Jul 30 07
Magma Design Automation
As always, we have another great guest that was kind enough to spend some time talking to us last week. Milan Lazich, VP of Corporate Marketing at Magma Design Automation talks about the tools and methods he’s employing, what’s working, and what is unique about Magma’s business and stakeholders. (Total Runtime 11:57)
Full transcript after the jump
Renn Vara: On this edition of More Than Talk, we meet Milan Lazich, Vice President of Corporate Marketing in Magma Design Automation. The San Jose-based software company provides integrated solutions for the chip development industry and has over 800 full-time employees. Milan, thanks for joining us today.
Milan Lazich: Thanks for having me, Renn.
Renn Vara: Let’s first for the audience, describe your role there at Magma Design.
Milan Lazich: My title is Vice President of Corporate Marketing and that entails or encompasses a number of responsibilities. Primarily, I am responsible for all communication that supports our business objectives. So, my team and I work very closely with our various business units in promoting their products.
But along with those responsibilities I also manage investor relations. Magma’s a public company and so much of what I do has to relate with communicating with Wall Street and our relationship with the public markets. Then I also have responsibilities for communications within the company and there are different organizations within Magma who I assist in their various communications activities.
Renn Vara: You know, in most people’s world, that’s three jobs.
Milan Lazich: I suppose it is three jobs, but there is an economy and there is an efficiency that we have found in having those combined within one group of people or one person at least having influence over them, in that we are able to assure consistency in what we say to various audiences.
Renn Vara: Now with that, obviously there are some real challenges. What would you say are the top challenges from managing those three somewhat disparate roles?
Milan Lazich: I’d say that the major challenge or at least my major objective across all of those is starting with a clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve not only from a business standpoint, but perhaps starting with a business standpoint, and then extending that to what is my communication’s objective.
Probably my biggest focus is working with different constituencies within the company, to make sure they understand what they are trying to communicate, what they are trying to achieve. And then, making sure that we can come up with a consistent message and appropriate vehicles for getting that message out.
Starting with our business units, what markets are they addressing? What products are they trying to promote? What problems are they trying to solve for customers? How do we articulate that for prospects? And then, what is the vehicle we use to get that message out? It is fairly standard, not rocket science approach that we take. But sometimes the simplest things are the best.
Renn Vara: So Milan, considering all of that and considering those kinds of challenges, one of the biggest challenges many communicators face, despite the audience you are trying to reach, but it’s the internal people relying on you for that kind of guidance. How do you, for instance with your business units, how do you get them to rely on you?
Milan Lazich: I find you need to be very proactive in working with the groups internal to the company. By that I mean we need to be proactive in approaching them, describing for them the process that is most effective in getting their message out to the group that they are trying to reach. And starting with suggestions, drawing in proposals, this might be the best message for the X, Y, Z product. This might be the best way to reach that audience.
I find that once you get people thinking in those terms, usually they can come up with the appropriate answers that may not occur to me because they are closer to their particular domain of expertise. But they just need a kick start. It’s not their profession, they are not professional communicators as a rule, but they are professionals about their particular domain. So if I can give them an idea of what we’re trying to accomplish, they can apply their expertise and we can arrive at a more tailored solution.
But you do need to be proactive, because particularly they are in a very technical field, which is the case for Magma. You tend to deal with people who are not professional communicators. They have some sense of what marketing is for instance. But it’s typically a very limited sense. They think of television commercials, maybe they think of websites. But they don’t think in terms of tailoring certain vehicles for particular audiences, monitoring the performance of those vehicles, and then optimizing your communication strategy.
Renn Vara: So this requires obviously a lot of creativity on your part. What do you lean on? What kind of solutions do you lean on when you are talking to that internal audience to help them focus on how to best serve their audience?
Milan Lazich: You know, I usually start probably one level above that question and try to get them to focus on what they are trying to achieve. And usually what we’re trying to achieve is a hierarchy of goals.
First, we would want to achieve a certain level of awareness for the company or the product, whatever it is that we’re trying to communicate about. Beyond the awareness, you try to get to a level of education. Once you’ve educated your target audience about the product or the company, you’d like to incent them to contact the company or be receptive to contact. And then beyond that, demonstrate some kind of a preference for our offerings, whether it’s for the company, for the company stocks, for the company’s products, whatever it is.
