One of the most enjoyable parts of this project was having the freedom to inject irreverent humor in the form of visual and text gags. The voice-over plays it straight, and we made a conscious effort to keep the tone of both the VO and music dry while the visuals took on the persona of, well, a bit of a smartass (industry term). Our client's enthusiasm for this approach encouraged us to break out of the mold of antiseptic tech explainers and give this series a bit of a bite.
Threat Response dove into the mess that often gets created when admins layer too many inconsistent security measures on top of each other. We wanted to convey the idea that while these security measures have grown increasingly complex, there was a sense that nobody really knew what was going on and it was something of a "clusterf---" (again, industry term).
Sometimes it helps to find the humor in chaos. Our clients at Cisco were thrilled with the series and went on to commission more from First Person. New animators and art directors are now bringing their own fresh, funny approach to the template we established, and we played a key role in developing the 'voice' of Cisco Security Explainers.