Crommunity Round-Up: Exploring the marketing activities ofKitchener-Waterloo's technology companies
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Crommunity Round-Up: July 2020

Who says the summer months have to be quiet from a marketing standpoint—July 2020 was replete with examples of thought leadership from Kitchener-Waterloo tech companies who want to educate the market and stand out from the pack.

In case you missed it or want to know the extremely subjective inclusion ‘criteria’, click here to check out the the June 2020 Round-Up.

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SSIMWAVE and eSentire Leverage Data to Educate their Audiences

Let’s start with two neat examples of how companies can leverage data to produce marketing resources that increase awareness, create demand, and close knowledge gaps.

SSIMWAVE Surveys the Streaming Ecosystem

July saw SSIMWAVE present (via a webinar) and publish (via a written report) the results of a survey of more than 300 video and streaming media industry experts.

To conduct the survey, SSIMWAVE worked with Dan Rayburn—considered to be one of the foremost authorities, speakers, and writers on streaming media technology, content and business model.

Of course, you can always conduct your own survey directly! That’s what we did for The Waterloo Region Technology Marketing Spotlight.

Used correctly, surveys can be very effective marketing tools for at least a couple reasons. First, they let you gather quantified market intelligence that goes beyond your own customer base, which is hugely valuable for all sorts of reasons. Second, members of a group (i.e., members of the streaming media ecosystem) are more likely to listen to the insights and experiences of peers (i.e., other members of the streaming media ecosystem) than they are to the opinions of a vendor—and surveys are a convenient way of surfacing those insights and experiences in a manner which promotes your brand. Plus, they’re relatively inexpensive to conduct, which is always welcome.

I encourage you to read the report, as it’s a good example of how to combine data and explanations in a clear manner accessible to non-experts. In this case, the survey showed that the market is grappling with the problems that SSIMWAVE solves (and that the severity of these problems has been amplified by the pandemic) and identified some of the barriers that prevent media companies from rolling out solutions.

Just from this survey alone, SSIMWAVE now has two premium pieces of gated content (the webinar recording and the 12-page report), plus they can cite and use the statistical findings within other collateral and in social media campaigns.

eSentire and VMware Carbon Black Shine a Light on Modern Threats

Right at the end of July, eSentire and their partner VMware Carbon Black quietly released a new report—Threat Intelligence Spotlight: Hunting Evasive Malware. Unlike the SSIMWAVE survey, which relied on canvassing hundreds of industry experts, this spotlight leveraged malware telemetry gathered by eSentire’s and VMware Carbon Black’s solutions to enable their security services.

This report is a successor to one published last year; see Helping eSentire flex thought leadership muscle for a bit more on that one.

Bookended by an executive summary and tight conclusions, the report contains three main body sections:

  • An introduction that quickly summarizes recent changes in the cybersecurity landscape: namely, the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and how threat actors have adjusted their strategies and tactics in response
  • An examination of malware trends observed so far in 2020, including significant new threats and updates to threats examined in past reports
  • A slightly deeper dive on some of the advanced tactics, techniques, and procedures employed by threat actors and malware to evade detection

This structure is effective because the introduction sets the stage and reminds readers that cybersecurity is a very dynamic domain before the trends section goes one layer deeper to flag some specific threats—and both of those sections effectively set the stage for the deeper dive, which really showcases the capabilities and leadership of eSentire and VMware Carbon Black.

ISARA Delivers a Crash Course in Cryptographic Risk and Quantum Risk

Quick question: do you know what cryptographic risk is?

Another quick question: do you know what quantum risk is?

Don’t worry if you don’t know what those terms mean—in fact, it’s unlikely you’ve ever even encountered them until now.

Here are three things to know about them:

  1. They’re both very real
  2. They’re both very significant
  3. ISARA can help manage both

But being able to solve a problem only matters if you get the opportunity to solve it, and you can only get the opportunity to solve it if people know the problem exists. The tricky thing about both cryptographic risk and quantum risk is that they’re sneaky problems that lurk in the background (crypto) or seem not-yet-real (quantum).

To overcome these misconceptions, ISARA recently published a pretty remarkable document: Managing Cryptographic and Quantum Risk—A non-technical and hype-free explanation of what’s at risk, what you can do, and why you should act now.

This resource provides an incredibly efficient education into these two closely-related-but-still-distinct risks. Complete with handy “key takeaways” summaries at the beginning of each section, the document stands out for its clarity and completeness—and for being understandable even to readers unfamiliar with cryptography and/or quantum anything.

And for readers who might go into the document thinking, “Pfff, quantum is so far off in the future that I don’t care,” there’s a two-page feature right in the centre that illustrates the quantum timeline—including the remarkable recent progress—and shows that Y2Q might be just around the corner.

Like the SSIMWAVE and eSentire pieces profiled above (and like the Dejero 5G resource I wrote about previously), this piece from ISARA is educational, avoids sensationalizing, and isn’t remotely salesy. It’s just a damn good piece of thought leadership that will likely go a very long way to closing some significant—and dangerous—knowledge gaps, setting the stage for ISARA to have productive conversations.

We wrote about producing the ISARA piece in ISARA grows awareness and demand with educational content.

Marketing in the Time of COVID

We’ve all seen companies trying to incorporate into their messaging the pandemic and its ripple-effects. Some efforts have been clumsy, some have probably been eloquent.

I think it’s worth noting how SSIMWAVE and eSentire incorporated COVID into the pieces profiled above: both mentioned COVID because it’s had very real impacts on their respective markets, but neither one sensationalized or belaboured. For instance:

  • SSIMWAVE’s market has been impacted because streaming video has surged with people spending more time at home—this change has very real implications for companies producing and delivering content
  • eSentire’s market has been impacted because the widespread and rapid adoption of WFH has dramatically changed the security perimeter; at the same time, threat actors are adept at taking advantage of every opportunity

So to reiterate: both SSIMWAVE and eSentire mentioned the pandemic as an important contextual element, but neither forced the issue. No fear-mongering, no exploitation—they just stated how the pandemic has had a real impact and then moved on.

If you want some tips, check out Marketing in a Pandemic: Learnings and Tips in a COVID-19 World, from Aterlo‘s Harneet Singh.

Other A’Doin’s that A’Transpired

OK, let’s blast through a few other neat things I spotted in July:

If you want to learn a bit more about Auvik’s Summer Treat Wave program, then go to the 20:53 mark of this conversation with Auvik CMO Jacqui Murphy.

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Aaaand that’s a wrap.

If you want to nominate something for inclusion in the August round-up, then hit me up (figuring out how to get in touch is the test to prove that you’re not a robot).

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