Before Email, The Cloud and Unicorns: The Early Days of Tech PR
The end of this year will mark our 25th anniversary. As we have been preparing for this moment, we thought, “why not celebrate it all year long!” It’s a big milestone and we plan on giving it the attention it deserves. We will take a trip down memory lane by highlighting our top 25 tech moments, most famous alumni and share a few surprises along the way.
The Launch of Eastwick
When Eastwick first opened its doors in November 1991, there was no such thing as a “boutique agency.” The early technology public relations pioneers were Regis McKenna, Cunningham Communications, The Benjamin Group and one of the first smaller firms, Wilson McHenry. All the big agencies eventually opened up their offices on the peninsula, determined to dominate the tech market like they had with consumer and business. Slowly, one by one, they shut down their offices. The tech business was hard. It required a different approach and different talent in order to survive — and thus, Eastwick was born.
The three founders, Nancy Blake, Elaine Cummings and I, had all come from one of the pioneers and knew what it would take to handle the fast pace, complex subject matter, cultivating of influencers and senior level service that clients would most undoubtedly expect. We were referred to as “The Witches of Eastwick.” It didn’t take long for us to attract our first clients. However, what was the most surprising, was the size of the brands that we first worked with. Oracle, Pyramid Technology and IDG, to name a few. In our first decade we went from being a group of freelancers working together, to a bona fide agency with dozens of clients that included Apple, Intel, Novell, HP, Autodesk and Verifone, as well as the disruptors of the day like Palm, Softbook Press, Keynote Systems and Ramp Networks.
From Dot Bomb to Revival
Our second decade was a wild one. It started out with the now infamous end of the dot.com era best known as the dot bomb. Our client roster continued to be dominated by either big companies like Adobe, Business Objects, Fujitsu, Sun Microsystems, Nuance, Quantum, Enron (yes Enron!) and HP or the wild and wacky dot.coms with names like DoDots and ePeople. We also said goodbye to Nancy Blake, when she decided to wrap up her agency life.
The early 2000s were a tough time to be in tech communications. It meant being stiffed by clients who suddenly couldn’t pay their bills, budgets disappearing overnight and the letting go of staff being a frequent occurrence. Everybody in the valley was affected. It was brutal. I remember deciding to cancel our annual Black and Orange Bash because it didn’t feel right to spend money on a big party when folks all over the valley were losing their jobs.
Witnessing the rebirth of tech after that dark period was really exciting. It was more like a slow boil than the boom days of the late 90s. During this decade, we celebrated 10 years working with Business Objects and saw them exceed the billion-dollar mark. Our trusted partnership with BOBJ, which we lovingly called them, is one of the things that I am the most proud of after all these years. The cool thing about that relationship is that it lasted long after we wrapped up as their agency of record. Many of the former employees went onto innovative business intelligence and data and analytics companies and we have been lucky enough to work with them again. Another of our long standing 10+ year relationships started during our second decade with Seagate. We began working with the storage icon during a very exciting time. Under the leadership of CEO Bill Watkins, Seagate was transforming from a stodgy enterprise storage player into a more consumer facing driver of the storage economy. In December 2005, our team convinced Forbes reporters that Bill and Seagate deserved to grace their cover as company of the year.
During the run up to the next economic downturn, Eastwick grew up in many ways. We expanded our talent, grew our client roster and we began the push to innovate what kinds of services “PR” agencies delivered to their clients. We started our first blog in 2005. Nobody even knew what blogging meant back then, and they definitely didn’t think this thing called social media applied to them. Oh, how times have changed. During this time, we launched a staff exchange program with our long term European partners, Axicom, to give our team the chance to learn more about how the media worked in the UK. We hired different kinds of marketing talent and opened our first San Francisco office. Then the recession of 2008 began. Don’t get me wrong, it was tough. Businesses were affected and again the valley saw a long list of companies who had to reduce staff. However, for those of us that had lived through the dot bomb times, it wasn’t nearly as big of a downturn. Technology innovation continued and in fact, the tech market was viewed as one of the only shiny things in a bleak economic landscape. We were lucky enough to be working with some interesting companies like StrongMail, Shoretel, Qualcomm, ServiceMesh, Vyatta and NetBase. Again, we said goodbye to one of the founding witches, as Elaine Cummings left the agency world.
Acceleration and Growth
As we embarked on our third decade, the pace of change in the world of communications accelerated to lightning speed. We were no longer known as a public relations agency, we were integrated marketers. Our clients were social, mobile and video companies like Rypple, Badgeville and Ooyala. We became data and analytics geeks, not only because we served clients in those markets, but also began to use data and analytics to infuse more science into the art of communications. We celebrated our 20th Anniversary with an amazing industry gathering of 350 of the valley’s most influential by screening the documentary Something Ventured , a spotlight on the history of venture capital in Silicon Valley. Our friend Robert Scoble, moderated a panel of entrepreneurs from the past, present and future, including the legendary Nolan Bushnell. Pretty darn cool.
The last five years have represented both the most change we’ve experienced and also the best years. Keeping a 25-year old brand fresh and relevant is a challenge for any company, especially in the agency business where the search for the shiny new thing is palpable. We’ve hit many major milestones in the last few years. We opened a New York office, expanded our relationships overseas and grown our staff and revenue to all time highs.
We launched our Digital Brand Lab, which includes a full team of designers, content marketers, researchers and digital and social ninjas. We’ve been awarded innovative agency of the year and tech agency of the year honors by several respected industry organizations and garnered numerous awards for specific client campaigns. A huge milestone for me was the appointment of Heather Kernahan as Eastwick’s president. I’m very excited to see where Heather takes us in the next 25 years!
