Abnormal AI’s new chief marketing officer, Don Jeter, wants to make the cybersecurity firm a household name, with out-of-home ads and real-world activations likely to play key roles. The harder task is getting buyers to see an email security brand as an AI security one. Pipeline results will decide it.
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Don Jeter wants his 14-year-old nephew to know the name of an enterprise security company. Abnormal AI, which has named Jeter its chief marketing officer, is giving him the chance to try.
Abnormal AI told Business Insider‘s CMO Insider exclusively that it has appointed Jeter as chief marketing officer. According to Business Insider, Jeter intends to move away from the features-and-functions focus common in business-to-business marketing. He wants to create “cultural moments” that reach well beyond Abnormal’s core buyers, chief information security officers. He wants his parents to know the brand too. His goal comes with a date: to be the most talked-about cybersecurity company in 2027.
That reads like a consumer brand brief. Why a security vendor would write one becomes clearer from what Abnormal sells now. So does the test it sets for the marketing budget, a test plenty of B2B marketing leaders will recognize from their own planning cycles.
An email security name with a wider product
Abnormal was founded in 2018 and made its reputation with behavioral AI that catches malicious email. The same approach now flags unusual activity in employees’ accounts and logins, and the company is increasingly pointing it at securing how organizations use AI tools. Jeter told Business Insider that one of his first problems is resetting the perception that Abnormal only does email security.
The company’s own announcement made the point in fewer words. Its Nov. 4 release, distributed on Business Wire with a Las Vegas dateline, ran under the headline “Abnormal AI Names Don Jeter CMO to…