Case study
What makes business reporters seek out your expertise?
tier one interviews
in nine months
pieces of tier one coverage
Share of Voice
up from 2% less than a year previously
About the client
Secureworks, now part of Sophos, is an Extended Detection and Response (XDR) provider. Its platform enables customers – ranging from the Fortune 100 to medium-sized businesses – to detect, manage and respond to threats across the entire network, from cloud environments to endpoints. Secureworks has an in-house team – the Counter Threat Unit (CTU) – that is focused on uncovering the latest activity from sophisticated cybercrime groups and nation-state actors. This research gives customers unparalleled insight into emerging threats.
Challenge
Secureworks produced excellent, topical research and had a bench of media-ready experts but struggled to convert this into tier one coverage. The CTU insights were often buried within highly technical reports, which meant more generalist journalists found it hard to extract a clear news line.
Meanwhile, the small UK communications team didn’t have the bandwidth to run day-to-day PR and invest in consistent relationship-building with media. As a result, even the strongest research struggled to find a home, and key titles like the Financial Times and Sky News weren’t proactively approaching the company for comment.
The Spark team became the extra pairs of hands we needed to cut through to top tier journalists. They understand complex security topics, know what journalists want, are persistent and take an effective, tactical approach towards media relations. This combination helped us build lasting relationships with targets who had previously shown much less interest in engaging with our spokespeople.”
Susie Evershed, EMEA Corporate Communications at Secureworks
Action
We created a structured media buddy programme designed to build trust, familiarity and ongoing dialogue between CTU spokespeople and a carefully chosen group of priority journalists.
1. Identifying the “buddies”
We analysed what each journalist covered, where Secureworks expertise had previously been overlooked, and what would make a CTU expert genuinely useful to them. This produced a shortlist of tier one national and trade reporters who would benefit from a closer relationship with the team.
2. Pairing the right spokesperson with the right journalist
We matched CTU researchers to journalists based on their focus area. For instance, the Financial Times’ China correspondent was paired with Secureworks’s China-focused nation-state expert, supported by highly selective briefings.
3. Translating deep research into sharp, usable storylines
We ran quick briefing calls with CTU researchers to find the newsworthy angles within each report, then crafted short, punchy media alerts that made those angles accessible to non-technical audiences.
4. Playing the long game
Selectivity was crucial. We didn’t offer every piece of research to every target. Instead, we focused on sending only the most relevant insights, paced carefully so each journalist felt they were receiving tailored, high-value intelligence. Some relationships took months to mature, but once trust was established, the rewards became significant. For example, for Sky News, which focussed on more consumer-based topics, we pitched interviews around key consumer topics, such as the cybersecurity threats of children returning to school or Black Friday.
5. Keeping the drumbeat going
While the buddy programme was the core tactic, we supported it with a drumbeat of media relations tactics – news hijacking, feature pitching, bylines and company announcements – to maintain a consistent presence in between each CTU report.
Impact
The buddy programme began delivering results almost immediately. Within weeks we secured interviews with Sky News and ZDNet around Black Friday, setting the pace for what became a sustained run of tier one coverage.
In just nine months, we secured:
– 14 interviews with top-tier national media, including the Financial Times and Forbes
– 35 pieces of tier one business coverage
– An average of 20 pieces of coverage each month
– A steady stream of inbound requests from Sky News for expert commentary
Most importantly, the relationship-building delivered exactly what we set out to achieve. After months of tailored outreach, one CTU expert and the Financial Times’s cybersecurity correspondent exchanged direct phone numbers and began speaking regularly about breaking stories – turning Secureworks into a go-to source.
All of this contributed to a significant rise in Share of Voice, with Secureworks’s share jumping from 2% to 12.5%, and cemented the CTU as a trusted intelligence partner for major UK media.
