AspenTech is a leading supplier of software that optimizes process manufacturing for the oil & gas, chemicals, engineering & construction, and pharmaceutical industries. Its roots span back to a joint MIT and US Department of Energy research project dedicated to finding alternative fuel sources.
After 25 years of organic as well as inorganic growth fueled by an aggressive series of acquisitions, AspenTech endured a number of would be “death knells” by most standards: The former chief executive was convicted of securities fraud. Its founder was charged with falsifying revenues, and was removed by the board as part of a comprehensive executive team restructuring. Multiple earnings restatements. Delisted from NASDAQ. Hyper-competitor propaganda. Eroded customer and employee confidence. Negative publicity was abound. Course of Action:
- Re-established a formal corporate communications function after it flat-lined due to corporate restructuring efforts
- Constructed and guided a comprehensive crisis communications plan implementation. This included triaging immediate corporate image issues, while educating key audiences including trade and business press, financial and industry analysts, as well as customers and employees.
- Conducted intensive and regular media tours with key journalists and editors. Re-enforced thought leadership position through systematic byline article creation and placement in industry publications, as well as feature interviews.
- Simplified product messaging by architecting an umbrella framework to definitively articulate the brand purpose for a comprehensive software suite. This also included rationalizing the subcomponents for three separate business lines as part of a 200+ point product rollup.