Perry Nalevka, CEO of Penguin Strategies, specializes in launching technology companies internationally. In this episode of The Global Marketing Show podcast, he talks about the global launch of GuardKnox, a technology and engineering company specializing in electric/electronics (E/E) products and solutions for the automotive industry.
GuardKnox offers next-generation software to carmakers, enabling the development of secure, high-performance driving computers. The company has won multiple awards and gets high marks from major car manufacturers like Ford, Mercedes, and Audi.
From the outset, the company knew it had a total addressable market of only 1,000 to 2,000 people and about 10 companies, so their messaging had to be impactful and authentic. Through a few iterations and carefully selected forums of engineers, they tested their messaging to make sure it resonated with their target audience in specific countries, namely the US, UK, Germany, and France.
Throughout, Perry insisted that messaging and content had to be insightful and accurately translated. He said they “would never use AI, that it had to be done right or not at all.”
The biggest mistakes the company made initially were expecting results too quickly and not creating enough quality content of interest to its buyers. Now, the CEO or CTO develops content technical enough to capture their market’s attention. You can find a wealth of robust content on the company’s website – www.guardknox.com.
Links:
Website: www.penguinstrategies.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pnalevka/
Email: perry@penguinstrategies.com
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
ATTENTION: Below is a machine-generated transcription of the podcast. Yes, here at Rapport International we talk a lot about how machine translation lacks quality. Here you see an example of what a machine can do in your own language. This transcription is provided as a gist and to give time indicators to find a topic of interest.
Wendy: Welcome back to another episode of The Global Marketing Show my friends. I am very excited today we're gonna talk about some international marketing. We've got some good stories to bring out. But before we get into that, let's remember to thank our sponsor, Rapport International, and they have a tidbit for us today.
Many words are the same across languages, but they can have different [00:01:00] meanings. For example, in English, if I talk about an angel, it's a heavenly being or somebody watching out for me. But if I say angel in German, it's a fishing rod. So when you're doing global marketing and you're thinking about AI and you think it's gonna get away with accurate translation, just be really careful.
Even the experts that are saying, oh, we've got 95% accuracy. It can really change the meaning and make you look foolish. So if you ever wanna have a free conversation about that, a free consult on what you're doing and whether AI is appropriate, certainly reach out to us. We're happy to talk to you about it.
Well today our guest is Perry Nalevka and he works with, Technology marketers to help global B2B technology companies to scale their marketing and meet their goals through inbound marketing. He's got a lot of international experience, so it's gonna be very [00:02:00] exciting to listen to him today. His company is Penguin Strategy.
And he's got a good story about GuardKnox, which I'm really excited to hear. I guess I'm very excited today. So, Perry, welcome.
Perry: Thanks for having me.
Wendy: I'm excited.
Perry: Good. Me too. Let's have some fun. Yeah,
Wendy: you have a fun shirt on. It says, dream, believe and Achieve. For those of you listening, you can't see it, but it's very inspiring to me.
So what's it mean to
Perry: you? Actually this is a T-shirt I got from a vendor of ours, which, uh, we work with. And exactly like you said, it's very inspiring. I like wearing it at least once a week if I can. And it gets great comments and and I think it's a great way to live.
it's the same way I think that anybody who's brought a company . Into life. that's really how it is. You have to dream and believe otherwise there's no way you're gonna be able to achieve it. It's a, it's a, it's a hard uphill battle to, to build a company and get results.
So there you go. So what's, what are your
Wendy: dreams right now?
Perry: [00:03:00] I think I'm in a good place. I think that I have a good work-life balance, and that was always my dream to get to a place where I really enjoyed what I do, and find my passion.
Recently in the last few years, I've found a passion in, in bike riding, so I guess I, one of the dreams I have is to spend more time doing that.
Wendy: And you live in Israel, right? That is correct,
Perry: just north of Tel Aviv.
