This year’s World Cup has featured one surprisingly universal trend among the 48 teams: pink cleats.
In the very first match, only three starting players from both teams were not wearing pink cleats.
Every match features multiple players wearing bright pink footwear from all the major brands. The shoe companies independently chose the color, with one of the main reasons being that it’s vibrant and would stand out. The cleats stand out against the grass (if you remember middle school art class, pink is opposite green on the complementary color wheel), but the players wearing them don’t exactly stand out from the sea of other players wearing pink cleats.
Differentiation only exists relative to what everyone else is doing.
What Pink Cleats Have in Common with Cybersecurity
The World Cup may be the most crowded marketing environment on the planet right now, and apparel companies went for bold and bright to stand apart.
We see the same thought process play out in the cybersecurity market, where there are thousands of cybersecurity companies, distributed across dozens of subcategories, many of which include hundreds of vendors offering very similar capabilities with only incremental differences.
As with all the soccer players ending up in pink footwear, in crowded technology markets, it’s easy for messaging to converge. Many cybersecurity companies describe themselves as AI-powered, offer comprehensive visibility, or promise industry-leading protection. Those capabilities may be real, but when everyone emphasizes the same attributes, they stop helping buyers distinguish one company from another.
Cybersecurity Conferences Also Turn Into a Sea of Sameness
This predicament plays out every year at Black Hat, RSA, and other cybersecurity conferences. So many of the vendors end up printing the same messaging on their signage that it becomes difficult to understand what they do from afar. It’s a sea of sameness.
A few years ago, many booths at Black Hat had “zero trust” on their signs. Zero trust is a security model rather than a technology, so it was unclear what the companies actually offered without going up and talking to them. Now, we’re seeing the same thing play out with companies wanting to have “AI” in their messaging.
When so much of the messaging is the same, companies need to find creative ways to get attendees to actually stop at their booth. Some favorites from the past are:
- One company had its employees’ kids draw pictures of what they imagined AI was.
- One of our clients created a version of Whac-A-Mole, but instead of hitting moles, attendees hit credential leaks, data breaches, and supply chain attacks.
- Another client used colors like yellow and green to stand out visually from the light blue typically used by security companies. (Symantec first got this right with its yellow and black logo many years ago.)
Larger vendors can afford to put together over-the-top booths in prime locations, but these examples highlight that you don’t necessarily need to go all out and spend a ton of money to draw people in. Sometimes you just need to be a little creative.
The important thing to remember is that the point of having a booth that stands out is to get attendees to talk to you. You want that conversation to be the memorable part, not the gimmick you had to draw them in. As our SVP, Jennifer Tanner, said after RSA last year: “You don’t want people to remember you for the goats; you want them to remember them for your technology.” (Yes, you read that right. One company really did bring goats.)
Bright Beats Bark to Stand Apart
Besides standing out at conferences, security companies need to stand out every day. The most memorable companies often do so by telling the stories nobody else can.
They’re publishing original research, opinionated thought leadership, unique customer perspectives, data journalists haven’t already seen, or unexpected takes on industry trends. The goal of PR isn’t to invent a story, but to uncover the expertise, data, or perspective that competitors can’t easily replicate.
The best examples of differentiation usually aren’t created overnight, but are built by consistently contributing something valuable to the industry.
One example comes from our work with cybersecurity company Flare. By publishing original research into emerging malware and cybercrime, the company earned media coverage in top-tier publications, not for its platform capabilities but for the unique insights its researchers developed.
In crowded markets, people often remember the expertise surrounding the product before they remember the product itself. Flare’s researchers have become a go-to for commentary on security stories, not because of the company’s product, but because they’ve established themselves as credible experts.
Fashion Moves Fast. So Does Standing Out.
In the case of the pink cleats, every individual company made the same logical decision: Pink is a vibrant color, so if our players are wearing pink cleats, they’ll stand out. If Nike alone had made that decision, players sponsored by Nike probably would have stood out. But when every other shoe company made the same choice, Nike’s choice suddenly wasn’t very unique. If you didn’t know better, you might assume all players were part of a single FIFA-wide sponsorship.
Now, pink (or other colored) cleats didn’t magically appear in 2026. Apparel companies gradually started using bolder colors over the past few decades. The overuse of pink this year is really just the result of companies continuing to build on existing trends.
The same thing happens in cybersecurity. Companies independently adopt the same messaging trends, content formats, and positioning because those approaches appear to be working. Over time, they all begin to sound alike.
This means that standing out is a moving target, not a permanent achievement. The moment everyone adopts the same strategy or messaging, it stops being differentiating.
At the World Cup, pink stopped being distinctive the moment everyone wore it. The same thing happens in B2B marketing. The companies that continue to stand out aren’t the ones chasing the latest trend. They’re the ones creating value that no one else can easily copy.
Want to make sure your brand is standing out? That’s the kind of work we do for cybersecurity companies every day, so let’s talk.
