Marketing strategy: dominate the developer AI security conversation and establish CodeBench as the standard

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Goal

CodeBench has two distinct news angles — contamination and security — each of which can independently generate significant press. Combine them and you have one of the most provocative stories in AI: "The benchmark everyone uses is compromised, and the models that score best are the most dangerous."

Channel 1: Developer Community (Primary Audience)

Technical Blog Posts (Publish as a Series)

1. "HumanEval Is Broken: The Contamination Problem in Code Benchmarks" — this will be widely shared; it challenges a sacred cow in the field
2. "AI Code Generation and Security: The Benchmark Nobody Was Running" — introduces security-adjusted pass@k
3. "We Analyzed 10,000 AI-Generated Code Samples for Security Vulnerabilities. Here's What We Found" — the data post
4. "The Cost of AI Code: Pass@t and What It Means for Your Token Budget" — practical post for cost-conscious teams

Distribution: dev.to, Hacker News, GitHub Blog pitch, The Pragmatic Programmer newsletter

Hacker News Strategy

• The contamination angle will reliably go viral on HN ("Ask HN: Is every code benchmark contaminated?")
• Title: "Show HN: CodeBench — Contamination-Resistant and Security-Aware Code Generation Benchmark"
• Time it for Tuesday morning Pacific (peak HN traffic)
• Have 3-5 friends ready to upvote and comment immediately to get initial traction

Developer YouTube / Podcast

• Lex Fridman Podcast: cold email pitch with the contamination + security finding — this is exactly the kind of provocative AI story Lex covers
• MLST (Machine Learning Street Talk): technical AI podcast; code generation is a frequent topic
• Latent Space Podcast (swyx & Alessio): very popular with AI engineers; reach out for a guest appearance
• YouTube: "Every AI Coding Benchmark Is Lying to You" — provocative title; 10-min explainer video

GitHub Community

• Post to awesome-code-generation repo as a resource
• File issues on SWE-bench / HumanEval GitHub: "Related work: contamination-resistant evaluation" — this gets noticed by maintainers
• GitHub Universe conference: apply for talk slot about AI code quality and security

Channel 2: Security Community

Security Conference Submissions

• DEF CON AI Village — the perfect venue for "AI code generation security vulnerabilities"; talk or workshop
• Black Hat Briefings — "AI-Generated Code: The New Attack Surface" — security researchers will engage heavily
• RSA Conference — enterprise security; CISO audience cares about AI code security risk

Security Practitioner Content

• Snyk blog / Veracode blog: they already publish vulnerability research; offer co-authorship or cross-promotion of the security findings
• OWASP newsletter/blog: frame the CWE taxonomy as an extension of OWASP to AI code generation
• CISA: submit findings as a vulnerability research report; they have published advisories on AI code security

Twitter/X Security Community

• @thegrugq, @SwiftOnSecurity, @danielmiessler — influential security community voices
• Tweet thread: "We tested 15 AI coding tools for the OWASP Top 10. Here's the ranking." (with visualization)
• The security community will amplify this organically

Channel 3: Enterprise / Compliance

CISO / Engineering Leader Content

• Pitch angle: "Every company using AI code generation has an unknown security exposure. CodeBench can measure it."
• Target: CSO Online, Dark Reading, SC Magazine (all cover enterprise security)
• The GitHub Action integration (continuous security evaluation) is a concrete product these audiences understand

Analyst Briefings

• Gartner (DevSecOps coverage) — brief on AI code generation security risk
• Forrester (Security & Risk) — the vulnerability rate finding is a Forrester report topic

Metrics to Track

• HN points on launch day (target: 500+)
• GitHub stars (target: 2000 in 3 months for a security-adjacent benchmark)
• Security conference talk acceptance
• Snyk/Veracode co-promotion engagement

Timeline

• Blog post Fix CI and improve evaluate.py #1 (contamination) drafted and ready to publish with paper
• DEF CON AI Village CFP deadline noted
• Snyk / Veracode outreach email drafted
• Latent Space Podcast pitch written
• HN post draft prepared and reviewd