Background
Talend is a French-founded company headquartered in the US that provides a complete, scalable data management and integration system that drives business outcomes via flexible, quality, trusted data support for the entire data lifecycle.
Challenge
Despite being well-known in Europe and the US, Talend wanted to elevate is position as a data expert to UK businesses. The importance of data “health” was also a foreign concept to UK companies as they focused instead on security against cyber threats and ensuring employees were not mishandling or sharing company data rather than considering the value of the data held within their company or using data-driven insights to make better business decisions.
Integrating third party data platforms was also disjointed with each third party monitoring and managing their own implementation, but Talend’s solution could combine and co-ordinate all of them into one easier to use system, pulling data across to provide a comprehensive data network that users could ensure was the right data at the right time, so quality data that could be trusted, not older data yet to be updated.
Solution
Vitis PR was selected to work with Talend in raising brand awareness with UK media and, as a result, becoming a trusted name for UK companies seeking the best data integration and management partner for their businesses.
The Vitis PR team worked on a range of different PR activities for Talend including distribution of regular press releases and product announcements, such as the Fall 21 and Winter 22 solution updates, new appointments and case studies where Talend was the data partner for international clients like Cloudera, SGN and Mental Health Concern – the latter of which Vitis PR secured coverage with the likes of Information Age, and also two bylines for Charities Management and Think Digital Partners. The fact that the case study was around a charity was such a good non-traditional testimonial angle that Vitis PR also pitched it to IT Pro and secured an interview with the features editor and also secured a mention of that case study in an article in Computer Weekly, where the journalist was covering Talend’s partnership with Snowflake offering improved data security, quality and trust.
Vitis PR also managed media relations for Talend’s Data Health Barometer surveys. This global survey of 900 independent data experts and leaders showed the challenges in using data effectively to drive business impact. The team achieved vast media coverage of the survey results with media including Digitalisation World, Blocks & Files, Enterprise Times, Intelligent CISO, Beta News and relevant verticals such as Energy, Oil & Gas
One of the most successful PR activities though was GDPR. The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) had alerted every company worldwide to take stock of their own data usage and privacy policies. To avoid massive potential GDPR fines, companies were advised to carefully consider and prioritise their policies and practices around data handling, data storage, data usage, and data protection, privacy and compliance.
But since GDPR had been in place for just over a year by the time Vitis PR was selected by Talend to help the company raise awareness of its brand as a data expert in the UK, the Vitis PR team tied GDPR to the UK leaving the European Union (Brexit) and what that event would mean for UK companies that had thought they were in line with GDPR.
To promote Talend to UK companies, Vitis PR set about promoting the ease and guarantee of data compliance that Talend’s data solution offered during the Brexit transition, with specific reference to GDPR requirements but expanding them to offer insights into the longer-lasting effects of both. The team did this via a range of PR activities including comments form C-level executives on data governance, data privacy and generative AI, data productisation and the EU implementing AI regulations.
Vitis PR also used key messaging that shared how stress-free and easy the solution was in order to put C-suite executives’ minds at ease about any additional worry in addition to the concerns they already had around GDPR and post-Brexit.
Results
By using each element of GDPR – data protection, data privacy, data compliance, etc – tied to Brexit Vitis PR was able to secure media coverage over an extended period (right up until February 2023). The team pitched bylines and interviews to enterprise media, data media and verticals to position Talend as an authority on each data consideration.
Our first angle, how CSOs and security teams could manage and overcome data protection uncertainty challenges post-Brexit, secured coverage with IT Pro, Beta News and The Tech Capital.
Our second angle around assessing and minimising data risks achieved placement in data-specific media including Datanami and Data Centre & Network News.
The Vitis PR team also secured interviews around reducing data risks with Talend’s then-CISO Anne Hardy with EM360 , the Small Data Forum and TechTalks.
Once we had coverage of our initial angles, the Vitis PR team delved into the additional considerations such as how financial IT and other departmental software might strengthen data security, what to do if your business is drowning in data and how to avoid data privacy nightmares due to disjointed data privacy regulations. We secured several bylines from those including the Global Association of Risk Professionals and EM360 plus another TechTalks podcast interview, but this time with Talend’s new CISO, Nick Vigier.
That podcast gave us so many excellent forward-thinking insights from Nick that we created a predictions forecast piece and secured multiple media hits off the back of that in Winter 2022.
Client quote
“I want to express my deep gratitude to Vitis PR for the excellent work the team has done throughout our collaboration and to thank them warmly for their dedication and professionalism. Vitis PR expertise and commitment have been a real asset to Talend, and the team has been able to understand our needs, convey our messages and establish fruitful relationships with our target publications. Thanks to Vitis PR efforts, our visibility and reputation have increased in the UK.”
Head of Communications EMEA & APAC, Talend