Case study · Software & system design
Nine industry awards from one repeatable play.
System Surveyor builds the software security integrators use to design systems. In January 2023 they had a strong product and a quiet profile. They are now in their fourth year with Maize, their CEO has been on the cover of a trade magazine, and their feature launches arrive with press and awards already lined up. This is the system that does it.
They didn't need more marketing. They needed the editors to pick up the phone.
Security is a small industry that behaves like a small town. The editors, the award juries, the association program chairs and the integrators all know each other, and most of them have known each other for twenty years. A firm coming in from outside can write a good release. What it can't do is know which of the four award cycles that quarter actually moves an integrator, or which editor has been looking for exactly this story since March.
System Surveyor understood that from the start. What followed was a five-year conversation — a first meeting at Securing New Ground, a lunch, several years of “not yet” — that ended when a fellow Maize client joined their partner program and vouched for us on the thread. The engagement began in January 2023.
Every feature gets three news cycles instead of one.
Most companies launch a product, send a release, and hope. We run each release through the same three moves. It is not complicated. It is just done every single time, which is the part that turns out to be hard.
Seed it
Before a feature is announced, the thinking behind it runs as a bylined article in a trade publication. The market meets the idea before it meets the product — and the editor who ran the byline is now invested in the story.
Launch it
The release goes wide, and it goes direct to the editors who already have context. Coverage compounds because nobody in the inbox is meeting this idea cold. Pickup is faster and the write-ups are longer.
Enter it
Every launch becomes an award submission. A win generates a second announcement, a trophy for the trade show booth, a credential the sales team can lead with, and sometimes a magazine cover.
Boundaries: soft launch to industry award in a single quarter.
Boundaries lets a designer map the precise area a device covers. On its own, a modest feature release. Run through the playbook, it produced three separate moments in the trade press inside fourteen weeks.
One feature. One quarter. Three reasons for the industry to say the name.
The same three moves, four years running.
A selection from more than forty earned placements — arranged not by date, but by the move that produced each one. No sponsored posts, no advertorial, nothing bought.
What the play produces when you run it for four years.
- Two flagship platform launches taken to market — System Surveyor 2.0 in 2023 and Web Editor 2.0 in 2024. The 2.0 launch landed in the SecurityInfoWatch GSX Show Daily eNewsletter, distributed to 61,000 security end users and integrators.
- CEO Chris Hugman on the cover of Security Business, July 2024, as a Security Industry Innovator — from a nomination Maize wrote and submitted.
- Co-Founder & President Maureen Carlson named a 2026 Security Innovator. We wrote that nomination too, and kept it a surprise from her until the win was announced.
- Customer stories with real numbers. The TruControls story documented survey time and cost cut by 50–70% and proposals turned around 30% faster — proof points their sales team now uses directly.
- A SOC 2 Type 2 announcement picked up by six publications, turning a compliance milestone into an enterprise trust signal.
- Their largest deal of 2023 — a move up to 50 enterprise licenses on a two-year commitment — closed the same week as the GSX push that put the 2.0 launch in front of the industry.
Three wins in the first year alone
Every badge, a Maize-written submission
“No doubt we found the right partner as the Maize team is the most experienced in the industry with deep relationships. When we work with the publications on a pitch or they are looking for a thought leader on a key topic, they ask Maize and they bring us great opportunities. Although we're virtual, we consider them an extension of our team.”Maureen Carlson — Co-Founder & President, System Surveyor
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