Kenna Security Rebrand

Upon joining Kenna Security as their first in-house creative, my main objective was to strategically and intentionally develop Kenna Security’s brand story and to refresh their look and feel across all expressions.

Kenna Security enables companies to efficiently manage and mitigate risk for their business. Kenna’s Modern Vulnerability Management model eliminates friction between Security and IT teams regarding what to patch, and provides clear prioritization based on real-time threat intelligence. This guidance is applied to each customer’s unique environment across infrastructure, applications, and IoT. 

Below is an overview of the rebrand methodology and implementation across media and channels: web design, advertising, social media, print, events, video, and sales enablement.

Evaluating the Existing Brand

Within a few days of onboarding as Art Director it was clear that marketing desired a new look and feel. To have clear idea of what direction to take, I evaluated the existing brand centered around what was affectionately dubbed the “space elevator” and 3D blue spheres. The spheres comprised of a turquoise ring to represents the organization’s context and a royal blue ball to represent global threats. There was also a “risk score engine” to represent the underlying technology that drives the Kenna Security approach. Additionally, the color palate felt juvenile for the enterprise-level target audience and typography lacked both hierarchy and consistency.

During my second week, I participated in a two-day leadership workshop aimed to redefine Kenna Security’s positioning messaging and value propositions. The workshop was provided a foundational education that informed my discovery and research phase. Following the workshop, I engaged conversations with key stakeholders across Marketing, Sales, Product and UX to learn what the existing brand meant to them, evaluate what was and was not working and derive any ideals toward a future expression.

Developing the Brand and Design Elements

Over a two-week period, I threw myself into all things Kenna. General themes arose from my stakeholder interviews and positioning workshop: a desire for an enterprise-ready visual identity rooted in a story rich with adaptable symbolism tying to our three key differentiators: Confidence, Intelligence and Alignment

Kenna’s CEO, Karim Toubba had a few very clear requests. No threatening, fear-based visuals. No red or black. Avoid the hacker in a hoodie, dark tech vibe that is often seen within the cybersecurity space.

To steer clear of the aforementioned, I focused on the key differentiators and the way stakeholders spoke about Kenna Security. How Kenna provides customers a roadmap to security, unmatched guidance, and collaborative results. These qualities felt reminiscent of elements found in nature and guided me to developing the foundational brand elements: topography, mountains, and waves.

Defining Key Differentiators

Visual Proof-of-Concept

Color and Gradient Development

The original color palette was teal, lavender and gray accented with lavender to teal gradient which lacked consistency and use case.

My recommendation was to maintain the original palette for familiarity and incorporate additional colors to for greater maturity, depth, and variance. A richer palette to represent confidence (violet), strength (indigo), and optimism (sungold). I also replaced the original light gray with white and included opacities as a neutral replacement.

Photography

It was really important to me that we utilize photos of both real Kenna employees and if stock is necessary, to select images that are reflective of our workforce and process.

In terms of treatment, photos featuring engaged faces treated in black and white with mindfulness to rich blacks. When using as a social card or slide deck, my recommendation is to include a multiplied gradient overlay to provide dimension and depth as well as enhanced legibility and a tie back to the brand colors. Additionally, keeping with the organic wave shapes are a nod to Kenna’s all-encompassing solution.

Marketing Collateral Development

Designed and deployed PowerPoint and Google Slide templates across the organization. These are samples of some of the initial slides and social cards.

E-books, Data Sheets, Solution Briefs

Demand Gen and Sales Enablement is a key part of any startup’s pipeline. One of Kenna’s key personas and target decision makers are CIOs. To target this audience, we created ungated assets including this “5 Things Every CIO Should Know About Vulnerability Management” e-book.

Infographics

Kenna Security was founded on a few basic propositions: Companies have more vulnerabilities than they can patch; but most vulnerabilities present very little risk. By harnessing data, we can help companies decide which vulnerabilities really matter, and they can allocate resources more effectively. The data below comes from Kenna Security’s Prioritization to Prediction research, which analyzes a vast amount of data to create a truly objective analysis picture of the security practices at large companies. For many of these numbers, we relied on a sample of data from over 300 Kenna customers, along with external data from public and private intelligence sources as displayed in some of infographics below.

As part of the design process, I worked with technical stakeholders to validate that the visual interpretations are accurate and digestible by a technical audience.

Social Media Assets

Kenna Security needed a consistent look across social platforms. Below are examples of both Twitter and LinkedIn. Assets and templates were distributed to across the org along with a social media guide that included social media best practices and recommended tone of voice.

“Why Kenna Security?” Brand Video

Telling the story of “Why Kenna Security?” in a roughly two minute video for initial use at the RSA Conference. I was responsible for script development, storyboarding, and art direction in collaboration with Content Marketing and freelance video editor Angie Milosevich.

Website Redesign

To align with the new brand creative, the website needed to be redesigned. One of the priorities for the homepage was to increase conversions. Within one month of the homepage Q1 launch, we saw a 1650% increase in homepage conversions. The whole website is slated to go live at the of Q3 2020. All assets were created in Figma.

Webinar Email Campaign and Registration Landing Page

Webinars are a critical part of Sales Enablement for Kenna Security. With this in mind, I wanted to create a more engaging landing page that highlight the speaker’s expertise and the value add someone would experience by joining a webinar. Within one month of launch, we saw a 36% increase in webinar registrations.

Design System