Early Tuesday morning we picked up on the story that hackers had posted a supposed subset of 7,000,000 Dropbox login details to Pastebin. Dropbox had hit back at the claim, denying they had been hacked and stating the usernames and passwords were stolen from other services. However, we knew the story would still make the headlines so we still saw it as a great story for our clients to comment on. We immediately sent the story on to our clients with a request for comment, and even though Proofpoint’s spokesperson was unfortunately unwell and off sick, he was still able to provide comment, which was ready to be issued by midday.
What happened next was nothing short of remarkable! The first piece of coverage appeared in the Daily Mail, one of the UK’s biggest newspapers reaching over 100 million readers a day. This was shortly followed by coverage in SC Magazine, and from there it just snowballed. Proofpoint’s comment was picked up by Press Association and subsequently distributed through their newswire, gaining an impressive 200 pieces of coverage in total! All in just 4 hours!
This shows that if you spot a good story and jump on it quickly enough, you can generate outstanding results for your clients.
