A Top Ranked Tech Digital Marketing and PR Agency
Karbo Com combines the new digital marketing model, with its emphasis on data, analytics and the bottom line, with the PR methods honed while working with thousands of tech pioneers. At Karbo Com, we live and breathe tech; not because it’s our job, but because we’re convinced technology is transforming our world in positive ways.
The buzz generated by millions of companies makes it hard for even the most innovative companies to break through. As a top-ranked, full-service digital PR and marketing agency, Karbo Com develops messaging that cuts through the promotional din. Using our own proprietary branding system we articulate clear differentiation and market leadership. Creative and strategic programs deliver awareness, leadership and the ability to attract customers, partners and employees.
Karbo Com has extensive experience in the IoT/IIoT, SaaS/cloud, security, communications, commerce, HPC, community-based tech and mobile markets. We know target market personas and can help drive new relationships. We offer a full range of services, including positioning, company and product PR, social programs, paid and earned content development, customer and partner relations, event management, growth hacking and analytics. With Karbo Com you get senior people working with you day in and day out. Our experienced team does “the work," bringing industry knowledge, strategic thinking, experience, creativity and the best of the tech industry's entrepreneurial spirit to create and amplify market leadership for a range of clients, from start-ups to leading global organizations.
Karbo Com’s culture emphasizes responsibility—to each other, to the success of our clients and to the larger community. Everyone’s contributions are valued—from interns to our founder. This leads to the highest quality work and an environment where creativity, persistence, strategic thinking, knowledge, mentoring, respect and dedication to the team are paramount.

headquarters
other locations
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1304 Jefferson AvenueRedwood City, CA 94062United States
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1304 Jefferson AvenueRedwood City, CA 94062United States
Focus
Recommended Providers
Portfolio
Incognia, Harmony Helper, Subtext, Alpha Group, RTI, Penguin Computing, Logitech, Hootsuite, WGAMES, etc.

TDK
Karbo Communications quickly hit the ground running, strategizing with TUC on an in-depth messaging exercise with the aim of establishing TDK as the go-to company for electronics such as capacitors and inductors, as well as sensors and energy units.
To take advantage of TDK’s presence at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Karbo Communications reached out to its key press contacts to line up interviews featuring demonstrations of products previously shown only to customers at TDK’s invitation-only booth. Through face-to-face meetings with influential journalists, TDK spokespeople shared their knowledge with reporters looking to better understand the key trends and technologies driving the trends on display at CES. By also providing on-site support at the conference, Karbo Communications prioritized chronicling the events to grow TDK’s social media channels and engagement with key influencers as well.
In the first four months of collaborating, Karbo Communications increased TDK’s media visibility in North America by both opportunistically inserting the company in timely conversations, and by garnering the interest of business and trade press reporters – including those attending CES 2017. The agency also took over managing @tdkamerica’s social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter by following relevant reporters and influencers and sharing appropriate industry articles in a timely manner.
As a direct result of Karbo’s aggressive media outreach, TDK garnered coverage from meetings at CES for total reach/impressions of 16,882,995, increased social media reach significantly and expanded social media engagement by 710%. Additionally, the meetings netted unsolicited requests for TDK-authored bylines on important technical topics of interest to engineers who design electronic circuits and devices for information and communications devices, automotive electronics, and industrial/energy markets.

Real-Time Innovations
Following a successful messaging revamp, Karbo Com and RTI developed a launch plan for their new security product, Connext DDS Secure. Being the first security product for the IIoT, the agency pursued an aggressive outreach strategy.
In October 2018, RTI broke into the autonomous drive market by announcing their first Connext product offering designed specifically for the development of autonomous vehicles: Connext 6. In order to drive awareness in a priority market, Karbo Com pursued aggressive outreach to key media and industry analysts. Karbo Com also established a thought leadership campaign for the head of RTI’s autonomous systems division, Bob Leigh. Over the course of the next two years, Karbo Com continued momentum by driving opportunistic media campaigns and leveraging RTI execs as spokespeople for topical issues and trends in the autonomous vehicle industry. In late 2019, Karbo Com worked with RTI to showcase the company’s newest automotive offering, Connext Drive, at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where Karbo Com reached out to key press contacts and influencers to secure interviews, while allowing press to experience the Connext Drive product demo in an autonomous vehicle simulation booth on the show floor. Both leading up to and after the CES, Karbo Com worked with RTI to execute media campaigns, highlighting autonomous vehicle customer successes such as Aptiv, Xpeng Motors and Baidu, in order to further validate RTI’s technology and its pivotal role in the development of next-generation driverless vehicles.
As RTI’s market has grown and advanced, Karbo Com worked with RTI to refine their current messaging to resonate with their evolving customer base. As the multi-year partnership has progressed, Karbo Com has continued to drive impactful and integrated PR and content programs across all of RTI’s five key verticals including healthcare, energy, transportation, automotive and aerospace and defense.

TIBCO
Karbo Com developed and executed an aggressive plan for TIBCO customers, product experts, and its thought leadership team that discussed the current and upcoming challenges for today’s business landscape. The team focused on TIBCO’s unique combination of deep understanding of the current market with the advantage of a long history of helping customers succeed. Karbo Com’s plan allowed media the opportunity to dive deep on TIBCO’s current product suite — a much-needed educational refresh. Karbo Com also developed a thought leadership platform for TIBCO’s C-suite, including having the CEO and CMO connect directly with media to discuss the current state of the company and share future plans and vision, elevating TIBCO’s brand awareness and credibility.

