Wired Island started working with a small and relatively low-key technology company recently. Avery Design Systems is in the chip design space and for the past 20 years has been quietly providing important, if not well-known to the mainstream, technology for verifying very complex semiconductor designs. While theirs is a relatively finite and engineering-oriented market, it’s still important for them to communicate effectively. Wired Island is supporting their outbound communications, through PR, content, events, email marketing and most recently we helped re-design their website and update their company brand (which had served them well for the past 20 years but was in need of a refresh). We caught up with Mike Sottak, the lead on this client to understand how Wired Island can help very specialized technology suppliers.

Q: Many people may not know who Avery is, could you give some insight as to who they are and what products/ services they provide?

A: Unless you’re in the chip business, you probably have never heard of Avery Design and maybe don’t even care. But if you use a cell phone, or laptop or any other electronic device, the role Avery plays in helping bringing those types of products to market is very important. They provide technology to the companies designing the chips that power all of our electronic devices, as well as the important infrastructure supporting data consumption, sharing and storage – like the data centers Amazon, Facebook and Google depend on. So they don’t design the chips in the way that companies such as Intel, nVidia, Qualcomm and Samsung do – but engineers at companies like those use Avery’s technology to develop their chips faster, specifically by helping them verify that the design will work as intended before they are sent to manufacturing. That’s a super important step in the chip design process and can literally make the difference between success and failure for a new product.

Q: How long have you been supporting them and what is your core value add?

A: We’ve been working with Avery since about mid-2021 but our connection with them goes back more than 20 years. I actually worked with the Avery co-founder as well as the heads of sales and marketing many years ago when we were all at a company called Gateway Design, which got merged into Cadence Design Systems – the largest supplier of chip design, or EDA (electronic design automation) tools. So chip design technology was common ground for all of us. Fast forward to this year, the head of marketing came to us and said they could use some help freshening up their image and getting more visibility. He knew we had unique and deep expertise in their particular technology, so there would be a quick learning curve and ramp-up to help them reach the audiences they wanted to. With our experience in EDA, I’d say our value is the domain knowledge about chip design for sure, plus a personal familiarity with some of the people involved. That combination has helped us hit the ground running for Avery.

Q: What is your biggest PR win with Avery?

A: As I mentioned Avery has a very specialized product line, and the scope of their potential customers is relatively small. But that makes it even more important to make sure they maintain visibility where their customers go for information. So we’ve gotten them coverage in some very niche publications that chip engineers read and rely on. For them, it’s almost as important to get in EE Times as it is to get in the NY Times! Because they have a focused market that we can target fairly precisely, we’ve also ramped up an email newsletter program for them – we can reach a lot of their existing customers and prospects efficiently through email marketing, which is still quite effective with engineering audiences. We’ve done some webinar work with them, too, again taking advantage of the very narrow focus on the target user base to deliver extremely relevant and deep tech content.

Q: I noticed your recently designed Avery’s logo, could you describe how that opportunity came to fruition? This is not something Wired Island has been known for.

A: Yes, logo updates and graphic design, in general, are not something we offer to all our clients but given the relationship with Avery and our insight into what they wanted, we wanted to participate in the brand update. Plus, we were re-doing their website so it made sense to do both at the same time. The website part of the assignment turned out to be a little more involved than we had expected but it was a good exercise for us to go through to 1) fine-tune how we work with our web developer Tim; and 2) get a broader sense for everything that Avery does. The net result was a good one and we will continue to help Avery maintain its online presence.

Q: Where do you see your relationship with Avery going in the near future, and long term?

A: Avery is not the type of company that’s going to have rocket ship growth and be breaking into brand new markets all the time. Their success has been based on consistency, quality products, and developing a loyal customer base. And as semiconductor technology permeates more and more aspects of our live, Avery’s role is really vital. It’s also important that they keep up with the relevant industry standards they help implement – protocols like CXL, NMVe, PCIe, Ethernet (yes, it’s a bit of an alphabet soup in this world), so there are always new topics and trends we want to be sure they are positioned properly around as thought leaders and also having products to support these developments. Communications-wise we want to continue to expand their visibility in the press, but also drive more into digital marketing and especially areas like SEO and lead generation. As a small company, Avery gives us an opportunity to get involved with a lot of different aspects of their marketing programs and we feel like our experience in their technology space makes us a great asset for them, too.

Click Here to see Avery’s Website.

Also, if you would like to more coverage of Avery, click Here.