If you were to walk the floor of a major cybersecurity convention anywhere in the world, from San Francisco to Dubai, you would eventually succumb to a specific kind of sensory fatigue. It is a world of blue. Cobalt blue, navy blue, electric blue. There are digital maps of the world with threatening red pulsing dots. There are images of hooded figures hunched over keyboards in dark rooms. There are padlocks, shields, and brick walls. And there is language that feels less like an invitation to a solution and more like a warning from a dystopian future. Zero Trust. Threat Vector. Attack Surface. Kill Chain.
It is an industry that is simultaneously the most important infrastructure of our modern lives and the most difficult to truly understand. It protects our bank accounts, our hospitals, our power grids, and our identities. Yet, for years, the way this industry spoke to the world was stuck in a loop of technical jargon and fear.
Sara Carty and Kelly Allen noticed this numbness. They are the Founder & CEO and Co-Founder & CMO, respectively, of UNBORING.
Sara and Kelly founded UNBORING not to add to the noise, but to tune it out. They founded it to answer a question that seems simple but is actually quite radical in a sector driven by complexity: Your tech isn’t boring, so why is your marketing?
The Pattern in the Noise
To understand where UNBORING came from, you have to look at where Sara and Kelly have been. Their careers were not forged in the abstract towers of theory but in the trenches of technology and cybersecurity marketing. They spent years working within emerging businesses, the kind of places where marketing is often viewed as a lever to be pulled rather than a voice to be cultivated.
They worked in crowded, highly technical markets. They watched as brilliant engineers built tools that could quite literally save a company from ruin. The technology was genuinely impressive. It was complex, elegant, and necessary. But then came the communication.
“Over time, we repeatedly saw the same pattern,” they explain, reflecting on those early days. It was a cycle of repetition. Different products, same language. Different companies, same imagery. And almost always, the same fear-led messaging.
It creates a specific kind of fatigue. When every message is a warning, no message is a warning. When every product claims to be the ultimate shield, the buyer ceases to believe in shields at all.
What motivated the creation of UNBORING was not a desire to just make things ‘pretty.’ It was born from a disconnect. Sara and Kelly saw a chasm between the gravity of what cybersecurity actually does and the triviality of how it is sold.
“Cybersecurity protects real people, real businesses, and real infrastructure,” they note. There is a weight to that statement. It is about the safety of data, yes, but data is just a proxy for people’s lives. Yet, the industry had fallen into a habit of stripping out the human impact. They were selling boxes and wires and cloud permissions, removing the emotional relevance until all that was left was feature lists and fear.
UNBORING was founded to challenge that status quo. It exists to help cybersecurity brands tell clearer, more meaningful stories about what they do, why they exist, and why they matter. And crucially, they aim to do this without dumbing down the complexity of the technology. They respect the intelligence of the audience enough to know that you can be clear without being simplistic.
Flipping the Script on Fear
There is a phrase you will hear if you spend enough time in the orbit of Sara and Kelly: “Your tech isn’t boring, so why is your marketing?”
It is a question that stops people. It forces a pause. It highlights the gap that pushed them to flip the script. The biggest gap they saw was differentiation. In the cybersecurity ecosystem, companies struggle to articulate why they are meaningfully different. They rely on lists of features or technical claims that five other competitors can also make. The result is a cacophony where everyone is shouting the same thing at the same volume.
But the more insidious gap was the reliance on fear.
Fear is an easy sell. It grabs attention. It spikes the adrenaline. But Sara and Kelly understood something fundamental about human psychology: fear does not build trust. Fear is a transactional emotion. It works for a moment, but it does not build brand equity. You cannot build a relationship on the premise that the world is ending.
“We flipped the script by starting with positioning and narrative, not tactics,” they say.
This is where the “Why” comes in. They do not start with the LinkedIn post or the email subject line. They start with the existential questions.
- What does this brand stand for?
- Who is it for?
- What does it enable customers to do better than anyone else?
They work with brands to find anchors in real differentiation, not theatre. The goal is not to be loud for the sake of being loud. It is not about putting a clown nose on a firewall. It is about being clear, credible, and distinct. It is about replacing the shadowy hacker in the hoodie with the confident CISO who sleeps better at night because the system actually works.
The Anatomy of UNBORING
So, what does this look like in practice? How do they operationalize the removal of boredom?
UNBORING is not a standard agency. They do not treat cybersecurity as just one vertical among many, sandwiched between toothpaste and luxury cars. It is their sole focus. This is a critical distinction. It means they understand the constraints. They know the language. They respect the risk. They understand the reality of selling and communicating in a regulated, high-stakes environment.
Their core offerings span brand strategy, messaging, content, campaigns, and go-to-market support. They build positioning frameworks and brand identities. They develop creative campaigns and content strategies. They handle events and community-led marketing. They even get into the weeds of commercial enablement for sales teams, ensuring that the promise made by the marketing is the same promise kept by the sales rep.
But there is an area of their work that perhaps best illustrates their unique approach: security awareness.
For the uninitiated, security awareness training is often the bane of the corporate employee’s existence. It is the mandatory video you watch once a year, telling you not to click on suspicious links. It is usually dry, forgettable, and viewed as a compliance hurdle.
Sara and Kelly looked at this and saw an opportunity. They work with enterprise cybersecurity teams to get more value from these investments. They asked: Why can’t this be interesting?
“By borrowing consumer marketing tactics and campaign thinking, we turn dry, forgettable security content into things people would actually stop for on their feeds,” they explain. They take the same security messages but build them to “survive the scroll.”
