I’ve been in cyber for a very long time, which means I’ve been to Black Hat eleventeen times.
This one hit different.
This was my first time at the show when I wasn’t a CMO, didn’t have a booth or events to worry about, a team to support, a CEO to keep happy, or a slate of meetings as long as my arm.
I was able to take it all in, in a way that was far more NPC than player.
I also took 55 photos of the floor. I could have taken 550, but the story would have been the same.
Here’s what I saw:
- Obligatory, but worth mentioning — the show is one loud sea of sameness, with few exceptions. Concrete example: I observed 6 booths, located nearby one another, with near-identical messaging. It left me wondering what would happen if you just switched the logos.
- “Agentic” is more camouflage than description. Everything is either an agentic product or an enabler of the same. Fair enough. AI is playing a huge role in security today. But I’m reasonably technical, and I couldn’t tell what most of these companies actually do by glancing at their booths. So what must buyers be thinking?
- A few vendors cut through (more on this later). My sense is that they put significant effort and dollars into doing so. I predict that those who didn’t will go home sad, or decide that the show floor doesn’t work. Fair enough; it might not.
- Visually: blue blue blue. And some purple.
- Plain English, in large type, is a perennial winner. Recovering CMO rant: If I can’t read what you do and understand it in a flash, from a decent distance, try again.
As Jillian Jones, who runs communications at OX Security, told me ruefully, "Right now there's so much noise, and yet so much of what is being said is very repetitive. Very little does stand out."
Her philosophy resonated: "A little bit raw is much more human… being willing to be a little bit less polished sometimes, and being willing to challenge the consensus.
So What Does Stand Out?
Creativity. Authenticity. Human interaction.
1. Creativity
A few booths did really stand out.
One of the sharpest marketing moves I saw was from Zero Networks, who built around customers. Real human customers were at the center of the booth in Zero Networks shirts printed in a different color than the staff's. A security buyer could speak to a peer in real time.
Jaz Fulton, Zero Networks' director of brand and content, told me, “We at any time have three to four customers sitting or standing at the bar, ready to talk to anyone who wants to learn about their experience with us or even just their experience in the industry."
Even more interesting was their philosophy behind it: "Everyone is saying loud things here at Black Hat and in the industry. And I think to cut through the noise, you have to be quiet and secure and honest and real."
Just a few others of note:
- Dropzone AI built a full 1950s diner with milkshakes, a counter, staff in soda-jerk uniforms. The genius isn't the theme. It's the furniture. People sitting at a counter talk to the person across it. People at a screen stand with their backs to the aisle.
- Novee built a working gym: staff in character, loaded barbells, a handwritten schedule on a whiteboard.
- Axonius went the other way entirely: a flat orange monolith and deadpan swag ("This is a tote bag."). Smart and simple.
And for those vendors who are highlighting AI capabilities on their signage, the best ones actually showed it. As Sarah Kuranda Vallone, VP of Marketing at cyber investor NightDragon, told me the best vendors in their portfolio are "not just saying you do AI, but showing it… versus just AI-washing it and saying it's going to do this magical AI thing."
2. Authenticity
As my old colleague Sara Dacey, an event marketing leader at Dataminr, told me, "Everyone gets the same emails from all the same BDRs."
One reason that I spent so much time on the show floor is that it’s the visual representation of a cyber buyer’s inbox. These folks are professional skeptics, and they can smell vendor BS from a country mile.
That effort and those dollars I mentioned earlier? Turns out the good ones didn’t use it to buy flashier camouflage; they spent it on being unmistakably, recognizably themselves.
So what to do? Creativity without authenticity grabs attention but doesn’t connect. Authenticity without creativity gets ignored. To stand out, do both.
Here’s what some of the leaders I spoke to said:
Rob Sobers, CMO at Varonis: “Do things that don’t scale! When you start spewing AI slop, people stop paying attention to you and your brand."
Valerie Worman, VP of Marketing at Monad: "Everything we do is organic. And so content and trust are really, really, really important… if we're doing content that's slop, you've lost trust already."
Ash Parikh, CMO at Absolute Security: "Truly successful marketers use AI to automate, human psychology to personalize, and intentional engagement with ICPs by giving before asking."
3. Human Interaction
I didn’t capture the best of Black Hat with my camera. No booth, no swag, no slide. Just people actually talking to each other.
As most of us know, the most meaningful action at Black Hat (or RSA, or Infosec, or Gartner…) is outside the show floor. It’s in the private meeting spaces, intimate events, and hallway conversations. You know, the human stuff.
We go to these big events for the same reason the guy robs the bank. It’s where the money is. But for us, it’s where the people are; the buyers, the influencers, the partners, the investors. And, not for nothing, the friends we’ve made in the industry.
I was fortunate enough to participate in a CMO dinner with Sequel.io on opening Tuesday. There was almost zero discussion of our individual businesses beyond introductions. When business came up, it was more about higher-level topics (data sovereignty, fundraising). But 90% of the conversation was about far more personal topics (What’s your personal why? Best vacation you’ve ever taken). As a result, the dinner was memorable, and the connections were real and durable, not transactional.
On the buyer side, my favorite events as a CMO were always our customer dinners. Away from the carnival barking of the show floor, we could have real human conversations with people who used our products or were thinking of doing so. In my experience, there was little shop talk, and much more connection. This year I heard that more than 130 security leaders registered for that dinner.
In both dinners, there was zero vendor pitch. No need. In the AI era, and particularly in cyber, people want to buy from people they know and trust.
Going back to the show floor for a quick aside — 5 of the vendor booths I shot specifically called out the “human” side of things.
What does all this mean?
In three days at Black Hat, I spent hours on the show floor, talked to dozens of marketers, had dinner with some of the top CMOs in cyber, and had many private catch-ups with industry friends.
What did I take away?
- Creativity: If you’re going to do a booth, labor over it. Make it stand out and tell a story. Find a way to make it human, approachable, and memorable. That’s how you dodge the sea of sameness.
- Authenticity: The debate over whether Black Hat is “worth it” is nonsense. Your users are there. Your buyers are there. It’s never about “do or don’t do”, it’s about how authentically you show up.
- Human Interaction: Plan dinners and experiences mindfully to encourage real connection. It means recruiting carefully to get the right people in the room, and being mindful about seating charts. But it also means finding ways to show who you are as a brand by the way you interact at the event and afterward.
And above all, put in the human effort. People dig it.
