Public Relations Case Study
Growing SOV 5x With Thought Leadership
CrashPlan provides enterprise and SMB backup and recovery solutions. When CrashPlan appointed Firebrand, the brand was better known for its consumer and prosumer backup solutions but wanted to increase its profile among enterprise buyers. The challenge was that, in the tech media, backup was perceived as a commodity, with most coverage of the space focusing exclusively on corporate moves among the largest vendors. We needed to create a fresh angle on enterprise backup.
Firebrand’s solution was to demonstrate that changes in workplace culture had redefined backup. The heart of the campaign was a new research study: the Work Trend Security Report. The survey explored the connection between emerging trends in work culture (from quiet quitting to polyworking) and data stewardship practices. It even revealed that a new class of employee was emerging, the “Idea Worker”, who had very different data backup needs.
In addition to publicizing the research via a series of mediagenic press announcements, CrashPlan developed an immersive landing page that drove engagement and leads and brought the Idea Worker concept to life at in-person events. The initiative helped establish CrashPlan’s profile with key enterprise reporters, boosting results for core product and corporate announcements as well as executive visibility opportunities.
Key Results
Over 100 articles in enterprise and target vertical publications that CrashPlan had not previously appeared in, such as CRN, Dark Reading, Security Week, Silicon Angle, Information Week, IT Brew, Worklife Becker’s Hospital Review, Risk & Insurance
Grew SOV 5x in less than 18 months
Campaign formed the basis for an immersive landing page driving high engagement and extended time-on-site within CrashPlan’s website
Approach
Firebrand developed the campaign concept and wrote the survey, worked with a third-party research sample company to gather responses and conducted the analysis in-house. We worked with CrashPlan’s multimedia design firm to creatively represent each user persona as unique animated characters. The combined team developed an immersive landing page and created swag such as t-shirts and stickers for employee and customer engagement.
The Work Trend Security Report demonstrated that a new type of worker was emerging, with very different backup needs. “Idea Workers”, such as creatives, researchers, developers, attorneys and consultants, deal with large sets of IP-intensive, highly valuable, multimedia data. They are constantly augmenting and creating new data, and they are heavy AI users. But their data lives in a variety of applications and endpoints, including personal devices, rather than in centralized applications and systems of record like the data used by non-idea workers (those in finance, healthcare, customer service, sales and many other roles). Existing backup systems fail to adequately serve their needs. This perspective provided a foundation for thought leadership, news and interviews.
We leveraged the research findings to drive multiple stories. For example, one story revealed a connection between employee disengagement and bad backup behavior and even uncovered a trend of “Rage Deletion” — intentional data destruction by disgruntled workers. It also provided one of the first industry snapshots of enterprise AI adoption and governance.
As part of the wider corporate and product program, Firebrand also successfully announced CrashPlan’s acquisition of Parablu, resulting in an extensive profile in CRN as well as comprehensive pickups across security trades.
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