd be happy with retirement, once he was feeling better. Instead he was bored stiff. One day, he read an article about buzz marketing, and became very excited about the concept. He moved into hyperlearning mode, reading The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, Unleashing the Ideavirus, by Seth Godin, The Anatomy of Buzz, by Emanuel Rosen, and The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing, by George Silverman. He was hooked. He reinvented himself as a viral marketing guru. About a year into it, he realized that viral marketing was just another tool in the marketing communications toolkit, so he reinvented himself again as a Marketing Communications Consultant. "People used to launch a product with PR, then support it with advertising," Keith says. "Now, with the Internet and email, it's smarter to launch a campaign with viral marketing--it's more credible and cheaper--and support that with PR. Then, once the brand is established, you use advertising to sustain the brand." In his new role, he is using a variety of tools to help his clients generate qualified leads. "That's what people really care about right now," he says. "They need all the help they can get to attract qualified buyers through a variety of methods. Viral marketing helps, by giving you credibility at a low cost. Nothing is more credible than a satisfied customer referring someone to you." |
