You don’t have to spend big to make a big PR impact in IT security

It’s simple at Spark: we find, develop and share stories. I was lured across to tech PR from a full-time journalism role because a tech PR agency is just as involved in the news as any of the national newsrooms I have ever worked a shift at. When explaining our industry to my Nan, I tell her we’re journalists who work on behalf of technology firms. And that IS what we are: I wouldn’t lie to my Nan!

Every writer worth their salt will know where to look for a story, and as a PR agency our mindset is the same. Just as a journalist will struggle to persuade an editor to send them halfway across the world (or out of the office for an afternoon) to cover a story, successful PR doesn’t involve a lot of leg work or splashing cash, it’s about knowing how to gather the right ingredients to put together ideas and content journalists will be interested in.

The good news is there is an opportunity for our clients to play a part in the biggest news stories of the day. Just look at Google’s ‘right to be forgotten’ saga, one which has dragged in big guns like the European Union and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). It’s a massive story, one a small technology firm might think it would have no chance in commenting on to the press.

But our client, encryption firm Egress Software Technologies, has been doing just that: after we had monitored for breaking stories on high-profile leaks of data, we worked with Egress to create comment about an accidental leak of the G20 leaders’ personal information. Contact details for the likes of David Cameron and Barack Obama were mistakenly emailed out by the Australian Department of Immigration, a mistake Egress’ technology could have helped the Australian authorities to avoid happening in the first place, and to manage in the aftermath.

This mistakenly-sent email became big news, and after we had pitched a couple of paragraphs of insight to journalists we knew could be interested in covering the story, Egress’ comment appeared in several national newspapers, as well as hitting the security and IT press.

In addition to providing insight on breaking stories, we have actually been working with the ICO to create our own stories. Hard-hitting facts, not dull self-serving press releases. After Egress, put in a Freedom of Information request to the ICO, which didn’t cost them a penny, we worked with them on a news story about how UK law firms are failing to encrypt sensitive data and are currently under investigation by the body. Combining our news agenda knowledge with their industry insight, we were able to craft an angle that journalists would be keen to write about. 

It was great to be able to approach journalists with a fresh set of statistics, and we secured some nice bits of coverage, including this piece on Infosecurity Magazine.  The best thing about taking the approach outlined above is that journalists like it when you call them with these kinds of stories. There are no awkward conversations and ‘oh, I’ll take a look at your press release’ half-truths when you actually give the journalists what they want, and without spending big, this will translate into success for your PR programme.