When it comes to creative, whilst some products and services immediately lend themselves to a visual language, others are more difficult. On the downside, this means that you have to think harder (which has added so many furrows to my already irreparably wrinkled brow that botox would now have the same effect as a dehydrated child sneezing into a forest fire). On the upside, it often means that the work that comes out is better.
Pentesec Cyber Security was one such proposition.
Our journey with Pentesec began with a call from Joshua Barnard. We’d worked with Josh in his previous role, and he’s our kind of marketeer. He knows what he wants to achieve, he’s willing to give our strategy and creative its head, but he’s not afraid of pushing back (hard) when something’s not right. Which only encourages us to do better. For us it’s the perfect arrangement; a partnership with mutual respect for each other’s needs, skills and experience.
The brief was to raise awareness of the Pentesec Firewall Managed Service to IT Directors.
Now, the first and most obvious point to make here is that IT Directors are already aware that they need something like this service. They are fully aware of the ever evolving and changing risks in a connected world. Disastrous breaches can happen to the biggest and most prestigious of companies, and the only way to stay ahead is to keep investing in experts.
We knew that Pentesec already had a great reputation in the industry. They don’t just fix the problems you know about, they go and find the problems you don’t know about, which in many cases is much more important. And they’re people focused. And yes, everyone says that, but Pentesec actually live it. Which is why, when you call, when you need them, you’re not put through a filtering system of call centres, you’re put on to an expert.
Which is all great, but after talking to the team at Pentesec and researching more widely, it became clear that we actually had two different target groups. The first were the IT Directors. But the second group contained CFOs and CEOs. The women and men who had to sign the cheques.
They knew that they wanted Cyber Security. The problem was, they didn’t necessarily understand the nuances of what they were asking for. IT Directors not only understood how complex the solution could be, but actually, how multi-faceted and complex the request for security was in the first place.
So, our goal changed. We didn’t simply want to create an engagement campaign to talk to IT Directors. We wanted to also give them a tool they could use to get buy-in from the C-suite.
Which meant that we had to avoid the technical language and start treating this as a more emotive proposition.
Which is where the visual approach came in. The cyber security industry’s approach to creative has often been quite formulaic (after all, it’s an incredibly complex industry involving a great deal of not particularly photogenic code). If pushed to describe the visuals that had been prevalent in the industry thus far, I think it’d be best to leave it at “a bit matrix-ey/computer-y”. Which doesn’t really get across the real world impact that data security (or the lack if it) has.
It described the industry in the same way that “Beep-Boop-Beep!” sound effects describe the Terminator films.
So we decided to step away from the technical benefits, and look more to the emotive. What could be stopped. What could this service help to prevent. It stopped being about data, and became about people, about careers, about legal. It became real.
Josh Barnard from Pentesec said, “the results have started coming in. And they’re good. In the first two weeks of a limited exploratory launch, the campaign has raised brand awareness and initiated enquiries representing what looks to be an extremely encouraging ROI. It’s a method of engagement that we’re keen to hone, and one that we will look to expand on. As Pentesec has recently joined the Charterhouse family, we’re all very excited about upcoming projects, working in tandem with Nadine ter Meulen’s talented marketing team in London.”