Wendy: I'm going way off on a tangent, but I'm an avid now. Let's do it like rider and lover and so this is the first time I've heard about somebody talking about Israel and bike riding.
I usually think of beach and oceans scuba diving yeah. So how's
Perry: the bike riding? Yeah, well, it's very interesting country from a terrain perspective because in a way it's similar to New Zealand in that, and sometimes of the year you can go. Skiing up north and go to the beach down south.
Uh, and in between, I think you've got the most, if you're a mountain biker and you like riding singles, you probably have, I dunno the most, but you have a lot of singles per capita. I've been on [00:04:00] 50 or 60 different routes just in the last, 24 months. And there's still more to discover it.
It's a tiny country, but barely. If you look at it in a globe, you can barely find it. Right. It's got a lot of different terrains, desert mountains. Good stuff.
Wendy: All right Israel's always been on top of my list to go to, but now it has really risen. I wanna go mountain biking in Israel.
Who? Who to guess. All right, so Penguin strategies. I have heard that companies in Israel think global from the start. Because the country is small like you talked about, and they have to think large if they're gonna grow a big business. So can you give an example of a company that came to you wanted to build their brand and how you helped them think that through?
Perry: Yeah. And you gave a great introduction one of the things that's great about here at Summit, people call it the Silicon Wadi. In that there's a lot of, a lot of tech per capita, similar to the mountain biking [00:05:00] and a lot of very technically minded people bringing great products to market.
One of the weaknesses is when you deal with technical founders is their ability to. Take it global or just market it outside. It's not so much I always say it's not a language barrier, meaning that they English and other languages, it's language from technical to what does your market need to hear?
And so we've, we've worked with hundreds of companies. One of the stories we had talked about earlier, which I love, we've been working with them for better part of the last seven years. It's a company called Guard. And they've, uh, I, I won't bore you with all the details, but they've brought to market a I think if everybody's, all the automation and the autonomous driving that companies are, are talking about is the next, you know, the next generation cars or the generation of cars that are coming out are so automated that the fear of someone hacking into it.
And so they brought a solution to market that's coming to solve that. Now they're not the first company to come to solve it, and they're not the [00:06:00] only company to solve it. But when they came, when they came to market, they were a small, 15, 20 person company and they wanted to be talking to the, the biggest companies in the world like gm, Mercedes, bmw, you, you name it, which is really hard for a small company that, that doesn't have an international presence.
And that's where we came in. And trying to find a way to angle their story in order to a, give them a front of, Hey, we're not just, we're not a small company. We're, we're bigger than we. Look, we've got something great. We've got a story to tell and we can solve your problems. And so one of the first approaches they took.
And I remember clearly this is, you know, two year, three years into their going live is we took the, their, their background story, which is most of the founders had come from the Air Force and their like website was talked about how they've tick, you know, this. You know, you saw like an F 16 or I think a 15 or kind of taking Air Force technology and bringing it to the automotive industry.
So that was kind of a part of the story that they [00:07:00] brought for their background. Using their background and who they are bringing, you know, kind this authenticity to tell their story, which I think is a really important part. Companies sometimes it's very hard for them to embrace that, but that was a great start for them.
Wendy: so you said one of the first stories they did, did they go on to a second story or is that the one that really resonated and took off so
Perry: that that resonated? They, they we actually went through two Rebrandings with them. That was their first go-to-market that we spent about five years getting them out in the market and they, they were adopted by, You know, it took, took time, of course, but they did get adopted by some of these top companies that I mentioned before.
Of course, it takes many years to take a, to, to, to bring a technology into a car, right? There's, there's safety and, you know, all kinds of, you know, bells and whistles you have to go through, or they're gates they have to go through to get there. But they're, they're doing that Eventually they wanted to reinvent themselves as they were expanding because they didn't want to just solve one problem, which was cybersecurity.
They wanted to [00:08:00] also talk about more of a control box. And so we've you know, we're, we expanded there the message around, around that to where they are today.
