In Cybersecurity, your brand is their shortcut
If buyers can’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. And in cybersecurity, trust is not just a preference. It’s survival.
Most cybersecurity products are invisible. Buyers can’t inspect your code. They can’t validate your security claims. They can’t open the black box. So they fall back on what they can judge — your brand.
Think of it as the visible proxy for operational maturity, trustworthiness, and competence. If you don’t shape that perception, people will fill in the blanks for you.
This reflects a broader truth: in cybersecurity, neither buyers or sellers can confidently evaluate what actually works. As Ian Grigg’s article puts it, “Cybersecurity is not a market for lemons. It’s a market for silver bullets.”
When outcomes are hard to measure, buyers default to signals they can see — VC backing, analyst mentions, peer reviews, user experience, adoption, and marketing visibility. In short: they’re not just buying the product. They’re buying the brand.
Author: Alex Waite, Marketing Director, Shaped By
When products sound the same, the brain reaches for shortcuts
Everyone promises faster detection, smarter response, lower risk. But buyers aren’t auditors. Even the most technical ones don’t have time to properly assess a dozen vendors.
So they fall back on:
- Familiar names
- Peer recommendations
- Public signals like press, presence, and partnerships
According to LinkedIn, a staggering 78% of buyers chose vendors they already knew before starting research. For enterprise buyers, it was 86%. Once the shortlist was made, 71% went with their first choice. That’s not a sort of influence, that’s hard power.
If you’re not remembered before the brief is written, you’re not getting the brief.
Distinctiveness beats differentiation
There’s a common trap in cybersecurity marketing, believing small technical differences will win the deal. They rarely do.
Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk’s research shows it’s distinctiveness, not differentiation that drives brand growth.
Your logo, colours, tone, slogans, your design system — these are the assets that build mental availability. Easier to notice, easier to recall, and easier to choose.
The below work we did for Cyera shows how a cohesive design language works.
But here’s the rub, only 15% of B2B ads are considered distinctive. 71% of marketers say they have a USP, while 68% of buyers say all B2B brands sound the same (WARC). There’s a sea of blues out there in the cyber world.
Most brands think they sound different. Most buyers know they don’t.
Across the category, we still see the same shorthand repeated. A sea of dark blues. Stick imagery of glowing padlocks. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) used as the main hook.
The sameness is so baked in that it takes real intent to cut through it. They’re invisible because they’ve copied the category cues so precisely, no one can tell them apart. We unpacked this in ‘Are you drowning in a sea of cyber sameness?’ a while ago.
First unmissable, then unforgettable
We’re living in a state of constant cognitive overload. Thousands of brand messages hit us every day. Most barely register.
To cope, the brain filters aggressively, prioritising what’s familiar, emotionally charged, or visually distinctive.
This is why creativity does its real job. Not as decoration, but as a Trojan horse that gets your brand noticed. See our storytelling with a bit of oomph work for Palo Alto Networks here.
As Bill Bernbach put it:
“If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.”
But getting noticed is only part one. Memory is the harder game. Cognitive neuroscientist Dr Carmen Simon found that business audiences forget 90% of content within 48 hours. What survives is what made them feel something.
This isn’t marketing theory, it’s how the brain works. Emotion triggers memory. Yet despite this, 75% of B2B ads score poorly on emotional engagement (System1 + B2B Institute).
If you’re not deliberately engineering a feeling, you’re betting on luck. And if you’re forgotten, you’re invisible when it comes to being shortlisted.
Groups decisions creates defensive biases
B2B buying is a team sport. At enterprise level, procurement, legal, security, finance all usually get a say. That means decisions aren’t just about what’s best. They’re about what’s safest.
As Rory Sutherland puts it: “You make the decision that’s easiest to defend, or least likely to come under attack.”
This is why strong brands win, they de-risk the decision. It’s the “no one got fired for buying Microsoft” effect.
Grigg’s article describes exactly that:
“Managers often buy products and services which they know to be suboptimal or even defective, but which are from big name suppliers. This is known to minimize the likelihood of getting fired when things go wrong.”
That was written in 2008, and it’s still true today.
In cybersecurity, where the cost of failure is existential, that kind of brand reassurance carrier real weight.
The myth of rational decisions
B2B buyers aren’t spreadsheets with shoes. They’re humans. And humans feel first, rationalise later.
They form a gut-level impression of a brand and then justify it with case studies and scoring matrices. The B2B Institute found that 70% of B2B purchase decisions are emotional or a mix of emotional and rational.
And it’s not just what you say. It’s how you show up: Design, layout, copy, tone, rhythm — all of it creates a feeling. Whether you like it or not
Brand is the shortcut, the signal, and the safety net
Plenty of cybersecurity brands are doing this well showing up with originality, consistency and personality (nod to Wiz who appear in every ‘brands I admire’ competitor research we undertake for clients). But there still aren’t enough of them.
That’s the opportunity. When most of the market blends in, distinction punches harder.
Brand doesn’t close deals. But it gets you invited.
It creates confidence, reduces risk, and makes you the safe bet before the buying process even begins. If your cybersecurity brand isn’t already known, felt and trusted you’re gambling on being the exception.
And most buyers? They don’t gamble. They hedge.
With brands they remember.
To go deeper, we brought together creative, marketing, and security leaders from across the industry to talk candidly about brand’s real-world role in cybersecurity.
It was a frank conversation about what actually makes a brand trusted, credible, and memorable in this space.
Here’s what came up:
- CISOs don’t switch off their humanity at work — people bring personal instincts and gut calls to vendor decisions
- Fear-based marketing is losing power — buyers know the risks. What they need is assurance and clarity
- Brand isn’t just marketing’s job — it’s every touchpoint, from product to pre-sales
People follow people — trust often carries over from past relationships, not just messaging - Startups can win — but they need to lead with focus, specialism, and a clear value lens
▶️ Watch the highlights of discussion below.
