This interview comes on the heels of a huge PR milestone for Synaptics: A feature on CNBC’s premier stock talk show, Mad Money hosted by Jim Cramer. With that, I wanted to sit down with Mike Sottak, who heads up the Synaptics account for Wired Island, o

Client Spotlight: Botify

What Google Doesn’t Know About Your Website is Bad News for You: Botify Helps Improve Organic Search

If you’ve done a web search today – and who hasn’t – whether it’s to plan a trip or buy a new pair of shoes, you’ll appreciate what our client Botify does – it makes more of the web discoverable by search engines.  

We recently partnered with this French/NY-based start-up to announce its Series C funding round and have been so impressed to learn what Botify is doing in this space.  

Botify is addressing a little-known reality that up to 50% the web pages on a typical large company site are not indexed by Google. Imagine half of large websites are not being seen when someone does a relevant search. This represents significant lost opportunities for retailers, brands, travel providers, media companies – just about anyone that depends on their web site for revenue. No wonder why companies spent $47.5 billion on SEO related products and services in 2020.   

With more and more businesses shifting to a digital first strategy and websites growing in both volume and complexity, organic search has become a critical priority for all kinds of companies. Google estimates 80,000 searches are done per second and 15% of those searches are totally new queries!  Organic search drives 53% of web traffic today, eclipsing paid search which generates 30%.  

Botify provides a comprehensive suite of machine learning-enabled analytics and automation tools to make web sites more visible and drive more sales. Its enterprise SEO platform is used by more than 500 leading global companies across industries including e-commerce, travel, media & publishing, classifieds, and more, such as Expedia, Macy’s, Farfetch, Marriott, L’Oreal, Crate & Barrel, Conde Nast, Groupon, Github, Carvana, and The New York Times. And, it works closely with the major search engines and other internet infrastructure companies to ensure compliance with guidelines and best practices. 

Botify’s Series C funding was widely covered in feature-length articles, news pieces and syndicated stories in key news and trade press outlets including: Les Echos, Le Figaro, Fortune’s Term Sheet,  INSIDER, Venture Beat, TechCrunch, Tech Crunch Japan, Yahoo Finance and BuiltinNYC. 

Positive press coverage of the funding helped increase visibility and momentum for Botify and established a solid foundation for building credibility with key audiences.  In fact, in addition to the funding news we were also able to secure additional media placements including this feature on Botify from E Commerce Times; a Q&A with Botify’s CEO in MarTechSeries and a thought leadership article in TechRadarPro. 

Needless to say, Wired Island is thrilled to work with Botify to help it gain more awareness for the big impact it is having on how companies improve organic search results. 

If you would like to read more articles on Botify, click here.

Wired Island has been working with Back Market since it launched its marketplace for renewed electronics in the U.S. in 2018. This Paris-based start-up was a rising star and gained wide acclaim selling professionally refurbished devices and appliances to French and European consumers who appreciated the cost savings and waste-reduction aspects of the offer. Coming to America, Back Market learned quickly that while U.S. consumers don’t have quite the same sensibilities and appreciation for reused electronics, they do appreciate a good bargain and purpose-driven brands.   

We partnered with Back Market to help it position itself in the US market.  Not only does this include  expanding its business operations but it also means educating consumers about the bigger picture: a world where buying renewed devices are a first choice.    

Q: What’s does it mean that Back Market is creating a movement – how is it doing that and how do you support that in the PR program?   

The business model of Back Market is intrinsically tied to its vision and mission. In fact, they were developed at the same time. The story goes that Thibaud Hug de Larauze – one of the three founders – was touring a refurbishing plant and surprised by  the level of quality and precision that went into the process and care of refurbishing iPhones. He immediately recognized the opportunity to create a marketplace for these items to be sold that gave these items the respect and visibility they deserved. He also understood the environmental benefits and thus Back Market was born.  This is why we say Back Market is a purpose-driven company. Its purpose is part of its business imperative – to be successful in moving the industry towards a circular economy it needs to create demand and desire for refurbished electronics.  When we talk about building a movement it is with this in mind – Back Market knows it must appeal to consumers on a variety of levels to get the kind of market shift they want to see happen. 

