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Soter: Transforming Workplace Safety With AI

Few jobs are as high pressure as that of EHS professionals, tasked with keeping dozens to hundreds of workers safe in industrial facilities where heavy-duty robotic machinery, and dangerous chemicals and equipment like welders are being used daily. Not only are they tasked with identifing and remediating real-time hazards, but they also have to know and constantly monitor for all manner of potential OSHA violations. Luckily, AI is now helping to act as another set of eyes and ears on their team. Soter brought on Diffusion to help grow brand and product awareness, first for the company’s proprietary safety wearables and through its transition to focusing heavily on AI-powered EHS software.

Insight & Idea

Diffusion immediately recognized that despite worker safety being a very real and serious ongoing problem, it was garnering little organic media attention. In order to bring media focus to the solution Soter had developed, Diffusion had to first work backwards and create a media hook around the problem itself. Tying into a timely talent story in the newscycle, Diffusion executed an issues-jacking research campaign based on why Gen Z aren’t joining the industrial workforce, and the role that perceptions of too much danger and too little tech on the job, were playing.

Diffusion continued successfully issues-jacking and inserting Soter into the moments when worker safety began to enter the broader media conversation, including when sweltering summer temperatures led to serious injuries in warehouses around the country. Diffusion positioned Soter as the champions of safer workplaces, tackling the safety problem with cutting-edge technology and making the entire field more enticing in the midst of a serious talent shortage.

Diffusion also leaned into the technical aspects of Soter’s solutions, providing media with customer case studies and benchmark statistics to ground how each unique feature was leading to tangible safety progress in each case. Diffusion leveraged this tactic through Soter’s transition to focus more heavily on its AI software, and was able to break through the noise with compelling features, at a time when every company had a new AI product they were pushing.

Impact & Action

Diffusion generated top tier coverage for Soter, including research features in Fast Company, Forbes, and trade publications like Occupational Health & Safety, positioning Soter as the leading safety tech company tackling the industry’s most pressing issues. Nearly a year after its original publication, Diffusion’s talent and safety-focused data campaign continued to garner coverage, with continued, ongoing mentions in outlets like Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company and Benzinga. Bylines in the San Francisco Chronicle, SupplyChainBrain, Training Industry and more rounded out Soter’s executive visibility, and complemented a comprehensive feature of the company’s AI technology in Business Insider.