About the Client

Nord Security is one of the world's most recognized cybersecurity companies, known for its flagship consumer product that protects users from hackers, trackers, ads, and malware. We worked with one of their core products, which was at a critical inflection point: the Covid-19 pandemic had shifted millions of employees onto personal routers and shared connections overnight, and NordVPN needed to capture the enterprise remote-work security market before a competitor did.

Challenge

NordVPN was a consumer-facing cybersecurity brand but wanted to establish itself as the leading enterprise solution for remote-first businesses as the COVID-19 pandemic created an entirely new market.

Solution

We executed the campaign in three focused stages: the story, international distribution, and regional distribution.

Stage 1. The story

When Covid hit, millions of employees went home and took sensitive corporate data with them onto personal routers and shared connections, with zero oversight and no plan. The remote work security gap was massive and no one had stepped in to own it yet.

The gap we saw: Media was covering remote work productivity. Nobody was talking about the security risk sitting underneath it and that was the opening.

The position we built: We built NordVPN's narrative around the crisis itself, leading with the risk every company was now exposed to, and positioning NordVPN as the only solution built for it.

Stage 2. International distribution

We identified the top outlets and mapped out their editorial priorities before reaching out: Forbes → the corporate risk every business was now exposed to Bloomberg → the data behind what was actually happening in the workforce The Guardian → what this shift meant for millions of workers overnight We built the pitch around NordVPN's own internal data showing remote employees were working an average of 2-3 extra hours per day during the pandemic, a stat specific and verifiable enough that Bloomberg, Reuters, and 200+ outlets picked it up as a standalone story rather than a product mention. We ran the entire campaign in 7 days by leading all journalist communications in-house across every market and outlet simultaneously, making sure every editor heard the same story so the narrative never got diluted across regions.

Stage 3. Regional distribution

Mid-campaign, USA and UK were generating the highest engagement so we doubled down there, giving the story enough credibility to spread organically across 15+ markets without additional spend. We identified Ukraine as an underserved high-VPN-demand market and activated local PR contacts specifically, it became the third highest performing market in the entire campaign with 46 placements. Once Bloomberg and Forbes ran the story, we led every regional pitch with that validation. Editors across 12+ markets approved faster because the story had already been vetted by the biggest names in the industry.

Results

• 103M+ total audience reach in 7 days with zero paid advertising

• 217+ global publications, exceeding the 150-placement target

• 78 top-tier media placements including Forbes, Bloomberg, The Guardian, CNBC, Yahoo! Finance, and ZDNet

• 252,000+ estimated direct article views