PR plays an important role for companies like this – the more awareness and visibility Back Market has as a company as a marketplace and a sales channel – the more it can educate consumers on the benefits of refurbished electronics.  

Q: What’s the background on Wired Island’s relationship with Back Market. How long have they been a client? How has that relationship changed over the years? 

We were one of the first businesses to welcome Back Market to the US.  We started working together in 2018. Our goal was to help the company gain awareness and evangelize the benefits of refurbishes.  Unlike the Europeans in Back Market’s other markets, American consumers were not as far along in their attitudes and concerns about e-waste and the environmental impact of our use of electronics. Through careful and proactive messaging we set out to make every communication with a journalist or influential an education opportunity.  We referenced facts and figures and tried to put some of the environmental impact stats into context.  We quickly helped them gain visibility and credibility though earned media coverage.  They went from having virtually no awareness in the US to being listed along side Amazon and Ebay on some listings.  Also the attitude towards buying refurbished electronics also started to shift from being seen as a cheap option to a good compromise compared to buying something new. PR results over the past three years have helped establish Back Market as the leading marketplace for refurbished electronics. We are proud of the feature coverage in mainstream publications, allowing consumers to get a full view of what the company is all about and their mission to make buying refurbished safe and fun.  We worked hard to use earned media to showcase the expertise behind the marketplace so consumers can understand the quality of the renewed devices and the extreme efforts Back Market takes to ensure customer satisfaction.   

As part of the success of our work, we continue to see Back Market included in conversations and coverage evaluating consumer options from some big established names like Amazon Renewed, EBay and Best Buy. This not only shows they are a major player in the space, but they often come out on top when quality assurances are factored in.  Wired Island has helped the brand achieve this elevation by introducing them to key journalists and industry analysts. Our team continues to be involved in helping Back Market refine its message for customer segments through additional content such as contributed articles, social media, awards and more. 

Q: Given Back Market has such a wide audience – anyone can buy from the platform – how do you help them effectively communicate?  

It’s true, Back Market’s target audience is massive and includes both businesses and consumers as it needs to reach companies that may want to resell on the platform and consumers looking for renewed devices. This has required a dual B2B and a B2C communication strategy with different messages for each audience.  For efficiency, we have focused our efforts on publications and outlets that cover the popular products on the platform and weave a singular story about the value Back Market brings to these audiences. We concentrate on targeting areas where the benefits of Back Market matter most – such as smartphones, laptops, gaming and personal electronics.  

Q: Back Market talks a lot about the importance of a circular economy and “fair” tech yet it fundamentally sells electronics.  Do you think the company’s messaging around this is helpful and supportive of them as a marketplace? 

Back Market’s vision is integrated in its business… Back Market wants to change the way people frame renewed electronics.  Back Market’s fundamental goal is not just to meet a sales target and to grow at all costs, they want to establish buying new as the first choice for consumers. Buying used as the first choice is as important to Back Market as sales numbers are.  

Q: The Wired Island team has been involved in several funding announcements for Back Market – can you tell more about these rounds and they have helped position Back Market in the industry? 

Back Market raised $120 million during the pandemic and then another $335 million a year later. This is a big deal and really speaks to the maturity and unique value proposition of Back Market and the huge potential of the refurbished electronics industry. Due to the size of this deal, collaboration among investors, as well as Back Market’s international communication team were extremely important and well-coordinated in terms of messaging, timing of the announcement, press outreach, interview prep, and more.  We took a leadership role in outreach to English speaking journalists. This resulted in positive coverage from mainstream media in Europe and the U.S. such as Reuters , MSN, INSIDER, Le Figaro, Venture Beat, TechCrunch, Fortune, Les Echos, Forbes, trade and regional pubs such as BuiltInNYC and Sifted, and broadcast coverage on Cheddar. 

