Unboring B2B: Making Serious Brands Bold, Human and Impossible to Ignore with Kelly Allen

Kelly Allen does not think cybersecurity is boring. She thinks the way it is marketed has been made boring by teams that forgot the buyer is still a person, with emotion, bias, pressure, bad days and limited attention.

As co-founder of Unboring and a former cybersecurity CMO, Kelly now helps cybersecurity companies break out of the sameness that has defined much of the category. Her starting point is not louder colours or gimmicks. It is positioning, messaging, customer experience and the original pain that made the business worth building.

This conversation is a useful challenge for any B2B marketer working in a serious category: if your website, content and customer journey could have your logo removed and be mistaken for a competitor, the problem is not taste. It is strategy.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Tom: You started out thinking you might open a dance school, then ended up as a cybersecurity CMO and agency founder. Which parts of that route shaped how you market serious categories now?

Kelly: My route was unconventional. I went to university as a qualified dance teacher, studied business studies and international marketing, and thought I was going to open my own dance school.

Then I moved to London, got swept up in agency life and never really left. I started in a small boutique agency that was all film, so I worked on film releases, comedian releases and more PR-style work. Orange Wednesdays were around then, if anyone remembers those.

That progressed into events. I worked on a lot around the Olympics, then went into event management for a boutique event hotel. I have always loved hospitality, and I am a big believer that service-based jobs help with marketing and sales. You learn to read consumers, work long hours and hustle. I always look for that on CVs.

I then joined an agency that specialised more in tech. When I found out I was pregnant, we had a few cybersecurity clients come in and none of the girls were interested, so I took them on. I thought I would do it for six or seven months, then be out of there, but I accidentally fell in love with the industry.

After having my daughter, I joined a cybersecurity reseller startup. It was two young, ambitious guys who had no idea about marketing. I sent a cheeky email, joined them, stayed for seven years and we grew it into the millions. After that, with all my experience and frustration about how something as cool as cybersecurity was being marketed in such a boring way, Unboring was born.

Tom: Cybersecurity is high stakes, but the marketing often feels flat. Why does serious B2B work end up so dull?

Kelly: I think everyone assumes it has to be serious because it is work and business. But that has changed so much. COVID pushed that even further. We do not wear suits or sit in offices the way we used to, and who we are at work, at home and in life is much more blended.

Even on LinkedIn, you see more vulnerability, more mental health conversations and more humanity. The old B2B playbook has not changed quickly enough. We need to talk to human beings.

Even if there are multiple stakeholders buying something in B2B, they are still human. They have emotion, biases, good days and bad days. They want to make their lives easier, save money and save time, and they make decisions for emotional reasons too.

In cybersecurity, the human part matters even more. Hacks often happen through a person. People say the person is the weakest link, which is not a great phrase, but the point is that people are trusting. If you educate them in a mundane, boring way, they do not take in the information.

If we want people to become allies in protecting a business, or to think twice before clicking a link, we cannot train them in a boring way and expect them to care. Health and safety is similar. I have done those quick online training links and still have no idea which fire extinguisher to use. If you put me in a burning building and made me choose, I would probably remember because it would go in differently.

People want faster, more engaging, more TikTok-style education. The traditional route of reading a long white paper or report is not how many of us absorb information now.

Tom: Unboring is a bold name, but you have said it is not just about being loud. What do you look for when you audit a cybersecurity brand?

Kelly: Unboring does not mean we walk in with crazy branding and start making everything loud. It means breaking convention and asking how something could be done better.

That could be how your revenue setup works, how your content is distributed, how your customer feels from the first moment they work with you, or whether a HubSpot form could be much slicker. We look for the little bit of coolness in everything.

We always start with an audit. One exercise we do is screenshot a client’s content and website, remove all the logos, then do the same with their competitors and put everything on a board. Then we ask whether they can recognise their own content.

In cybersecurity, that exercise is really interesting because I do not think there has been one slam dunk. But if I put up pictures of shoes, you could recognise Converse, Adidas and Nike very easily.

That shows the problem. If everything looks the same to your customer, how do they decide where to buy?

Cybersecurity has also changed as a category. In the early days, there were not many options, so customers had to buy into the platforms that existed. Now the market is saturated. There are multiple tools for email security, multiple tools for every category, and buyers are researching options themselves.

It is no longer just a platform or price play. Brand, customer service, customer experience, team fit and whether you are built for SMBs or enterprise all matter more. There are better examples now too, like Torq and Wiz. Wiz has just been bought by Google, and they do big brand activation work and have strong personal brands inside the company.

Tom: When you say brand, a lot of CEOs hear expensive logo work or hard-to-measure activity. How do you make brand feel commercial?

Kelly: Brand is not just the logo and colour palette. It is positioning, messaging, how you cut through the noise, your strapline, your ideal customer persona, the imagery you use, the beliefs you stand by and the original pain that made the business exist.

In cybersecurity, a business is often built by an incredible founder who is technical or has found someone technical. They have been in the industry and felt a real pain. Somewhere along the way, the company becomes corporate and loses that original “ouch”. If we can drag that out in one sentence, that is usually why the product is going to market.

When people come to Unboring, we are lucky because the name qualifies people. We are not the agency for everyone. People usually reach out because they have seen our content, heard me or Sarah speak, or read something and thought, “Yes, that is the problem we have.”

In my old CMO role, getting buy-in was harder, especially with finance. I remember wanting to send personalised Christmas jumpers to customers instead of the usual corporate hamper that gets divided around the office. In the board meeting, the question was, “What is the ROI?”

