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

Crommunity Round-Up: June 2020

Hi there!

Welcome to the first of what I intend to be a monthly rundown of notable marketing activities plucked from Kitchener-Waterloo’s tech community.

How does an activity get included? It’s pretty simple:

  1. I become aware of it (spot it on LinkedIn, someone tells me about it, etc.)
  2. I decide whether or not to include it

We’re going for “just enough process” here, not some overly complex curated subscription newsletter.

The criteria for inclusion are entirely subjective and I don’t doubt that they’ll vary over time. I’m going to try to focus primarily on product marketing and strategy, because those are what I know best, they’re important, and I don’t think the region talks about them enough; plus, between Waterloo EDC and Communitech, general news already has solid coverage.

Ultimately, I want to share interesting and illustrative examples of technology marketing—whether or not Cromulent had anything to do with them. So let me be clear that including an example in here doesn’t imply or indicate that the company is a client, or that the project involved Cromulent.

Alright, here we go.

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eSentire Provides an Education

Hot on the heels of their comprehensive report on Managing Industry 4.0 Cybersecurity Risks (released at the end of May), eSentire was back at it with too many blog posts and resources to list. Having said that, though, I’ll highlight three activities.

In early June, eSentire released their Annual UK Threat Intelligence Spotlight. This report focuses on trends observed eSentire’s UK customer base in the context of the broader threat landscape. The report provides visuals, data, and written analysis, as well as practical recommendations for readers to better understand and respond to cybersecurity risks.

The next day, eSentire published Cybersecurity Governance for Small and Medium Businesses. Today’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) are subject to a wide array of cyberthreats and are particularly vulnerable because they don’t have the same resources as enterprises and other large organizations. This resource is a nice, non-salesy summary to help SMBs catch up on things they really should know—it specifically addresses misconceptions and provides an outline on how to set up an effective cybersecurity governance structure.

Lastly, right at the end of the month eSentire quietly shared 5 Essential Questions to Ask Your Security Provider—a short, clear resource that helps companies understand what matters and what to look out for when choosing between security providers.

All of these resources take an education-first, sales-distant-second (if at all) approach. In doing so, they provide real utility to readers—while also demonstrating eSentire’s domain expertise and leadership. Plus, they’re also focused on particular audiences (e.g., manufacturers, companies in the UK, SMBs, and companies looking for a security provider) and because of this focus they’re able to go deeper into a very broad and complex subject—cybersecurity—than most of what you see in the market.

Miovision’s Versatility Helps Detroit Tackle COVID

Miovision released a short summary of an unplanned application of their TrafficLink technology.

In partnership with Miovision Labs—which I interpret to be a kind’ve experimental, rapid-prototyping group—Detroit leveraged its existing Miovision installation to execute three new smart city solutions:

  • Improve operational efficiency at a large-scale COVID-19 drive-through testing site
  • Provide real-time insight into processing performance at the testing site
  • Monitor citizen mobility and measure the impact of COVID-19 within the community’s traffic network

This example clearly shows the versatility of Miovision’s TrafficLink platform, which is a nice proof-point for their messages about being future-proof, growing with changing smart city needs, and so on. Plus, Detroit is quietly reinventing and rebuilding (recall The World’s Smartest Intersection), and this quick reapplication of an existing solution is pretty exemplary.

VueReal Shines a Light on Micro-LED Testing

In “Does it turn on?!” An introduction to Micro-LED testing, which shines a light (*rimshot*) on how to go about testing microscopic LEDs.

There are a few reasons why I really liked this post:

  • It’s accessible to non-specialists: aside from some unavoidable domain-specific terms, the language is straightforward enough that anyone can read it and make sense of it
  • It’s educational: I learned stuff, and I always appreciate that
  • It’s not salesy: sales messages cause readers to put up defenses, while educational messages get welcomed inside and often leave a much more effective impression

And from an SEO standpoint, this post provides fresh content specific to VueReal’s industry.

Also, note that the post isn’t from a marketer—the author (Devika Khosla) is part of the engineering team. Companies often struggle to create sorta-technical content, primarily because marketers often aren’t technical enough to do so and sometimes because the marketing team is simply too busy. This post is a nice example of how you can tap into the knowledge throughout the organization.

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Aaaand that’s a wrap.

If you want to nominate something for inclusion in the July round-up, then hit me up (figuring out how is my IANAR test).

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