US Cybersecurity company ExtraHop was looking to change its European coverage from small mentions against big competitors to a leading voice in the market. The challenge? Several well-funded rivals and a local media darling, Darktrace, which IPO’d, raising millions, the year we started working with them.
Positive was chosen after a competitive selection process with a clear target: earn coverage in high-value titles while increasing overall coverage volume to help its sales team compete fairly in the field. In effect, the ultimate task of achieving quality and quantity in the right places.
ExtraHop plays an important but very specific part of the cybersecurity market, Network Detection and Response, or NDR. Its technology is too ‘deep in the weeds’ for many business journalists and is also hard to convey to generalist tech journalists. Pitching requires forging a ‘Goldilocks’ approach, neither too tech-heavy, nor too simplistic and all the time with ambitious coverage targets to hit.