It’s not often that you hear from the marketing manager on a company’s tech blog. However, over the past week, I have been busy doing our annual client mailing, and I have something I want to share with you. We like to send our current and past clients something each year, just to let them know we’re thinking about them. Because the truth is, we always are. Our goal is to make this something useful to engineers, something beyond just your everyday promo item. For example, last year we sent a dry-erase whiteboard marker with our name on it. If there’s one thing I know about working with engineers, it’s that the whiteboard is a window to their souls, and an extra dry-erase marker is always handy. If said engineers happen to read our name on the side of the marker, well, that’s extra points for marketing. But mostly, we just want to give something that makes your day a little easier or more fun.
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Something Useful From Marketing? Unheard Of.
This year, as I thought about what we would mail out to our clients, Howdy Pierce, our CEO came across something that struck him as both very cool and very useful. He spotted a webcam cover on a new employee’s laptop, and we immediately decided that this is what we would send out. It’s basically just a plastic sliding window that sticks to your laptop and covers your web camera until you don’t want it to. When you’re ready for a video conference, a Google hangout or to take a bad photo of yourself for your ski pass, you just slide the window open and you’re back in business. It’s more attractive and functional than a piece of tape and you’re left with a clean webcam view when you want it, without a sticky spot or a bright pink Post-it on your laptop.
If It’s Good Enough for Mark Zuckerberg…
While I love the fact that this is a fun, useful gadget with our name on it, something else came up while I was in the process of preparing for our mailing. First, a photo of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook went viral. In the photo, his laptop is visible in the background, and it didn’t take long for web sleuths to zoom in and take note of the fact that he had a piece of tape covering both his webcam and his microphone. Tech blogs and news sites across the web had a lot to say about it.
Shortly thereafter, the FBI released a statement explaining that everyone should cover their webcams. The web camera, as it turns out, is a highly hackable part of your computer, and it’s fairly easy for a determined criminal to see you or your home through an uncovered lens. The thought of that is creepy on so many levels.
Be Safe Out There: Get Your Cardinal Peak Web Cam Cover
So, what started out as a promotional item for our clients has turned into something we’re realizing is important to everyone. With that in mind, if you didn’t receive a webcam cover in the mail from us, we want to send you one. If you’re interested in getting your own webcam cover from Cardinal Peak, just email us.
Send an email to [email protected] with the subject line: Webcam cover. In the body of the email, simply provide your name, company and address, and I’ll put a free webcam cover in the mail to you right away.
As we work to create a safer, more secure IoT and world wide web, we realize that there are certain risks out there that are real but avoidable, and we want you to be as safe as possible. We look forward to sending you a webcam cover to help you avoid creepy hackers, and don’t worry, we sent one to Mark Zuckerberg, too. We like to look out for everyone equally.