Wendy: Okay, so that, so what was that message and then where are they today? Okay,
Perry: so where they are today is so that what, that, that change or that that kind of evolution that they went through is not just protecting the car, but allowing other software or becoming like the software center for the car.
So that, that came to the message. What, what? What we have today, which is like a software defined vehicle. If you think about, you know, if you think about a car, at least someone of my generation, a car is just a bunch of parts put together. You don't think of it as a, as a as a computer, but really that's what it is today, right?
It's just another computer, like our phone or anything else we, we use. It's, it's, it's another. Computer and it's defined, you know, it has tons of software, many different, whether, you know, it's your, the interface you have, you know, the breaking system, [00:09:00] the, you know, the g p s, whatever it might be. And they, all these things need to work together.
And so part of their solution is not only protecting it, but also allowing the systems to talk to each other efficiently and properly.
Wendy: Oh, that's fantastic. Okay. And is that, and where are they now? Or is that where they
Perry: evolved? So they've evolved. Yeah, so they've evolved into that and they've gone to market.
They've gone through multiple rounds of funding. So their market cap is, is quite large. I don't know the number with all the craziness that's going on in the world, it's probably gone up and down over the last, the 12, 24 months. But they're doing great. And they go to CES every year and get, all kinds of accolades and awards.
But this is where, this is the the story of a, small company that's in a small town in the middle of Israel, you know, very removed from, do many of their markets, right? If you think about the automotive market, you think. You think, you know, do you think different European countries like Germany and France and maybe, you know, us and I dunno if [00:10:00] Detroit is still a big big automotive, but like those are the areas where they need to be.
This is very far away and different. And from a, there's different languages You mentioned languages at the beginning of the translations, and that was a big challenge for them as well, because. When you market in and you actually hit it on the head, marketing in Germany is just so much different.
It's not just taking your, your, your, you know, what you have and. Translating. I remember going through that process with them many years ago, and it's something that goes you know, not just translating your site, but actually putting, you know, you need a, you know, a PR company that's very specific to that, to that region.
It's not, you can't, it's not one size fits all. And so there's there's a lot of work that needs to go around localizing you know, your message. Yes.
Wendy: Or you know, and then there's, there's differences with companies, but also what we've seen, if people bring it to us, our translators are so knowledgeable about the industry, they can make suggestions cuz they're, they're specialists in global [00:11:00] marketing translation.
But dig, dig down into that and give me more details of it. You've got a company, you've, you've, you. Have the message now that you've decided that you want to come to, you know it's a software center. You wanna protect the car, but also make all the systems talk to each other. How did you test that across the different markets or different companies you wanted to target to be able to come up with something appropriate?
Perry: Right. So there's a lot of different ways that we do that. It depends but let's talk about them specifically cuz with them you're targeting a a market that's very, very finite, very, very small. If you think about the amount of automotive companies in the automotive, in the peripheral there are not very many.
There's, there's tens and I don't even think there's, there's not. You know, 30 or 40. And within those companies there's maybe a, a few hundred. So you're total, total addressable market, or it's like a, maybe a thousand to 2000 people. So you, you don't want to put out a message there that's gonna miss the [00:12:00] mark.
And so this is, this is not a, a, a place where you can, you know, a lot of b companies that have bigger markets can go and AB test and you know, the. See, put, put some PPC behind it and say, okay, let's see which message works better. That's not gonna really work in a, in a market that's so defined. And so we worked with them to build out kind of like a.
A forum of people that we can kind of reach out to and test out different ideas, different, different messages. And a lot of these people are engineers in the, in the market that are, that are doing it. And then when we, when we want to talk about their, come, come, come out with new ideas, this, these are the, these are the people that we can do some initial bouncing off of.
After that, we can then take, take it to the wider to the wider market and, and, and put it out. So those are, those are things that you need to develop and we, we worked with them on. which, which is a great tactic, but also, something we've, we've done with the many companies that have very finite audiences.
