Most breaches don’t start with a broken firewall. They start with an email that seems to come from a colleague, a supplier or the boss, and a busy person who clicks. Aquilai had built Ajax Intelligence to catch exactly those messages: software that analyses every incoming email with technical checks and linguistic analysis, then warns the employee with a simple traffic light banner when something looks deceptive.
The technology was serious, but the company was still presenting itself under an earlier Cybershield identity. To win over the IT and security leaders it was selling to, Aquilai needed a brand as considered as its product, and a way to explain a technical idea in a few seconds.
The identity grew out of the name. Aquilai carries two ideas at once: the aquila, the eagle standard carried before the Roman legions as a sign of strength and victory, and the AI that powers the software. We explored letterforms, shields and wordmarks before settling on a triangle holding a white eagle’s head, set above a light, open wordmark and the descriptor Cyberintelligence.
The same thinking shaped the product family. Each product takes the name of a legendary shield, Ajax, Achilles, Aegis and Ancilia, and sits under the Aquilai mark as Ajax Intelligence, Achilles Intelligence and so on, so every product’s initials spell AI. Each sub-brand has its own colour, from deep blue to green.
The identity runs on a Venice blue gradient set against a near black, with a halftone world map and classical statues and shields used as imagery. We set it down in a first-edition brand style guide and applied it across business cards, a letterhead, a presentation template, report and brochure designs, and graphics for the website’s home and services pages.
For Aquilai’s partner programme we designed a holographic Certified Partner label, its eagle mark set over a repeating Ajax Intelligence pattern.
Ajax had to explain itself inside the inbox. We designed the warning states it adds to an email, from very strong signs of phishing in red, through amber, to a teal all clear, and a report page that sets out why a message was flagged: the sender appears to be imitating someone from your company, pushing you into an action, untrustworthy or mass produced, with a map showing where the email came from.
We also made an animated video presenting Ajax in the same visual language.
With the brand in place, we turned to demand. We proposed a 12-month marketing plan built around LinkedIn campaigns for a case study, a white paper, a breakfast seminar and a webinar, alongside Google Ads, press releases, SEO, a fact sheet and further case studies. The first campaign went live on LinkedIn in October 2019, promoting a customer story about a UK aerospace organisation using Ajax to stop phishing attacks on Office 365.
For four weeks we split tested one variable after another: case study copy against sales copy, then target account tiers, industries, company sizes, job titles and years of experience. The case study copy won in the first week, and targeting by job title brought in the strongest sales qualified leads, so it became the master advert. By early December 2019 the campaign had generated 39 qualified leads.
Aquilai has since turned its focus to unifying cybersecurity defences with single-console visibility across critical infrastructure.
Outfly, a London brand, marketing and product agency, designed Aquilai’s identity and style guide, the logos for its Ajax, Achilles, Aegis and Ancilia sub-brands, product interface designs and marketing materials, and ran a LinkedIn lead generation campaign.
It brings together two ideas: the aquila, the eagle standard carried before the Roman legions, and AI, the technology behind the software. The logo places a white eagle’s head inside a triangle.
It analysed every incoming email with technical checks and linguistic analysis, and warned employees with a simple traffic light banner when a message showed signs of phishing.
By promoting a customer case study and testing one variable after another: copy, target account tiers, industries, company sizes, job titles and years of experience. Targeting by job title brought in the strongest sales qualified leads and became the master advert, and the campaign had generated 39 qualified leads by early December 2019.