In total there were 40 articles about the funding announcement, which got in front of 18.3 million (UVM) with the media equivalent of $475 million. 

Enabling the journey of this neuromorphic sensing pioneer from start-up to industry leader 

Interview with Mike Sottak and Rebecca Renner of Wired Island on Prophesee

Q: Tell me more about Wired Island’s relationship with Prophesee. How long have they been a client and how has that relationship changed over the years? 

Prophesee has been a great client, one that we have kind of grown up with.  Our relationship began back in 2014 when they were just getting started. In fact, we actually wrote their first press release! We were introduced to their founder Luca Verre through a “French connection” and there was good chemistry right from the get-go. Since then, we have worked side by side with Prophesee as the company has grown and evolved. Looking back over the past seven years, it’s impressive and rewarding to see how Prophesee has become a force in the machine vision industry. We are proud that we helped evangelize their innovative approach to vision sensing– event-based vision – and how they are truly recognized as the pioneer in this space. Our collaborative efforts have had some nice results, from Luca participating in the World Economic Forum to getting into Forbes to supporting their product rollouts and funding rounds – it is all starting to pay off for them. We have a great internal contact we work with which makes a big difference, too. He is always willing to listen to new ideas.  It’s exciting to partner with a company like Prophesee as they gain traction and establish themselves as a leader in their space. 

Q: Given Prophesee has such a unique audience, how have you modeled your efforts to bring more value to them as compared to an internal PR team? 

We operate as an extension of their internal communications and marketing team yet we bring outside perspective and connections. Wired Island has a history of relationships with the high-tech outlets that are relevant to Prophesee. Our global network of influencers, as well as industry experience, enable us to bring value to the team.  We can work with Propshee to create messaging that resonates. Our team is able to be flexible as their company’s needs ebb and flow throughout the year. I think that is a big plus for an organization like Prophesee versus a dedicated internal person. They have a seasoned team available to them on demand and we bring value to the table that they appreciate exactly when they need it. 

Q: Seems like the big recent news has been their partnership with Sony. How has that helped him?

From a PR perspective, Sony is obviously a great name to be associated with, especially since they are the market leader in CMOS image sensors. They chose to partner with Prophesee and leverage Prophesee’s unique event-based vision technology – that’s a very rare type of thing for Sony to do, to work with an external technology provider –  and underscores the innovation Prophesee brings. So we are able to get good PR mileage out of the relationship, both when the joint technology collaboration was announced at an industry conference in 2020 and when the actual Sony products were announced about a year later. We’re really happy with the coverage in technical trades especially, like IEEE Spectrum. These are reaching Prophesee’s core audience of engineers but have influence all the way up teh management chain of their customers.

Q: And awards seem to be a part of the program?

Yes, with a company like Prophesee that has such disruptive and pioneering technology, recognition through awards are a great way to amplify what they are doing. We’ve helped them with some really nice ones, like the VISION Award at a major industry event, and recognition from key publications like SME and Robotics Report.

Q: Around this time last year the Wired Island Team helped Prophesee announce a breakout product, Metavision Intelligence Suite How did you ensure the right audience was exposed to this announcement and that the messaging aligned with the company’s vision? 

This was an interesting announcement because it was their first software product and really established them as being able to provide a complete solution based on their technology innovation. It was more than just a new product –it is an attempt to build an entire ecosystem around their technology platform.  And, it was important for them to appeal to a much broader set of customers in different markets than we had traditionally focused on. We started by expanding our normal set of target publications to those covering the software space (vs hardware). Some of the key applications also allowed us to expand their messaging to new verticals and trade magazines. We also helped the team expand their messaging beyond just putting out a news release by ensuring it was reflected on their website, social media, email newsletter and more. A few years ago, Prophesee was perceived as being in a single market – automotive. Now they are viewed as a much broader solution provider across many different industries and application areas. 

Q: I also noticed you have worked with Prophesee through an impressive amount of growth in the form of funding. For a growing company like Prophesee, could you detail how those announcements are handled? 