Hootsuite
Karbo Communications hit the ground running, offering strategic counsel and teaming up with Hootsuite on various media campaigns and product launches. Simultaneously, the agency began pursuing a thought leadership program for Hootsuite executives to discuss the role of social media in societal and business communication. Karbo Com also began securing contributed articles and introductory interviews with top journalists, amplifying U.S. market awareness.
The agency worked with Hootsuite to leverage the company’s data platform to drive thought and market leadership, leading a number of proactive media campaigns tied to timely industry news and events. As the COVID-19 crisis hit around the world, the agency saw an immediate change in tone and conversation on social media. Karbo Com identified trending COVID-19 topics and hashtags on social, working with Hootsuite to pull relevant data from their platform. Karbo Com worked to analyze the findings and identify compelling trends within the data around sentiment and top hashtags related to COVID-19. The agency conducted aggressive media outreach, garnering two back-to-back pieces of coverage in Forbes while establishing Hootsuite as the go-to resource for timely social media data.
Karbo Com also drove various media campaigns for Hootsuite, most recently for Digital 2020, Hootsuite and We Are Social’s annual report on social media and digital trends. Karbo Com worked side-by-side with the Hootsuite team and chief analyst Simon Kemp to identify key market trends, recommend topics for data collection, analyze the data findings and recommend a media outreach strategy. Karbo Com executed on media outreach, securing joint media interviews with Simon Kemp and Hootsuite’s VP of corporate marketing, Henk Campher, and securing coverage in Forbes and ZDNet.
In July 2020, Karbo Com worked with Hootsuite to announce their newly appointed CEO, Tom Keiser. As a result, Karbo Com secured an exclusive feature story in Fortune Magazine.

Defense.Net
The agency began the relationship with a strategic positioning process that helped articulate the company’s core differentiation from the existing players in the market. The positioning focused on how the team of DDoS experts was assembled, as well as how new technologies developed by Defense.Net were best positioned to mitigate the new generation of sophisticated DDoS attacks that were regularly disrupting the operations of the largest banks and enterprises.
The agency also developed a launch plan that focused on positioning the company in the context of the top trends and issues in the DDoS market. The goal was to secure widespread coverage in enterprise-focused media and gain the support of the top market analysts. The team embarked on a two-tiered strategy beginning with the launch of the company, followed by the introduction of the company’s first product a month later. Ongoing coverage was secured by inserting Defense.Net into conversations around regular attacks, and via contributed articles, social media, industry awards and top tier security conferences.
The Karbo team began aggressively pitching the enterprise, technology, financial and security trade press, scheduling interviews with top journalists and bloggers. Coverage in top tier press was extensive and Defense.Net met with the top analysts in enterprise security. The team also secured a position as a Top Ten Finalist at RSA in the Innovation Sandbox. This exposure created awareness, generated leads and most importantly, gave Defense.Net the credibility and stature needed to sell their services to banks and large enterprises that are typically skeptical of unproven technology startups.
Reviews
the project
Marketing & PR for IoT Company
"They deliver value, creativity, and results."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
RTI is the leading Industrial IoT company. We help organizations develop and integrate their systems with market-leading technology, superior service support, and proven success, RTI’s software is used in platforms and projects to accelerate development, and reduce risk and costs. Deployed systems include medical devices and imaging; wind, hydro and solar power; autonomous planes, trains, and cars; traffic control; Oil and Gas; robotics, ships, and defense.
For what projects/services did your company hire Karbo Communications?
Four years ago, RTI hired Karbo Communications to develop strong positioning that communicated value, reduced message complexity, increased media, and analyst visibility and positioned RTI as a market leader. Today, we retain them to drive awareness and education in our key markets through media and analyst relations, thought leadership programs, product launches, awards, and news.
What were your goals for this project?
We wanted to build awareness of RTI as a technology leader while educating target audiences on the importance of this technology in key vertical markets.
How did you select this vendor?
Karbo Communications was recommended by our previous PR agency.
Describe the scope of their work in detail.
We conducted an in-depth messaging exercise to establish the importance of our product line and our role as the Industrial IoT leader. Karbo Communications reached out to key analysts and press members with strong product messaging and industry-leading customer stories.
We also developed a launch plan for our new security product. Since this was the first Industrial IoT security product, they built an aggressive outreach strategy. As our partnership progressed, they drove PR efforts by supporting additional product launches, leveraging customers, identifying important partnerships, pursuing press opportunities, and positioning RTI executives as market leaders.
What was the team composition?
The team includes their CEO, an account director, a team lead, an account executive who functions as media lead, and an account coordinator.
Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
Within the first few months, Karbo Communications secured briefings with the top market analysts and effectively communicated our important role in enabling the Industrial IoT.
While working on our product launch, they successfully positioned us as the first company to create a specialized security product for the Industrial IoT. They scored coverage in top vertical and engineering press outlets.
A month later, an independent study named RTI as the most influential Industrial IoT Company, above Google, Cisco, Apple, and GE. This survey validated our strong market positioning and aggressive PR and marketing efforts. The Karbo Communications team also secured a feature article and CEO profile in the Mercury News. It received a full, multi-spread feature placement both online and in print.
Throughout our four-year relationship, Karbo Communications has consistently delivered impactful media results, including coverage in Ars Technica, CIO, ComputerWorld, Digital Engineering, EE Times, Forbes, Network World, TechRepublic, TechTarget, VentureBeat, and ZDNet.
How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?
We have consistent, positive working experience. They deliver value, creativity, and results. They keep our success in mind.
What did you find most impressive about this company?
The Karbo Communications team consistently delivers results and proactively drives our PR strategy.
Are there any areas for improvement?
As RTI continues to grow, we are looking forward to more top-tier press coverage.
By designing effective marketing strategies and landing features in prestigious publications, Karbo Communications has solidified the company's reputation as an industry leader. The team delivers on time, suggests innovative ideas, and collaborates seamlessly with internal stakeholders.