Now at those different levels, awareness, education, contact, and preference, different vehicles lend themselves to achieving those goals. So some of the particular communications vehicles we use for awareness for instance, whether it may be for advertising, PR, some direct mail.
Once you have achieved that level of awareness, then we need to educate them more about the company. And that might be in the case of our products, seminars, trade shows, webcasts. In the case of our stock, Magma’s investment, its appearances at financial conferences, it’s our earning calls. These are all education vehicles.
And then beyond that, assuming we’ve done our job at making people aware of the company and products, educating them about the product and our company, we want to encourage them to contact us. And at that point, that’s where we try to make it as easy as possible for people to contact our products specialists, sales people, support engineers, etc.
And if we do our job along all those processes, then they express a preference for the company and that’s when we make a sale, they buy our stock, etc. So there are different vehicles that lend themselves to different steps along the flow.
Renn Vara: You start with somewhat of a format in that what you do is you look at awareness, education, and contact in you as primary categories for how you reach out to them, correct?
Milan Lazich: That’s correct.
Renn Vara: Now, you didn’t mention anything about this latest and greatest thing, which people called social media or what we call a ‘communication system’. Do you not see in any of those three categories, particularly in the education side, any need for this idea of developing blogs, and podcasts, and vidcasts and developing what many call a community? Do you not find that a value in your business?
Milan Lazich: I wouldn’t say that we don’t find it a value. I would say that some of the vehicles that are in vogue right now haven’t shown themselves to be as effective for our particular business. But that doesn’t mean that the phenomenon isn’t appropriate.
And let me put it this way. Engineers, which is by and large our target audience, do rely on each other when they are looking at new ways to solve problems and that includes buying software, which is what Magma sells. There is a natural, I think, reluctance that I’ve seen over the years among engineers or maybe it’s a natural skepticism they have toward companies that are trying to sell software. They much rather hear from each other recommendations. So, in that regard, the social marketing phenomenon is relevant.
I’m not sure its one that marketers in our field have figured out exactly how to exploit, for lack of a better word, as effectively as in other industries. I think you’ve got certain engineers who have their own blogs, who have their own websites and make their own commentary. And their peers do refer to those.
I’m not sure of the marketer. There’s a way we can effectively do that, because of this natural skepticism, that whatever we have to say is going to have an agenda. They are going to look for someone who is perceived as unbiased.
That’s not to say we won’t figure out how to be more effective at that. I think it maybe a matter of making it more simple, more available for engineers to conduct that social marketing phenomenon. But we’re not going to be able to have significant influence as far as the message in the content. I don’t think we’ll ever have significant influence over that.
Renn Vara: Gotcha, gotcha. And then the other thing that’s somewhat unique to Magma is that you have a very defined customer based and a very defined competitive base. And you guys know each other. Does this not add some uniqueness to the approach that you take?
Milan Lazich: It is a little different from many industries. If you’re looking at our target audience, our customer-base, its a few hundred companies that make semiconductors. If you look at the competitors, Magma is one of the four largest companies in the EDA industry. But it’s an industry with several hundred players but a relative handful of large companies that we compete with.
So, you do have a pretty good idea where the customers are, you have a pretty good idea where the competitors are. There are a very few secrets as far as what’s going on. From a technology standpoint of course, we all protect our intellectual property quite jealousy but there’s pretty good insight into who’s doing what in what accounts.
So the marketing challenge is not necessarily one of awareness because most of the companies were targeting know who we are. It’s a little different problem from other industries.
Renn Vara: Gotcha, gotcha. So first of all, thank you very much for all the time you’ve given us so far. Let’s close out with some advice to other communicators like yourself. Anything, you’ve been doing this for quite a few years, what’s your advice to other communicators?
Milan Lazich: I’ve learned that what makes my job easier is when I keep things simple and start with what am I trying to achieve, what do I want people to understand, how am I going to communicate that, and how am I going to know that they heard the message.
How am I going to monitor the different vehicles we used and know that I have been successful or that I haven’t been successful and what adjustments do I have to make? I’d say the key things to understanding what your message is be consistent in its communication and make adjustments where needed.
Renn Vara: That’s terrific. Milan, thank you very much for your time, we really appreciate it.
Milan Lazich: You’re very welcome.
Renn Vara: That was Milan Lazich, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Magma Design Automation.