For any start up, industry validation in the form of investors is important. Prophesee has had a very deliberate strategy to work with strategic investors and not necessarily just take money from anyone who approaches them. We helped create the right messages around each funding round, including the most recent one, which wasn’t huge in terms of dollars by current standards but was super strategic in that it opened up a whole new market for them in China, and also got them the endorsement of a highly respected expert in AI. Funding announcements are fun to work on but also can be challenging especially in today’s environment when multi hundred-million-dollar rounds are becoming common. Sometimes it’s not the amount you raise that’s important, but who you are working with. 

Q: What other ways do you support Prophesee? 

We like to think our experience is an important asset for them to draw on and we offer them advice and counsel beyond just PR tactics. The way our relationship works – they can ask for our input on a wide array of topics and it all strengthens the communications program.  In addition to PR, we help with content development – from news releases to thought leadership articles to their web site copy. Awards, events and speaking opportunities are also a part of the mix. We continue to work closely with the Prophesee team on social media content and best practices too. The past year has seen steady growth for their Twitter and LinkedIn accounts both in terms of quantity and quality engagements. Twitter has seen a steady growth in followers with a 65% increase in engagement year over year while their LinkedIn community gained over 1,000 new followers and a 40% increase in engagement. This can be attributed to the busy year they have had and as a result of the increase in post pace and engagement opportunities. The executive team has continued to be active as well, which adds a personal touch and helps to nurture the online community, especially on LinkedIn. 

While the full value of the relationship with Prophesee goes beyond press coverage, you can see more of the results we have had by visiting our results page. 

If you’ve done a web search today – and who hasn’t – whether it’s to plan a trip or buy a new pair of shoes, you’ll appreciate what our client Botify does – it makes more of the web discoverable by search engines. We recently partnered with this French/NY-based start-up to announce its Series C funding round.  

Botify is addressing a little-known reality that up to 50% of the web pages on a typical large company site are not indexed by Google. Imagine half of large websites are not being seen when someone does a relevant search. This represents significant lost opportunities for retailers, brands, travel providers, media companies – just about anyone that depends on their web site for revenue. No wonder why companies spent $47.5 billion on SEO related products and services in 2020.   

With more and more business shifting to a digital first strategy and websites growing in both volume and complexity, organic search has become a critical priority for all kinds of companies. Google estimates 80,000 searches are done per second and 15% of those searches are totally new queries!  Organic search drives 53% of web traffic today, eclipsing paid search which generates 30%.  

Botify provides a comprehensive suite of machine learning-enabled analytics and automation tools to make web sites more visible and drive more sales. Its enterprise SEO platform is used by more than 500 leading global companies across industries including e-commerce, travel, media & publishing, classifieds, and more, such as Expedia, Macy’s, Farfetch, Marriott, L’Oreal, Crate & Barrel, Conde Nast, Groupon, Github, Carvana, and The New York Times. And, it works closely with the major search engines and other internet infrastructure companies to ensure compliance with guidelines and best practices. 

Botify’s Series C funding was widely covered in feature-length articles, news pieces and syndicated stories in key news and trade press outlets including: Les Echos, Le Figaro, Fortune’s Term Sheet,  INSIDER, Venture Beat, TechCrunch, Tech Crunch Japan, Yahoo Finance and BuiltinNYC. 

Positive press coverage of the funding helped increase visibility and momentum for Botify and established a solid foundation for building credibility with key audiences.  In fact, in addition to the funding news we were also able to secure additional media placements including this feature on Botify from E Commerce Times; a Q&A with Botify’s CEO in MarTechSeries and a thought leadership article in TechRadarPro. 

Needless to say, Wired Island is thrilled to work with Botify to help it gain more awareness for the big impact it is having on how companies improve organic search results. 

We are happy to shine the spotlight on one of our most innovative clients, Prophesee. As a point of reflection over the past few years, we wanted to chat with Mike Sottak and Rebecca Renner, the leaders of the Prohesee account.

Q: Before we get into the more important content of this interview, I am interested to know more about your relationship with Prophesee. How long have they been a client of yours? How has that relationship changed over the years? 

