How do you get everyday product news in tier-one Silicon Valley media, specifically TechCrunch?
At the time, BOCA’s client Druva was looking for funding, which they announced in August, totaling $80 million. So naturally, TechCrunch coverage was a top priority as they were amping up for funding.
Ransomware was hot in the news and one of the most pressing security issues for enterprises. With data management and information governance in high demand, companies like our client Druva, a provider of cloud data protection and information management, needed to rise above the noise and insert their voice into the global conversation of ransomware.
A Smart Strategy for Everyday Product News
To start, we researched what truly made this product stand out amongst the sea of ransomware solutions. BOCA mapped out the existing landscape of ransomware solutions and deconstructed the various technological offerings to determine the key differentiators.
Analysis showed that Druva offered the only comprehensive approach to detect, respond and recover against malicious threats like ransomware. This feature put inSync (their flagship product) ahead of the curve and increased the value of its unified platform. Unlike other solutions on the market, Druva was successfully using machine learning for course correction and understanding how files changed, rather than broad-stroke anomaly detection focusing on one use case.
Armed with this research, BOCA could strategize a thoughtful campaign around this product announcement.
Telling the Full Story Rather than Pitching a Single Announcement
Rather than focus on product news alone, BOCA created a larger narrative connecting our announcement to a global conversation related to ransomware, security and its impact on enterprises. BOCA also strategically orchestrated a media strike to be timed around RSA (the premier global security conference).
The unveiling of the product news also included a video, infographic, data sheet and blog post to help inform enterprises about the current state of ransomware threats and what features were most important in order to detect and combat these threats.
The informative collateral, web content and data sheets were timed to go live prior to RSA in order to inform small to mid-market customers who lacked protection and recovery for ransomware attacks and larger consumers who needed a secondary line of defense.
Druva officially released this product in February 2017. The story initially broke with a calculated exclusive in TechCrunch. Following the exclusive, the announcement was covered in 10 unique publications totaling 31,462,680 UMVs.
With the team’s strategic thinking, we were able to turn a run-of-the-mill product announcement into a piece of valuable coverage and more.