Energizing SpiderLabs
Turning an elite security research team into a brand people asked for by name.
The situation
SpiderLabs was Trustwave's elite threat research and incident response team, genuinely world-class practitioners producing genuinely valuable research. Inside the security community, the name carried real weight. Outside of it, SpiderLabs was a logo on a report cover and a line item in a sales deck.
The problem wasn't awareness. It was that the brand had no character. A spider is one of the most usable symbols in security, it detects, it waits, it responds with precision, and none of that was being used. The mark sat still while the research it represented did all the work.
Over six months I rebuilt the SpiderLabs brand across every customer touchpoint, and gave it something it had never had: a face.
3X
increase in marketing qualified leads following brand launch,
April 2023
What I Did.
A symbol with a point of view
Repositioned the spider around the three things security teams actually do, precision detection, intelligent defense, decisive response, and built the identity system out from there.
Hunter
Concepted, designed, and launched a robot spider mascot as the brand's ambassador. Hunter appeared across digital, social, print, events, and merchandise. Concepted and executed solo.
A complete visual identity system
Logo usage, color palette, typography, iconography, illustration direction, and tone of voice, documented so the system could be extended by people who weren't in the room when it was built.
A modernized digital presence
Web and social channels rebuilt around the new system, with templates that let the research team stay in-brand without a designer in the loop.
Threat intelligence reports, tailored by vertical
Premium report design applied by industry, so the same research landed differently for a hospital system than it did for a bank.
Integrated campaigns
Digital and print, paid social, display, and event advertising, one concept, sized and adapted across every channel Trustwave ran.
Branded merchandise that people actually wanted
A curated line that turned Hunter into a physical ambassador. Booth traffic went up because people came to the booth for the spider.
The research was always the asset.
The brand just finally caught up to it.
