Key Results

~10%
YoY Division Growth
for 7 consecutive years
3
New Market Verticals
pro sports, museums and universities
Acquired
Largest Competitor
Bonded — expanding the division globally
#649
Fortune 1000

This Case Study Answers

  • How do you launch a division brand inside a Fortune 1000 parent?
  • How do you stop being seen as a commodity vendor?
  • How do you scale sales beyond a few top performers?
  • How do you expand into new verticals beyond your core market?

What Happened

The Challenge

Iron Mountain is #649 in the Fortune 1000 — a multinational that began in the 1950s as an ultra-secure bunker for critical government and corporate records in the event of nuclear war. Publicly, it was known for one thing: the white and blue vans parked in every corporate center in America. The paper-shredder people. In legal, healthcare and other highly regulated industries, it was where records were securely kept and destroyed exactly on schedule.

Almost no one knew that Iron Mountain also protects most of American pop culture in its original form — original film masters from every major movie studio and the smaller studios they absorbed, original recordings and mixes from every major record label, vast photo archives holding the negatives behind some of the most recognizable images ever taken, and government archives including Thomas Edison's original lightbulb patent.

Iron Mountain Entertainment Services had never told that story. Professional archivists considered them the most respected vault in the business. The creators and executives who actually commissioned the work saw a document-storage company.

Iron Mountain Entertainment Services case study visual

Positioning & Competitive Analysis

Matli Group was brought in to build division-specific branding, positioning and B2B marketing strategy for Iron Mountain Entertainment Services (IMES).

The work began with strategic positioning and competitive analysis: where IMES actually sat in the minds of studio, label and archive decision-makers versus where the parent brand sat — and what a division-level identity could credibly claim that the corporate brand could not.

The conclusion shaped everything that followed. Position IMES as a standalone expert in the entertainment space, carrying the credibility of a highly respected parent company without being flattened by its paper-and-shredding reputation.

Iron Mountain Entertainment Services strategy, rebrand and launch case study overview

Rebrand & Launch

The repositioning produced a full creative platform for the division, and culminated in Iron Mountain Entertainment hosting Paramount Pictures' 100th Anniversary celebration at the Hollywood Bowl — including a VIP reception on the rooftop of Iron Mountain Hollywood.

Anchoring the launch to a marquee industry moment achieved in a single night what years of category advertising could not. It placed IMES directly in front of the studio and label decision-makers it needed to reach, in the role of host rather than vendor.

Iron Mountain Entertainment Services launch event materials

Execution Highlights

This engagement spans the full arc of enterprise B2B growth work: division-level brand positioning inside a Fortune 1000 parent, competitive analysis, creative platform development, event-anchored launch, funnel design, sales enablement, and vertical go-to-market expansion.

A library of customer testimonial case study videos was produced to support the sales motion — covering the Kennedy Library, the Grammy Museum, USC Film School, the Corbis photography archive, Paramount Pictures, the Los Angeles Lakers and Universal Music Group.

Kennedy Library
Grammy Museum
USC Film School
Corbis Photography Archive
Paramount Pictures
Los Angeles Lakers (visual only)
Universal Music Group

Scaling: Funnel, Messaging & Sales Enablement

Dominating the core segment created a different problem. The division needed to grow beyond it, and its best sales results lived in the heads of a handful of high performers.

Three things were required to scale:

  • A defined B2B funnel
  • Sales messaging that could be taught to new sales teams
  • Vertical-specific customer journeys, marketing and sales materials

We analyzed the market opportunities open to IMES, identified the new verticals worth expanding into, and built the customer journeys, messaging and key products needed for each. Alongside that came the mechanism for transferring what the highest-performing enterprise sellers knew into entirely new teams — plus the marketing and sales materials to help them close.

Iron Mountain Entertainment Services scaling to new markets case study overview

Business Results

Growth: ~10% YoY growth of the Entertainment Services division for seven straight years.

Market position: Complete domination of domestic market share in the core business of movie studios and record labels, followed by the acquisition of its largest competitor, Bonded — which expanded the division globally.

Expansion: Three new verticals opened beyond the core business, including professional sports, museums and universities.

Capability: A documented funnel, teachable sales messaging and vertical-specific materials that allowed a domestic enterprise sales team to scale globally.