ThreatConnect was building something genuinely new — a collaborative threat intelligence platform for C-suite buyers at Fortune 500 companies. The technology was sophisticated. The audience was not interested in hearing about it that way.

We built a brand system around a single insight: nature solved cybersecurity long before Silicon Valley tried. Every animal in the campaign was chosen for a specific defensive behavior — elephants communicate threats across the herd, dolphins coordinate against predators, jellyfish overwhelm through sheer impenetrability. The biomechanical illustrations were created by comic book artist Felix Serrano — entirely by hand, before AI existed. The campaign launched at Defcon’s party at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

The work spanned full brand identity, OOH, print, digital, and environmental — including office installations. ThreatConnect was voted DC’s hottest startup and received an AIGA nod for branding. The illustrations have aged better than most work from that era precisely because they were made by a human with a point of view, not a machine with a prompt.

Yes. Cybersecurity is one of the hardest categories to brand because the audience is simultaneously technical and skeptical of being marketed to. This campaign didn’t try to explain the technology. It made people feel what the technology does. That’s a harder problem and a more durable solution.

In October 2025, Dataminr acquired ThreatConnect for $290 million.