BOCA and SpiderOak Featured at In2 Summit This Week

BOCA Communications CEO Kathleen Shanahan and SpiderOak CEO Ethan Oberman will share the stage this Thursday to talk about how innovative PR campaigns are changing the way that companies interact and engage with customers. As part of The Holmes’ Report’s first In2 Summit in San Francisco, Shanahan and Oberman will sit down to discuss SpiderOak’s groundbreaking campaign built on the concept of “Zero Knowledge Privacy.”

Facing deeply entrenched competition from established cloud storage brands such as Box and DropBox, SpiderOak needed an original approach to successfully enter the conversation around cloud storage providers. BOCA worked with SpiderOak to develop the idea of a “Zero Knowledge Privacy Standard,” which leveraged the company’s unique approach to protecting customer data to make its offering stand out from the rest of the crowd. As a result, SpiderOak became the “go-to” resource for reporters covering the privacy and security issues as Snowden and the NSA led to a spike in conversation during 2013.

Shanahan and Oberman will lay out how the term “Zero Knowledge Privacy” was developed, and how BOCA hammered the campaign home through media outreach, contributed content, press releases, and speaking opportunities. They will also share how the campaign effectively positioned SpiderOak as an industry leader and boosted its bottom line with significant lead generation.

The event will take place at 4:40 p.m. on Thursday, January 23, at the Four Seasons in San Francisco. We look forward to seeing you there!

BOCA Begins the New Year With a Bang

What a way to start 2014! From earning top tier media placements to signing some of the most innovative clients, BOCA Communications has been on a roll in the New Year. It’s only been two weeks, but we’re so excited about our progress so far that we just had to share the news.

Our clients are making a big splash. Cloud-based Business Intelligence platform Birst has been winning excellent coverage from the business press this year, with thought leadership pieces from CEO Brad Peters appearing recently in both Forbes and the Guardian. Forbes also ran a feature story describing how Birst would lead the data analytics industry, while Business Insider picked the company as one of its “21 Enterprise Startups To Bet Your Career On In 2014.”

At the same time, enterprise content collaboration platform Huddle made the shortlist for “Best International Startup” in this year’s 7^th Annual Crunchies Awards (Be sure to add your vote!), and JiWire, the location-powered mobile advertising and data platform, was featured in the New York Times and Streetfight Magazine.

BOCA also began work with some amazing new clients that are sure to make headlines in the coming months. Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider GoGrid is ready to take on industry giants like Amazon Web Services by offering a new type of service for companies that want the best performing platforms for Big Data. Another new BOCA client, the sales communications platform ToutApp, is raring to redefine email for sales professionals with tracking, analytics and templates features.

It’s been a banner year so far for BOCA Communications and our clients, and we expect the momentum will only continue to grow. We hope that your New Year has gotten off to a great start too. Buckle in; it’s going to be an amazing ride!

Winter Clothing Drive for the Homeless

The cold weather in the Bay Area is more than just a matter of unpleasantness for many people: for the homeless, this drop in temperatures can be a life-threatening issue. We were extremely saddened to find out that in the past two weeks at least four people have died due to cold exposure in the area – this is something that we just cannot accept.

To help make a difference, BOCA Communications has started a collection drive for winter coats and blankets for the homeless. We’re encouraging donations of spare coats, blankets, socks, and any other winter clothing from our team members, our clients, and anyone else we can get the news to. If you have any extra winter clothes around the house that you can supply, we’ll be collecting them at the BOCA office in San Francisco for the next two weeks.

After we’ve finished with our collection drive, we’ll be sending BOCA team members to hand out these items at homeless shelters and soup kitchens around San Francisco on December 19, before our annual holiday party. We hope you’ll join us over the next two weeks to help make sure that everyone has a safe and warm holiday season this year.

The Season of Humility

Reading the Bateman Group’s recent Fall 2013 newsletter, we were struck by the wonderful opening message about the importance of humility, and what it means to recognize the ways that others have helped contribute to your success. We also couldn’t help but notice how well it went with our blog post yesterday about celebrating professional as well as personal relationships during the holidays.

Maybe it’s the spirit of the season, or the artic cold that’s visiting San Francisco, but there’s definitely something in the air that makes us want to recognize how much we value the warmth and goodness of others. With that in mind, we’d like to reiterate how wonderful it is to work alongside our peers in the industry: superb firms like Bateman Group, Highwire PR, Kulesa Faul, LaunchSquad … the list goes on.

We’re thankful for your partnerships, the lessons you’ve taught us, and your achievements that continue to inspire us. We hope that we’ve been able to offer something valuable too – or at least to keep our Karma balance positive. So, to quote Fred Bateman on humility, let us “never, ever forget where we came from or the people who helped us along the way.” Thank you all for your generosity and goodwill; we’ll be thinking of you this holiday season.

A Holiday Toast to Our Clients and Partners

With the holiday season in full swing, we’re reminded to take time to reconnect with friends and family from near and far. At BOCA Communications, we think of our clients and partners in the industry as friends and family, and we cherish every opportunity to celebrate with them during this festive time.

That’s why we’re so excited to meet up with our friends at the Silicon Valley public relations firm Kulesa Faul for their annual holiday party this evening. Kulesa Faul has been doing excellent work in the field of tech PR (they were named one of the Top Tech Communicators by PRSourceCode), and we value the chance to exchange best practices along with holiday cheers at their event.

We believe that so much of our value at BOCA comes from the relationships we’ve made, and during this season of celebration, we want to take special time out to toast our professional relationships as well as our familial ones. Our bonds with our clients, both past and present, with our partners, and even with our competitors, are all part of what allows us to thrive in the thrilling world of tech PR.

So, as we take time out to be with the people that we value most in our lives, let’s not forget the partners and clients who are responsible for so much of our personal and professional success. We’re especially thankful this holiday season to be part of such a wonderful family.