XPANCEO, a deep tech company behind the world’s first smart contact lenses, believes that media visibility is not always beneficial for highly technical products if audiences lack the context needed to understand the technology behind the headlines.
In a recent interview with Outset PR founder Mike Ermolaev, XPANCEO’s Director of Marketing Communications, Daria Danilina, explained why topical relevance often matters more than reach when projects are still years away from mass adoption.
“Broad audiences may not fully understand the context around the technology, the stage of the product, or the complexity of the development process,” she said during the interview. “And sometimes that creates reactions that work against the brand.”
According to Daria, the challenge is especially relevant for emerging products that are difficult to evaluate through conventional consumer expectations. A working prototype can easily be mistaken for something ready for market, while long-term research milestones may be interpreted as imminent commercial launches.
This is one reason why XPANCEO doesn’t prioritize media opportunities based on traffic figures alone. Daria noted that a highly relevant niche publication can deliver more value than a larger outlet if the audience has the expertise and background for grasping the technology properly.
Translating Science Without Losing Accuracy
Daria says a closer connection between communication teams and the people building the technology is essential to shape the messaging that resonates with broad audiences.
At XPANCEO, marketers work directly with engineers, scientists, and product leads throughout the content creation process that typically involves using internal documentation, discussing nuances with technical specialists, and conducting final reviews before publication to ensure all materials remain both accessible and accurate.
“We stay deeply embedded in R&D through regular syncs, sprint reviews, and product updates,” Daria emphasized. “In this way, marketing accumulates a real understanding of the product instead of just sourcing answers on demand.”
This synergy is required to translate highly technical concepts into non-specialists language, while avoiding oversimplifying.
“For us, a good text is one that a person outside science can understand, but after the R&D review, nobody says it’s nonsense,” Daria said.
According to her, that balance becomes increasingly important when companies operate in categories that most people are still learning about.
Showing Live Demos Beats Endless Explanations
XPANCEO builds the necessary product context not only through messaging, but through direct exposure to the technology itself, something much more meaningful than media coverage alone.
The company regularly invites journalists to visit its lab, meet the engineers behind the lens, and interact with working prototypes. When in-person visits are not possible, the team sometimes organizes virtual tours instead.
For the same reason, conferences are an indispensable part of XPANCEO’s marketing strategy. The team turns their booths into places where an abstract idea becomes real and makes people care.
“It’s better to show once how something works in practice than to explain it ten times,” Daria claimed.
She even recalled a Mobile World Congress appearance where flight cancellations prevented key prototypes from reaching the venue. And while video demos helped fill the gap, the difference in user reactions was still clear.
The Challenge of Communicating the Impossible
For deep tech brands, XPANCEO states PR is less about maximizing exposure and more about helping audiences understand what they are actually looking at.
For Daria, credibility is built when technical ambition is consistently supported by evidence, whether through expert-reviewed messaging, direct interaction with the technology, or meaningful engagement with journalists who capture the context.
“People need to understand what already exists, what is still being tested, what we can actually show today, and what still needs time,” she said.
Since science-heavy companies push the boundaries of what technology may eventually become, that context proves more valuable than visibility itself.
For anyone interested in more details, the full interview with Daria Danilina is live on Outset PR blog.
