Thales is a highly-regarded multibillion-euro French company that’s a leader in a vast array of sectors. The Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing business needed to better establish itself as a player in the U.S. cyber security market amid some formidable players with large market share and brand recognition. Being part of a multinational company has its benefits, but it comes with challenges for divisions going head-to-head with U.S. independent security vendors. Bateman Agency was hired to uplevel its communications efforts across all media, specifically among U.S.-based security industry analysts and media.
Taking a European brand and building its reputation in North America as a key player in cloud security amid nimble, well-funded startups and publicly traded market leaders alike, is no easy feat. Adding to this challenge was a series of branding changes, reorgs, acquisitions and divestments, e.g., Thales Group, Thales e-Security and Thales CP&L along with lingering support for acquired brands like Gemalto and Vormetric, which just confused the media. It was time to make long-term commitments to corporate and product branding, positioning and messaging.
We began by leveraging their deep bench of spokespeople and experts to turn technical topics into mainstream media opps on leading-edge technologies, such as ransomware, AI, IoT, Quantum Computing, Kubernetes and Container Security. This extensive thought leadership program using both executive team and technology subject matter experts spanned a variety of topics and kept the program constantly refreshed and relevant. Results in terms of Tier 1 coverage appeared in outlets like: FedScoop, ZDNet, IDG Connect, Dark Reading and HealthcareIT News, among others.
Bateman also taught Thales how to maximize existing data surveys. For example, Thales publishes three industry research studies a year with IDC, but they were not sticking with journalists. We worked with Thales to create data fact sheets and “Snapshot” videos to quickly distill key findings for the media and for social. We also taught them the power of the simple embargo strategy, beginning the pitch process 10-12 days prior to the launch of the report, sending along supporting materials to give media the time, visuals and distilled content to more easily write their articles. Finally, we always included a comprehensive blog post series and bylined article plan as part of our overall data strategy for a long-tail impact. Sample coverage from these campaigns include: POLITICO, VentureBeat, SC Magazine, Forbes and Government Computer News.
Thales was at first skeptical, but grew to trust and accept our counsel for North American media strategies – which are starkly different from communications strategies conducted in EMEA. It is much more difficult to break through and secure meaningful coverage from journalists in the U.S., who tend to approach all vendors with a healthy dose of snark and skepticism. Given the time zone differences, Rapid Response opportunities were out of the question, so the relationship ultimately flourished because they were open to our counsel to use data to tell their story more and exhibit Cloud Security leadership and domain expertise.
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