Earning the right to sell to CIO’s

The piece was sent to 150 select prospects — CIOs and CSOs of Fortune 500 companies in the US.

They each get a little box with a sleeve around it. “The Security Shuffle, an executive playlist”.

They slip off the sleeve, open the clamshell box… and there’s a sleek silver iPod Shuffle.

Pop in the earbuds…

A complete playlist on the state of security and the power of managed security services, including:

• Bruce Schneier, uber-guru, on the state of security
• The CSO of BT USA on being a CSO… (fantastic track)
• Anatomy of an Attack — a minute-by-minute dramatisation of a real incident
• Fontella Bass singing ‘Rescue Me’
• Plus a few more case studies, interviews and two other classic security-related songs…

The idea behind the piece: earn the right to sell to these super-senior, super-busy people by giving them interesting, relevant and entertaining content presented in a way that’s impossible to ignore.

This is really a thought leadership piece. Only one track has overtly promotional content.

So far, the feedback has been excellent. We’ll report back on the overall result, but if we even open a single door to a Counterpane salesperson, the entire campaign is paid for several times over. I promise we’ll do better than that.

Now we’re turning this initial hit into a podcast series.

It took brave clients to go for this one. Hats off to Jean Foster, Jean-Marie Hitchin, Jenna Sinclair and Julie Woods-Moss at BT.