we helped Vendict start conversations with their target audience using thought leadership content.
James Heron unpacks the process and results of our most meaningful content project to date.
What we delivered
✅ 9 thought leadership pieces including The CISO Burnout Report in 3 months
How it helped
✅ Meaningful engagement and real conversations with a hard-to-access target audience
✅ Fueled a PR campaign
✅ Provided insights for presentations at global industry events
Client input
✅ 2 initial meetings for scoping and topic ideation
✅ ~2 rounds of approvals (via docs and email) for each article
✅ Facilitating interviews with industry experts
how the project started
“Vendict automates one of the most tedious of a CISO’s job – filling out security questionnaires.
We wanted to build brand awareness with an overworked and hard to access target audience.
Our idea was to lean into our position as outsiders in the space with content that doesn’t blend in with standard tech marketing.
But we were in a rut, knowing the direction we wanted to take but finding it hard to create quality content ourselves.
An email from lowercase popped up, it was the best cold outreach email we’ve ever seen.”
knowing lowercase was the right partner
“The initial discussion with Josh and Lou was open and honest, we all just accepted that we were learning together and that if we worked together we could create something different.
Lou and Josh brought insights from other projects, but not in the way that assumed they knew exactly what to do. They considered our industry carefully and made it clear that the content wouldn’t be perfect the first time around. This approach was actually very reassuring.
The initial topics from our leadership team weren’t quite resonating, but lowercase turned them into meaningful topics that we were excited to explore.
Lou, Josh, and Ettore came back with such deep research for each of the topics, and they pushed us to develop more content around interviews with CISOs.”
strong project management and editorial processes
“Ettore is a very hands-on project manager and immediately adjusted to our work style.
When there’s 100 things in your inbox, content isn’t always at the top, so whenever things slipped Ettore would always pick up the slack and take initiative. It was a very safe hands approach, and very well organised.
9 pieces of thought leadership content over 3 months might not seem like a lot, but we were growing other marketing channels at the same time so we see it as a win.
We started out thinking we needed to talk about technical or product-related topics like security and compliance. But lowercase helped us focus on the people behind cybersecurity.
They positioned the content around real stories they found from leading CISOs, we published and tagged them on LinkedIn. One of the posts was reshared 17 times by CISOs, and 3 CISOs got in touch with us directly as a result.
This was major for us because it’s so difficult to get in front of CISOs. They’re like gold dust, and it’s what our sales team are paid handsomely to do.”
the project highlight: The CISO Burnout Report
“This was an investigative piece that evolved over time, lowercase was there every step of the way. Together, we realised the dire situation of stress levels in cybersecurity and that the institutions designed to help these people are failing.
We managed to speak to 16 CISOs in 15 countries for this content piece, which just showed how well the topic resonated.
lowercase created the questions and used the interviews to produce an industry-critical document. That changed everything drastically – it’s just not what any content team can do.
This thought leadership project was a lightbulb moment – our industry is highly technical, but our content needs to be about people.
Our CISO Burnout report is timeless. It’s fueled our talks at CISO events around the world.
It’s achieving exactly what we set out to do when we engaged lowercase – we want Vendict to be known for great content.
lowercase helped us dive into dry, technical topics and breathe life into them. I would have believed their team had 5-10 years in cybersecurity judging by the content they produced.”
a message to marketers wanting to do thought leadership but struggling to find the team to execute it
“Client-agency relationships often look like this: the leaders make you feel special to close the deal, but once you’re onboarded you get handed off to an operations team and the relationship feels different.
That’s not what happened with lowercase – Ettore, Josh, and Lou all have the same vibe and dedication to the craft.”
planning a thought leadership project but need a competent team to execute it?
We’d love to hear more about it and see if we can help – but we’ll only throw our hat in the ring if we’re confident we can nail it.
