Key Wins

• Primary brand research; founders, all senior executives, analysts, customers

• Competitive audit, including positioning and messaging

• Name and logo improvements

• Brand strategy platform; value proposition, brand personality and reasons to believe 

• Brand verbal and visual identity, guidelines, templates, assets

“We were only known as ‘the fire-wall guys,’ but we had a cutting edge new security platform to sell.”

Repositioning the Brand for Growth

Palo Alto Networks was growing at an astounding rate: 46% increased revenue and on-boarding 200 new employees a quarter. But their early success also pigeon-holed the company as “the firewall guys” — a single pivotal product, but not reflective of the newer, breakthrough enterprise security platform.   

Change the Logo and Name?

On the heels of the massive growth, some fundamental brand questions arose: should the company alter its name for greater clarity? Should the company change its logo for better visibility? How could the company build on the success of its firewalls but shift the brand position to include a larger security platform solution?

Create a Unified Corporate Brand Strategy

As the company grew, it needed a framework to nurture and sustain its brand in market; align marketing dollars behind a unified brand strategy instead of scattered, product-level communications; and tap into a differentiated brand personality to make each message memorable.

“Most of our competitors emphasized customers’ vulnerability — the guy in the hoody breaching their perimeter. We emphasized productivity and innovation as the key benefits from our security offering.”

Qualitative Research Points to New Opportunity

I conducted an audit of the existing brand, including a competitive audit and qualitative 1:1 interviews with key stakeholders including founders, all senior executives, analysts and customers. The results showed that while PAN enjoyed significant awareness as a leader in firewall technology, its most innovative offering — their enterprise security platform solution — had very little awareness. This was a huge brand opportunity. 

Unconventional Stands Out

Following qualitative research, I facilitated a conversation with the senior leadership team to discuss changing the corporate name and signature. While the team opted to continue with existing elements, the provocative conversation helped foster support for a different approach to the brand expression — including placing the rectangular logo at a jaunty angle, which accurately captures the bold, unconventional personality of the brand and suggests upward growth.

Breakthrough Creative

I created a brand strategy platform that reflected the new security offering for enterprise, differentiated against the competition through the customer benefit of empowering productivity, and enabled marketing communications to reach more customers and prospects.