Company: SunGard Availability Services, Wayne, PA
Entry Submitted By: Edelman
Company Description: SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. With approximately five million square feet of datacenter and operations space, the company helps customers improve the resilience of their mission critical systems by designing, implementing and managing cost-effective solutions. Through direct sales and channel partners, the company helps organizations ensure their people and customers have uninterrupted access to the information systems they need in order to do business.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Awards Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Business-to-Business Marketing Campaign of the Year

Nomination Title: Zombie Apocalypse Marketing Campaign

Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 525 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign: TEXT REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION

In 2012 the SunGard Availability Services Demand Generation team’s goal was to develop a campaign that educated IT professionals on the benefits of Cloud and how to utilize these while fully protecting their data and applications. It was vital that the campaign deployed cut through the white noise that occurs within B2B marketing and gained traction quickly. To achieve this, the team partnered with Bulldog Solutions to create an infographic and E-book that paralleled the theme of moving to the Cloud with surviving a zombie attack. Their success would be measured on the number of times the infographic was shared by influential third-party Cloud-based sites.

The infographic and E-book outlined what IT leaders and business need to consider in a “survival guide” format, should their data be lost or compromised in a disaster. The survival guide played on a zombie attack, a timely pop-culture theme today, and walked readers through a three-phase plan, Prepare, Plan and Protect, which offered steps that identified weaknesses within disaster recovery plans and offered solutions for better data protection.

Readers were encouraged to identify vital materials for recovery, establish priorities and adapt to changes. These all tied back to the campaign overarching theme of disaster preparedness and the benefits of moving to the Cloud.

The Demand Generation team along with Bulldog Solutions debuted the “How to Survive a Zombie Attack” campaign with the “Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide” just before Halloween to great success. In total the campaign yielded more than triple the expected downloads, double the expected open and click through rates, and was even featured prominently on the home pages of several influential niche cloud websites. All in all, SunGard Availability Services tied in a top IT theme of migrating to the cloud with the cultural and somewhat edgy obsession of Zombies.
Supporting Materials:
The infographic and E-Booklet can be found attached with this written submission for reference.

Upload a collection of supporting files and web addresses to our server to provide more background information to the judges. You may upload any number of attachments and URLs through the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above. (Do NOT list your URLs below.)

Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 125 words):

SunGard Availability Services’ Demand Generation team within the marketing department consisted of eight employees and was led by Christine Nurnberger, director, Demand Generation and Field Marketing. The team’s goal was to promote the accomplishments of SunGard Availability Services through unique but educational campaigns, highlighting the company’s business services and dedicated staff.