And in
Wendy: what languages did you have to adapt those [00:13:00] communications?
Perry: So most of the communication like was, was censored in English. that being said the two secondary languages that were really important were German and French. Since there's two, there's two big Indu two, obviously Germany has the, probably the biggest automotive industry.
France is second, and then of course American and UK can are in English. Spain being a distant third.
Wendy: So you, you did like all of the testing and development in English, and then when you were comfortable that it was gonna work across the languages, then. You translated
Perry: it. Exactly, exactly.
And then today, if you go to their website, you can see that the website itself is only in two languages, which is English in in German.
Okay.
Wendy: So wait, let's give the website address. Can you spell it out for people?
Perry: Yeah, it's it's ox, it's the word guard.
Knox with a k k n o x.com.
Wendy: Okay, [00:14:00] so G u a r d k N o x.com. So if you wanna see how they added the translation in? Yeah, good. Sorry I cut you off. What were you gonna say?
Perry: No, that, that's, that's what I was gonna, that, that, that's it.
Wendy: So you have it in English and German. Correct. And so the French engineers that would be looking at it, you're assuming that they could read the English or German?
Perry: Yeah. That's already a company decision to, you know, cause it's a big investments obviously to, to, to do the. Like you said, they're not gonna do it over it using just an AI tool. And they want to, when you're translating something of this nature, which is very technical and very specific either do it right or don't do it at all.
We, we learned that early on. I don't remember the exact mistake, I wish I remember the story, but, or the anecdotes but are very similar to what you mentioned at the beginning is that you use, you use the wrong word and the wrong. In a [00:15:00] translation, it can, you can push something all the way off. And I remember having a communication early on, this is like seven years ago, so I don't remember the exact story, but I remember that it was something that we, we realize that you have to take this more seriously when you're when you're doing translations.
Wendy: Right, right. Yeah. Now this is, this has been a fantastic story to share, so I'm so glad that you came on. What do you think some of the mistakes they might have made along the way in their global marketing or developing it?
Perry: There's the, there's the typical mistake of expecting results too quickly, especially with such a finite market.
So, you know, you spend a lot of time thinking about the messaging and the brand and, and putting it out the website. That's not, you know, it's not builded and they will come. Right. It's, that's, it's build it and then you still have a lot more work to get them to come and, and in your, at your website.
And that it, I think the, the mistake was that the, the, the not developing enough [00:16:00] content on a, on a regular basis, it's, that's been fixed and you're, you know, there's, there's, there's a ton of. Very high, high quality content out there today, but at, at the beginning, it's hard cuz the company, everybody's really busy and the people that you need in order to make that quality content are always the busiest people.
It's usually the CTO or the founder. You can't make up that, that, that that content. And a mistake a lot of marketers make, in my opinion when dealing with this type of a market, when you're selling technology to technology people is there's this. If you've probably heard marketers say this all the time, you need to explain it so your grandmother or your six year old can, can understand it.
Now, if you're an engineer or you're a professional and you're, and if someone is delivering you content at, at that level, you're not going to take that that content very seriously cuz you're, you're an engineer, you're a PhD, you're, you need that content to be, yes, it needs to be [00:17:00] engaging and interesting, but it needs to be at a level that.
That you would expect it. And so therefore that's that's, you know, it's not enough to have a great content writer here. It's, it's, it's gotta, it's gotta be infused with that, with that added insight, which can only come from the people that are on the floor doing the work that understand the technology.
Wendy: Right. That's such a good point. As you need to know your audience. You know, at Rapport International there's a, there's a edu and so content writers can either get it, you've gotta be educational, but you've gotta keep it light and entertaining. And so defining that voice and who your clients are and how they're gonna wanna read is so important.
So,
Perry: yeah. Yeah. We had, we had another customer Sarah, they, and, and they do something, you know, super boring. I mean, when you get down to the technology, it's always for somebody that's not in that, it's always gonna be boring, but they do some back haul for, for cellular technology, you know, [00:18:00] very, very boring stuff.