I was cheeky and mocked up the jumpers with “What’s the ROI with this?” on the label, then sent it back saying, “Look, it is there in every jumper.” But as I have matured, I have learned you need the data and a way to track things.

For something like that, you might look at customer churn, renewal rates, event attendance or whether customers engage more afterwards. Brand awareness also affects recruitment. If you are a cool brand, it is easier to recruit, keep people and make them proud of the team. You can look at HR costs, customer loyalty, reviews, advocacy and what prospects mention on demo calls.

With Unboring, Sarah and I wear branded jackets and create different designs for different events. At Ideas Fest, someone came up to us and said, “You’re the Unboring girls,” because of the jackets. That is hard to track perfectly, but we now have a meeting booked with that person. That came from product placement and brand recognition.

Tom: If a marketer does not already have leadership buy-in for creative brand work, where should they start?

Kelly: Get into the data. If you are not great at data, find someone who is. Find someone in RevOps, finance or sales who can help you prove what is happening. You cannot deny data, facts or clear signals.

I think a lot of targets like MQLs were built by martech companies to prove the martech is working. You may need your own systems and spreadsheets to back up what you are saying, especially because dark social and other signals are not always tracked properly.

I used to speak to salespeople and, if they got a really nice email back because we had sent a welcome pack, I would screenshot it. Then I would show the pipeline growth of that customer and use it later as a case study for why welcome packs or Christmas gifts mattered.

If you do not have your own data yet, find examples from businesses your CEO, board or investors respect. Show what they did, what figures they achieved and how you would apply a similar idea.

Rory Sutherland is a great person to read because he shows that sometimes marketing works for reasons that look like nonsense. Nike is another good example. They have budget to experiment and they know not everything will work. That is hard to get signed off, but if you can educate your CEO or finance director and help them understand marketing language, that helps.

Find a way to communicate what you are trying to do in a language they understand. If you go in saying you want to brand up a taco shop, they might ask what you are talking about. If you can show that 95% of your customers love Mexican food, suddenly you have a reason.

Tom: You argue that brand has to show up beyond marketing. How does that work inside the company?

Kelly: Every person who works for your company is an extension of your brand. One bad phone call or terrible email can undo a lot of hard work at the front. A bad experience travels further than a good one.

That is why the brand foundation matters. How do you articulate who you are? How do you turn up as a team? How do you work, talk and interact? What does that look like in how you dress, how you onboard people and how you make employees feel?

If your onboarding is boring, you have already started wrong. If it is engaging and makes someone feel part of the brand, that is different. When someone joins your company, you want them to post that they are excited, show what they received, talk about the training and say they love the job.

Brand also has to reach finance. When someone becomes a customer, what does the invoice look like when it lands in their inbox? Does it feel like the same company they met at your event? If not, you have a break in the experience.

I think brand is a team sport. HR needs to be aligned on onboarding. Finance needs to understand how the customer receives information. Sales need to be part of it too. The foundational work becomes your North Star.

If you are in-house and do not yet have power to change everything, start by listening. Sit in meetings like you do not know anything. Befriend someone in each department and learn what they do, what hurts and where marketing could reduce friction.

If sales are struggling to get engagement, work with one rep. Build a LinkedIn campaign, record videos on your lunch break, test video in outreach and measure whether demos improve. Use that person as a case study. If it works, then you can ask what would happen if you rolled it out across the whole team.

If finance has friction collecting details for invoices, maybe marketing can make that warmer with a 30-second explainer video, a simple PDF or a more human message. Anywhere marketing can remove friction and help money come into the business faster, do that.

Tom: Your own LinkedIn presence is consistent and fun. How do you keep that going on days when you do not feel fun?

Kelly: When we started the business, I set myself a target to post Monday to Friday every day for a year and measure the results. Sarah does not want to do that. She is comfortable with three days a week. I wanted to go all in.

It is like going to the gym. Some mornings I wake up and think, “Absolutely not. I have nothing interesting to say.” I even did a post saying I had tried 10 times to record a video and nothing came out, with screenshots of what did not work. People liked that because it was real.

Something that feels obvious or stupid to you might not be obvious to someone else. If you have learned a Canva trick, found a good AI prompt or discovered a better way to do something, there will be someone in your audience who did not know it.

I save posts I like and ask myself why I found them engaging, then remix that for my audience. I look outside LinkedIn too. My husband sends me things and says, “Have you seen this?” I have built my own personalised GPT so I can ask it for ideas in the morning and play around with themes.

I read books, highlight things and keep notes like a journal. It is muscle memory. For us, nearly 90% of our business comes directly through LinkedIn, so if I am having a bad day, I think that someone might miss something they needed to hear.

Me and you are talking because of LinkedIn. That would not be happening if I had not posted there. You never know who is watching. People may not like or comment, but they do scroll. If someone looks you up and sees lots of useful content, that matters.

AI has also taken a lot of the grunt work out of marketing. Research, data, video production, Canva, imagery, all of that is easier than when I started. It helps us go faster, but it does not replace the human touch. You still need photographers, designers and marketers. AI is not the be all and end all, and people should not panic that they are going to lose their jobs.

The trait that has helped me most is curiosity. I always ask why. Anyone who has worked with me knows I will ask, “Why does the customer care?” I am a bit of a poker bear. I push, and I try to sit in the customer’s position.

For recommendations, I would read anything by Rory Sutherland. The Nudge is a good marketing podcast. I would also join communities like Pretty Little Marketer and Girls in Marketing. Take free courses, play with AI, try vibe coding, expand your network and have fun. Marketing is meant to be fun.