The RSA Conference (RSAC) can prove overwhelming for attendees looking to gain media traction. With more than 40,000 attendees and hundreds of technology pitches, corporate communications professionals attending RSAC can struggle to cut through the crowds, maximize their ROI and protect their budgets. To succeed, they must engage strategically and plan ahead— whether their solution aims to prevent weaponization of large language models (LLMs) or plan for a post-quantum cryptography world.
In the latest episode of “Politely Pushy,” Bospar’s Eric Chemi and his three media industry guests give RSAC attendees a roadmap for media success. Chemi is Bospar’s SVP of broadcast strategies who previously covered business news at CNBC and was head of data and research at Bloomberg’s television and Bloomberg Businessweek magazine divisions.
Joining Chemi on the podcast:
- Christina Knittel, senior director of corporate communications at DigiCert, a leading global provider of digital trust. Knittel has more than 20 years of experience on both the in-house and agency side for private and public tech companies in the areas of internet security, data management, networking infrastructure, CRM and ERP
- Byron Acohido, founder of LastWatchdog.com, is a Pulitzer–Prize winning journalist who began a focus on cybersecurity and privacy in 2000 when he started covering Microsoft in the Money section of USA Today.
- Larry Magid, Ed.D, CEO and co-founder of ConnectSafely.org., is an internet safety advocate and a technology journalist. He is a columnist for the Mercury News and a frequent guest on TV and radio.
The trio offered a number of tips for corporate communications representatives and attending journalists to maximize their time at RSAC.
Understand your ROI metrics
Knittel says as a communications expert on the corporate side, her ROI is tied to media engagement and coverage results.. “Given that my background and my role at my company is communications, I’m graded on, and my ROI comes from: How many media interviews did we do? RSAC, as everyone knows, is a very noisy conference. [When you are] strategically putting out news, sometimes it can get lost in the shuffle … So, it’s how many interviews you get, and did our message pull through in those interviews in the results of those interviews and the coverage results.”
Work tactically
For optimizing time and standing out at the RSA Conference, Acohido suggests attendees spend their time tactically, saying “Imagine if you’re going to Comic-Con, you can’t do everything right? You’re going to have to pick which keynotes or which side presentations to go to. I mean this is the Super Bowl of security conferences. So definitely pick one keynote that you want to see, it doesn’t have to be the main one, because you can see that afterwards. But pick the one that most resonates with what your mission is when you go to this conference.”
Acohido also suggested being selective about the after-hours events. “There’s a ton of those [after-hours events] too, and they’re definitely worth going to. Actually, you get a lot of good information that way. If you are tactical about it you will get better and more useful takeaways after all.”
Magid suggested a tactic for cybersecurity industry representatives at RSAC is to put risk into clearer perspective. He said, “So when you talk about the possibility of some horrible thing happening, you need to put it into some perspective. What is the probability of it happening? And I don’t think that that’s often done at these conferences. And I think sometimes reporters go away again, not putting that into perspective, just simply creating this impression that anything you do has a high risk … I also don’t want risk to debilitate people. I don’t want risk to keep you from enjoying the use of your devices.”
Storytelling matters
Chemi asked the group about how journalists encounter a lot of fluff and get to the technology story. He said “But there’s no way for you to really prove [the value of a technology solution], because you’re not going to download the software. You’re not going to buy it; you’re not going to install it. How do you really suss it out?”
Acohido responded with an emphasis on storytelling: “So really a lot has changed [about the RSA Conference], but the core thing has not changed. It’s about communication. It’s about storytelling, because it’s such a dynamic topic that touches everything you know, cybersecurity.”
Magid, speaking as a columnist rather than a reporter, shared how his coverage focuses on the real-world impact for everyday people.. “I’m there to impart an interpretation of what happened. And as a columnist, what I care most about is things that ultimately affect normal people, average people. So Christina, … what if I were to talk about quantum, … what does that mean to you when you’re at home, maybe at work, maybe in the car, maybe going out for a walk, wherever you’re using a device these days, it could be literally anywhere. What does that mean to you … when I would cover RSAC, … I would think about how this impacts the security and privacy of regular folks?”
Knittel weighed in from the corporate side for companies to come to RSAC prepared to bolster the company’s story: “Well, it’s a not-so-secret sauce, but when product announcements go out, you generally always want to have a customer reference to talk about it and then also an analyst reference to basically vet it … Reporters really rely on third-party validation to help them vet what’s news and what’s not news. Have your third-party references even if they’re not mentioned in the press release … here are your third-party folks that you can tap to get a quote you know … Don’t take it from us. Take it from these people.”
There are more than 400 media attendees at RSAC, and every one of them receives requests for attention and interviews. Getting in front of the right journalists requires deft PR planning. We can guide your product launch and strategic announcements at RSAC. Our team has deep experience with cybersecurity announcements and trends, whether it involves the risks of relying too much on AI-generated code or the latest challenges in API security, we’ve got you covered.
To learn more about how Bospar’s public relations specialists can help stand out at RSAC and get traction for your announcements, contact Bospar at results@bospar.com.
