The challenge
When I joined Acano as acting CMO, the company was still developing its technology under the name Silverflare. There was no marketing function, no sales infrastructure and no revenue.
The technology solved a real problem in enterprise collaboration: video systems from different vendors couldn’t easily communicate with one another. Cisco worked with Cisco. Polycom worked with Polycom. As organizations accumulated different technologies, getting everyone into the same meeting became unnecessarily complicated.
Acano could change that. The challenge was making sophisticated technology — and an entirely new way of thinking about video collaboration — immediately understandable to the market.
Finding the simple truth
We started with the customer problem rather than the technology. The priority buyer was the video manager responsible for making an increasingly complicated mix of systems work together. They didn’t need another technical story. They needed all of those systems to work.
That led to a very simple expression of Acano’s value:
Everyone’s Invited.
It meant exactly what it said. Acano could bring people together regardless of the technology they were using. Behind that simple promise was exceptional engineering — the horsepower to make interoperability work at enterprise scale.
Building a challenger brand
We built the company and brand around the same idea: make the complex feel simple.
While the established video market tended to lead with technical specifications, product imagery and “speeds and feeds,” Acano talked like a person. The brand was fresh, confident and occasionally cheeky. Human imagery showed people collaborating rather than equipment. A distinctive red-orange identity stood apart from traditional enterprise technology brands. Technical depth was there for buyers who wanted it — but it supported the story rather than leading it.
The objective wasn’t simply to look different. It was to make Acano feel like the obvious new answer to a problem the industry had accepted for too long.
Creating market momentum
The position became the foundation for the GTM. Working closely with the CEO, CTO and sales leaders, I built the initial marketing function and led the brand, website, launch, PR, analyst relations, events, demand generation, sales enablement and partner marketing.
We created anticipation before launch and then carried the same position and voice through the website, sales materials, analyst conversations, events and partner activity globally. At trade shows, the technology itself became part of the experience — simple, energetic demonstrations drew people in and gave the sales team a repeatable way to turn the promise into proof.
The result was more than awareness. Acano quickly developed the credibility and momentum of a serious new player in the market. In 2014, Gartner named Acano a Cool Vendor in Unified Communications.
The result
Acano went from $0 to $23 million in revenue in under 24 months. What began as complicated interoperability technology had become a clear market proposition with a distinctive brand, an aligned GTM motion and growing industry credibility.
Cisco announced its acquisition of Acano in 2015 for $700 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention incentives.
“Fuel Growth Group was brought in to get Acano launched. It was the momentum we needed as we transformed an industry.”
Complex technology. A simple human promise. Everyone’s Invited.
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