Kyle Flaherty started his career at a small PR firm in Maynard, Massachusetts, where his first client was a firewall company, and he admits he didn't know what a firewall was. He learned fast, moved into marketing and demand generation at a run of startups, and has worked in security since 1997. When we recorded this episode he was leading brand and North America marketing at Cybereason, an endpoint detection and response company he joined in June 2020.
Kyle and I go back a long way. In this episode of The PR Bunker Podcast, he explains why Cybereason put owls in its TV ads, what comes after a brand campaign and why the people he works with are the best part of the job.
A few takeaways from the conversation:
Kyle owns plenty of connected devices and said security and privacy always come down to risk versus reward. If a Nest saves him $12 a month on electricity, he'll use it and take small steps to protect himself. The bigger threat, in his view, was what was happening to companies, and he pointed to the SolarWinds breach and the Hafnium attacks involving Microsoft, the kind of work often carried out by nation-state hackers.
The owl had always been in Cybereason's logo, and Kyle learned more about owls than he ever expected to. Their vision, their ability to hunt at night and their silent attacks map to what the technology does. The team built a set of four owl characters representing detection, response, prevention and protection, and used them across TV, radio, NPR sponsorships and sales presentations. Kyle's measure of success was simple. If people remember Cybereason as the owl company, that's fine with him.
Kyle said the campaign was only step one. The next phase was carrying the same message into sales calls, media pitches and content, like the material Cybereason published about the Microsoft attacks, and getting the CEO and founders in front of audiences because they'd done security work in the trenches for years. The company had just hired a new head of corporate communications to take PR further. When I asked what he loves about the job, he said it's the people, including a core group who came with him from his previous security company.
Kyle said the easiest way to find him is to search his name along with Cybereason.
Listen to the full episode above.
Reading is the hello. SBGA is where we get to yes.
What does Cybereason do?
At the time of this episode, Kyle described Cybereason as an endpoint detection and response company that protects laptops and other devices attackers use to get into an organization.
Why does Cybereason use an owl in its advertising?
The owl was already in the logo, and its traits, including strong vision, hunting at night and attacking silently, matched how the technology works. The campaign created a team of four owls, each representing part of what the product does.
What should come after a brand awareness campaign?
Kyle's answer was to carry the same story into sales calls, media pitches and content, and to get company leaders out talking about the issues consistently.
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