Digital Marketing Animation

CyberArk commissioned us to create a suite of digital marketing animation assets that can be used across various digital marketing activations. We produced a scenario based ‘choose your own adventure style’ interactive PDF, and a two-minute comic-book style animation.

“CyberArk is the global leader in privileged access management, a critical layer of IT security to protect data, infrastructure and assets across the enterprise, in the cloud and throughout the DevOps pipeline. CyberArk delivers the industry’s most complete solution to reduce the risk created by privileged credentials and secrets. The company is trusted by the world’s leading organizations, including more than 50 percent of the Fortune 500, to protect against external attackers and malicious insiders.”

The Challenge in Marketing Animation

  • With competitor content looking very much the same, we were asked to create a new and captivating analogy to explain CyberArk’s service offering – that stood out from the rest
  • Engage their target audience with a story that explains how the company protects their clients from hackers and espionage with the overuse of boring jargon
  • Create the animation assets in a way that it can be used in multiple ways, enabling various marketing activations. E.g. multiple re-use across social media channels as bitesize media clips with text overlay.
illustration of ninja on top of buildings dodging lasers used in a digital marketing animation

The Solution:

  • Align with CyberArks’s main target audience type – people who work in the information technology sector – we went for a bespoke and bold graphic-novel book style featuring two intertwined worlds; the office environment and the world of data.
  • A ninja like hacker tries to intrude the system to steal the ‘Crown Jewels’. The Crown Jewels are a companies most critical assets – client data, intellectual property, service up time etc.
  • Modular content – from the start we set up to make the assets as versatile and modular as possible – e.g. the animation could be edited down to short sections and be used with overlaid text for bitesize social media clips, for use on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and Instagram.
  • Gamification – we also created a scenario-based ‘choose your own adventure style’ interactive PDF, in which the player needs to think like a hacker in order to complete the game and score points. The illustration style is the same as in the animation.

What We Did:

Typically the subject matter is marketed in a very dry and bland way. We were asked to create something engaging and vibrant, a creative approach that would stand out from the crowd, and competitors. With careful consideration we agreed that a comic book style, graphic novel illustration style would work best and we developed a dramatic story and visuals around two intertwined worlds; the office environment, and the data world.

“This is your Crown Jewels, your most critical assets (client data, intellectual property, service up time etc). Like anything precious, it always needs protection from unscrupulous characters. But unlike the physical world, it’s more a question of when, than if, an attacker will get inside. Whoever they are, they know privilege account credentials are the route to those crown jewels.”

The Story

The challenge was to inform the viewer about privileged access security in an engaging and captivating way, while avoiding overloading them with technical jargon. With that in mind how do you show a world in which all activity circles around ‘invisible’ data?

Taking off in an office environment we are quickly pulled into a world behind the screen, with streaming data and the crown jewels at its centre. System intruders and unscrupulous characters are hiding inconspicuously, advancing steadily and waiting for their chance to finally strike and steal the crown jewels.

The catastrophe is perfect, but could have been avoided if there had been Cyberark’s multi-layered privileged access security protection in place!

A still from a 2D marketing animation of a person's thumb on a scanner with an image of the scan on a screen next to the scanner and the words 'Control and Accountability' below

Marketing Animation – Our Process

If you are unfamiliar with the animation production process, this blog post What to expect when you work on an animation with Sliced Bread might serve to help you, it provides a complete guide on how we typically approach our projects, from concept to final delivery. It also provides information on how we structure our fees and plan the production schedule.

Contact Us About Your Digital Marketing Animation

Would you like to know more about how animation and technology can support your digital marketing requirements? Please feel free to drop us a line at info@sbanimation.com, or give us a call on +44 (0)207 148 0526. We would be happy to help.

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We’re an award-winning animation and immersive technology studio, creating everything from animated explainer videos, gamified e-learning to XR experiences.

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illustration of ninja hanging on rope behind a case which is holding the crown jewels and is protected by lasers
Animation Still of a Blueprint Showing Location of a Purple and Gold Crown
top down view of a city buildings in comic book style
digital environment with a shady figure in the foreground, the crown jewels in the distant centre and people walking and standing around
Illustrated close-up of a man clutching his head in shock or panic, mouth open and eyes wide, used to convey stress or urgency in a corporate characters scene.
illustration of office people being scanned by radar with text saying real time analytics