This is servant leadership in action. They are serving the employee who has to watch the content, respecting their time and attention span. They are serving the security team, helping them actually change behavior rather than just ticking a box. They are bringing humanity to the driest corner of the industry.
The Art of Partnership
To watch Sara and Kelly operate is to watch a study in complementarity. They are co-founders, yes, but the dynamic is deeper than titles. Sara is the CEO; Kelly is the CMO. But in the daily trenches of building a business, they are partners in the truest sense.
Their leadership styles are closely aligned, yet they create what they call a “healthy tension.” They both bring experience across strategy, creativity, and narrative thinking. They share a focus on building brands that combine substance and style.
“We talk things through, sharpen ideas together, and never leave ‘well enough’ alone,” they say.
This refusal to accept “well enough” is the engine of their growth. It is easy to settle for the safe answer. In cybersecurity, the safe answer is usually blue. The safe answer is usually a padlock. The safe answer is usually a technical jargon soup. Sara and Kelly push past the safe, obvious answers in favor of work that is clearer, braver, and actually worth paying attention to.
They navigate decision-making by prioritizing movement. They move with pace, but not panic. It is a deliberate speed, born of confidence in their shared vision. They are building brands that people trust, recognize, and remember, and they know that you cannot do that if you are paralyzed by the fear of being different.
Their days are a mix of strategic direction, client relationships, and the unglamorous but vital work of building a scalable agency. They are shaping positioning, ensuring quality, developing partnerships, and building the internal processes that allow creativity to flourish without descending into chaos.
But the most important decisions they make at this stage are about focus.
“UNBORING isn’t designed to be a fit for everyone,” they admit. This is a brave admission for a growing business. With a name like theirs and a very deliberate way of working, they know they are not for the faint of heart. They partner best with companies that want to challenge convention. They look for clients who value clarity over comfort.
The Courage of “No”
Leadership is easy when the sun is shining and the invoices are being paid. It is tested when the short-term opportunity conflicts with the long-term vision.
Sara and Kelly have faced these moments. As UNBORING has grown, they have attracted attention. There have been moments where attractive opportunities appeared, lucrative contracts, big names, that simply did not align with their positioning or the kind of work they want to be known for.
It is the classic entrepreneur’s dilemma. Do you take the money to keep the lights on, even if it means diluting your soul? Or do you hold the line?
For Sara and Kelly, leadership means saying no.
“In those moments, leadership means saying no and staying aligned to core principles, even when the short-term reward appears tempting,” they reflect.
This is where the “Why” protects the “Who.”
By returning to their positioning, by asking whether an opportunity strengthens or dilutes what they stand for, they navigate these tests. It requires a profound trust in the future. It requires believing that by turning down the wrong work, you are making space for the right work. It is a discipline that separates the agencies that survive from the agencies that matter.
Clarity for the Startup, Excavation for the Enterprise
One of the fascinating aspects of UNBORING’s portfolio is that it spans the spectrum from fast-moving startups to global enterprises. The strategic approach changes, but the core truth remains the same.
With early-stage companies, the work is about establishing clarity. These companies are often bursting with ideas and technical prowess, but can sometimes lack a coherent story. Sara and Kelly help them define the value proposition. They narrow the target audience. They create a strong foundation that can scale.
“Startups benefit most from focus and coherence rather than trying to appeal to everyone at once,” they note.
With established brands, the work is different. It is archeology. It is evolution rather than creation. These companies often have legacy positioning, internal silos, and a history of conservative brand decisions that have calcified over time.
Here, the work becomes about rediscovering what makes the business distinctive. It is about empowering teams to communicate with more confidence and humanity. It is about showing a global enterprise that they can still be human, even in a highly regulated environment. They help these giants find their voice again, stripping away the layers of corporate speak to reveal the purpose underneath.
The Impact of Choice
In a short space of time, the impact of UNBORING has been felt across the ecosystem. They have delivered full rebrands for cybersecurity companies that were tired of looking like everyone else. They became the official content partner for GISEC Dubai, a significant node in the global cybersecurity network. They have expanded their work into the US market, taking their philosophy to the biggest stage of all. They have partnered with global brands on cybersecurity engagement initiatives.
But if you ask Sara and Kelly what reflects their impact, they don’t just list clients. They talk about choice.
“The common thread is choice,” they say. “UNBORING is brought in when teams want to stand out without losing credibility and when ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough.”
They are the choice for the brave. They are the choice for the leaders who look at the trade show floor and feel a headache coming on, and decide they want to be the cure, not the cause.
The Vision for 2026
As they look toward 2026 and beyond, the vision is not just about growing the agency. It is about shifting the industry.
Their long-term vision is to help reshape how cybersecurity brands communicate. They want to move the entire industry away from fear-led, copy-paste marketing. They want to usher in an era of clear, human, and differentiated communication. They want to prove that you can build trust without scaring people.
For aspiring leaders and marketers looking at what Sara and Kelly have built, the message they leave is deceptively simple.
“Clarity and consistency matter more than constant reinvention,” they advise.
In a world obsessed with the new, with the pivot, with the next big thing, they argue for the power of sustained focus. Strong brands are not built overnight. They are built through meaningful differentiation. They are built by having the courage to communicate with honesty and humanity, even when the market is complex and technical.
Sara Carty and Kelly Allen are not just running a marketing agency. They are running a resistance movement against the mundane. They are reminding us that behind every firewall, every line of code, and every security protocol, there are people. And as long as there are people, there is a need for stories that treat them like human beings, not targets.
The technology may be binary, but the story never is. Sara and Kelly are making sure of that.
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Read More: Cybersecurity Marketing & Communications Disruptors to Watch in 2026