A: Prophesee has been great client and we are really proud that we have kind of grown up with them. We started working with them back in 2014 when they were just getting started and we actually wrote their first press release. We had been introduced to their founder Luca Verre through a “French connection” and there has been good chemistry right from the get-go. Since then, we have worked side by side with Prophesee as they have grown and evolved their strategy. Looking back over the past 7 years it’s impressive and rewarding to see how they have expanded and become a force in the machine vision industry. We are proud that we helped evangelize their innovative approach to vision sensing– event-based vision – and they are truly recognized as the pioneer in this space. We have had some nice results from them, from Luca participating in the World Economic Forum and getting them in Forbes to supporting their product rollouts and funding rounds -  and it’s all starting to pay off for them. We have a great internal contact we work with which makes big difference, too, and they are always willing to listen to new ideas.  It’s exciting to be partner for a company like Prophesee as they gain traction and establish themselves as a leader in their space. 

Q: Given Prophesee has such a unique audience, how have you modeled your efforts to bring more value to them as compared to an internal PR team? 

A: We definitely see ourselves as an extension of their internal communications and marketing team. Wired Island has a history of relationships with the high-tech media outlets, influencers and ecosystems that are relevant to Prophesee. Our global network with these influencers as well as experience with what messaging resonates most with them and is what I think brings the most value to this account. Our team is able to be flexible as their company needs and announcements ebb and flow throughout the year. I think that is a big plus for an organization like Prophesee versus a dedicated internal person. They have a seasoned team available to them on demand and we bring value to the table that they appreciate. 

 

Q: Around this time last year the Wired Island Team helped Prophesee announce a breakout product, Metavision Intelligence Suite How did you ensure the right audience was exposed to this announcement? And, that the messaging aligned with the company’s vision? 

A: This was an interesting announcement because it was their first software product and really established them as being able to provide a complete solution based on their technology innovation. It was more than just a new product –it is an attempt to build an entire ecosystem around their technology platform.  And it was important for them to appeal to a much broader set of customers in different markets than we had traditionally focused on. We started by expanding our normal set of target publications to those covering the software space and not hardware. Some of the key applications also allowed us to expand their messaging to new verticals and trade magazines. We also helped the team refine their messaging beyond just a news release to their website, social media, email newsletter and more. A few years ago, Prophesee was perceived as being in a single market – automotive. Now they are viewed as a much broader solution provider across many different industries and application areas. 

 

Q: I also noticed you have worked with Prophesee through an impressive amount of growth in the form of funding. For a growing company like Prophesee, could you detail how those announcements are handled by a firm like WII? 

A: For any start up, industry validation in the form of investors is important. Prophesee has had a very deliberate strategy to work with strategic investors and not necessarily just take money from anyone who approaches them. We helped create the right messages around each funding round, including the most recent one, which wasn’t a huge one dollars-wise by current standards but was super strategic in that is opened up a whole new market for them in China, and also got them the endorsement of a highly respected expert in AI. Funding announcements are fun to work on but also can be challenging especially in today’s environment when multi hundred-million-dollar rounds are becoming common. Sometimes it’s not the amount you raise that’s important, but who you are working with. 

 

Q: What other roles do you play with Prophesee 

A: We like to think our experience is an important asset for them to draw on and we offer them advice and counsel beyond just PR tactics. From a communications standpoint, we are also a content developer for them, from thought leadership articles to their web site. Awards, events and speaking opportunities are also a part of the mix. We also continue to counsel the Prophesee team on social media content and best practices. The past year has seen steady growth for their Twitter and LinkedIn accounts both in terms of quantity and quality engagements. Twitter has seen a steady growth in followers with an over 65% increase in engagement year over year. While their LinkedIn community gained over 1,000 new followers and a 40% increase in engagement. This can be attributed to the busy year they have had and as a result the increase in post pace and engagement opportunities. The executive team has continued to be active as well, which tends to nurture your online community by adding a personal touch, especially on LinkedIn.