And they were able to, you said, entertain their audience, is that They would. They had a very funny product manager, so he knew, well, he was a very techy guy, but he had no problem getting in front of the camera. And he would let, he had these really funny starts to the video where he'd bring like a hamburger and like start talking about it and then they, it would be like, he'd got a customer call like in the middle and he'd makes light of it and then he'd go into the technical.
So it, it's there. Just because you have a boring technology doesn't mean you have to, you have to be boring.
Wendy: Oh. Which is so funny cuz he gets that tech humor too. So he would pull that all in and then capture people's attention. Ah, that's
Perry: awesome. And I, and I can't remember how he compared the, the technology to a hamburger, and it was just, just kind of, I remember who shot that.
It was really funny. But you know, that that's the type of thing that you, you still. As a marketing, you still have, there's so much content out there, you had to cut through the noise and and that's, you know, those are things you gotta [00:19:00] do. So,
Wendy: yeah, cut through the noise, make it appropriate, and then localize it so it makes sense.
I mean, you're even, we're talking about. Tech people, there's a certain type of humor, and then you have to figure out whether that goes across country. So this has been fantastic. Do you have any like recommendations for our listeners if they wanna do global marketing, particularly in the, the, the area you specialize in?
Perry: Yeah, I think I think that it's I, I share some, some ideas around that along the way as we spoke. But I don't, you know, I don't, I don't want to, I don't think there's anything much, you know, anything more different than anything else that's no. Like you mentioned, it's know your audience.
And you, it's not one size fits all. So you, if, if you, you know, the way you market in, in the US is not necessarily gonna be the way you market in Germany. Or, you know, or this is the way you're going. And, and usually there's multiple people and, and influencers that you're selling into when you're selling into large enterprises.
So you might be [00:20:00] selling, the end user might be an engineer, but you might still need to talk to business. You know, you need to have marketing that talks to the business people to, to need help, to, to make the business case. So understand that and, you know, and, and, and work towards that.
Wendy: Yeah, that is a good point.
I think I told you months ago when we first talked about having you on the podcast that I was gonna ask you a question, and I don't know if you remember, what's your favorite foreign
Perry: word? Wow. I don't, I don't remember you. A i, yeah. It was long. It was,
Wendy: it was a long time ago when we, we originally talked.
Yes. So do you have a favorite foreign word?
Perry: You know, when I. My grandparents were Hungarian, and you know, they, they always talk. I, I didn't really, I didn't understand the language, but they always talked in that language in, in Hungarian. And one, when I was six years old, they took me to Hungary and, and this, this [00:21:00] word, it's just stuck in my head.
It's called, I think it's called it's fo Lodge, and that's Hungarian for ice cream. Hopefully I got that right. But I, I just, it's like a word that I've gotten. It's always, it's been in my head since I'm six years old. And I just love the sound of it. So there
Wendy: that is such know. Six year old, you know, isn't gonna recognize any other words except, oh, phones load.
Yes. I want that. Yep,
Perry: yep, yep. That's, that's what I remember. That's all I, that's all I would ask for when I was there. Right. So,
Wendy: oh, this is great. Well, Perry, where can people reach you or follow you or find out more information about what you do?
Perry: What's great about having a unique name and working for a very huge animal company is it's, it's fairly easy to find me on LinkedIn Perry Naka. There's really only one in the world.
[00:22:00] So that, that's probably the best way. Anybody connects. I'll, I'll connect with them. They can message me, penguin strategies, that's spelled as it sounds dot com. So, and that's my email also, perry penguin strategies.com. Okay.
Wendy: And you spell Perry's last name? N a l e V as in Victor, k a.
So go look him up on LinkedIn. We'll also put it in the show notes. Well, thank you so much for being here, Perry. This story was very, very good. Now I see why I was so excited to hear it. So great advice. Thank you. Thanks
Perry: for having me on. It was fun.
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