Snowden, SpiderOak and the Value of a Strong Point of View

Edward Snowden with the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger (right) and senior reporter Ewen MacAskill (left) in Moscow. Photograph: Alex Healey for the Guardian

On Thursday, the Guardian released the first video excerpts from its exclusive interview with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who has garnered an enormous media following but has so far agreed to talk publicly to only a small handful of news organizations (His first and only interview for an American television audience, with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, was broadcasted on May 28.). In the Guardian interview, Snowden cited the concept of a “zero-knowledge” privacy environment as a model for cloud computing, and endorsed BOCA’s client SpiderOak as a prime example of this privacy-first model. The widely publicized interview led to a flurry of interest from other high-level media influencers and customers wanting to learn more about SpiderOak and its platform.

The topic arose when the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, asked about the future of cloud computing and Snowden responded, “What cloud companies need to pursue in order to be truly successful is called a zero-knowledge system.” When asked for an example of this, Snowden cited SpiderOak: “There’s a company called SpiderOak,” he said, “[that] has structured their system in such a way that you can store all of your information on them but they literally have no access to the content of that information. So that yeah, while they could be compelled to turn it over, the law enforcement agencies still have to go to a judge to get a warrant to get that encryption key from you.”

The resulting deluge of coverage, in publications ranging from Gigaom to the Wall Street Journal, has raised SpiderOak’s visibility to unprecedented heights, along with generating a high volume of incoming leads, and BOCA is extremely proud to have helped SpiderOak reach this publicity breakthrough. While it only takes one high-profile interview to bring a client to a new level of recognition, BOCA and SpiderOak have worked together for years to lay the proper groundwork for this moment. It began when BOCA sat down with SpiderOak to develop the idea of a “Zero Knowledge Privacy Standard” in 2011, leveraging the company’s unique approach to protecting customer data to make its offering stand out from the rest of the crowd. When revelations of NSA spying led to a spike in interest in privacy-first technologies in 2013, BOCA had already done the heavy lifting to make SpiderOak the first name in any discussion of “zero-knowledge privacy,” a term coined by BOCA and SpiderOak during our initial messaging brainstorm in 2011.

There has been a rising drumbeat of coverage for SpiderOak over the past few years, including features in the New York Times and TechCrunch, but Snowden’s specific endorsement of the “zero-knowledge privacy” model in the Guardian interview, and his reference to SpiderOak as the best example of this technology, raised the company to a new level. Since Thursday, SpiderOak has been written about by nearly every major technology and business publication, along with many top tier general news and political outlets as well (check out the impressive summary of SpiderOak’s press coverage here), and continues to field interview requests at an overwhelming rate. SpiderOak has also seen an enormous surge in interest from potential new customers – website traffic spiked in the following days and the company experienced five to six times higher signup rates. While the full impact to SpiderOak’s bottom line has yet to be seen, the upside so far looks tremendous.

The lesson that we take from this public relations achievement at BOCA is that a strong and clearly communicated point of view, based on a technology that answers a real market need, will ultimately lead to client success. Though it may not always arrive on a predictable timeline, the benefits of good PR will accrue after serious and thoughtful work to promote the client as an industry leader with a specific message for the market. There is no “magic bullet” solution to put a company on the world stage, but ultimately the value of a creative, well-planned and rigorously executed PR campaign is almost immeasurable. We are extremely happy with SpiderOak’s success, and proud to have helped bring our client this unprecedented level of positive recognition.