The expo floor at RSAC Conference 2026 is full of noise, spectacle, and buzzwords -- but ask a CISO what stood out, and they rarely name a brand. Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli unpack why so many companies invest in attention-grabbing tactics while missing the one thing that actually builds trust: a clear, differentiated message tied to real business outcomes.
⬥EPISODE NOTES⬥
Walk the floor at RSAC Conference 2026 and you will find boxing rings, petting zoos, agentic AI everywhere, and very few answers to the question that actually matters: why should anyone trust you with their security? Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli have been watching this pattern for more than a decade -- and in this short On Location conversation, they turn the camera on themselves and on the problem they built Studio C60 to solve.
The conversation starts with a pin. A small ITSPmagazine swag item from roughly ten years ago, sitting in Sean's hand at RSAC Conference. Marco traces the thread from there -- back to 2012, back to his first time on the conference floor, back to a joke he made that has never stopped being true: they are still selling the box. The packaging has changed -- servers became SaaS, disks became dashboards -- but the instinct to lead with the product rather than the outcome has not.
Sean frames it cleanly: the messaging is the innovation. But the message only lands when it connects the technology to how teams actually use it, to what that enables the business to do, to why it matters beyond the booth. Marco extends it further: if you sound like everyone else, there is no music -- only noise. Every instrument is playing, but there is no song.
That is the gap Studio C60 exists to close. Drawing on decades of combined experience in cybersecurity, go-to-market strategy, journalism, and brand storytelling, Sean and Marco offer clients something the expo floor rarely demonstrates: the ability to articulate not just what a product does, but what it means -- for the team, for the business, for the people it serves.
The work ranges from a single consulting session to full campaign development and retainer partnerships. It starts with an honest assessment: who are you, who needs you, and what do you sound like right now? For startups especially, that starting point is where everything else begins.
What the floor at RSAC Conference 2026 makes clear, year after year, is that attention is cheap and memory is rare. The brands that last are the ones that earn it -- not with a boxing ring, but with a story worth repeating.
⬥HOSTS⬥
Sean Martin, CISSP -- Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Host, Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast & Music Evolves Podcast | https://www.seanmartin.com/
Marco Ciappelli -- Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Host, An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Podcast | https://www.marcociappelli.com/
⬥RESOURCES⬥
RSAC Conference 2026 -- Follow our coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac-2026-conference-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage
Studio C60 | https://www.studioc60.com
The Future of Cybersecurity Newsletter (Sean Martin) | https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7108625890296614912/
An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Newsletter (Marco Ciappelli) | https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7079849705156870144/
On Location | https://www.itspmagazine.com/on-location
⬥KEYWORDS⬥
sean martin, marco ciappelli, rsac conference 2026, rsac 2026, studio c60, itspmagazine, brand storytelling, cybersecurity marketing, go-to-market strategy, messaging and positioning, agentic ai, expo floor, brand differentiation, content production, cybersecurity branding, on location
They Forgot Your Brand Before They Left the Booth | An On Location Conversation at RSAC 2026 with Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli
[00:00:10] Marco Ciappelli: All right, so Sean,
[00:00:11] Sean Martin: Marco,
[00:00:13] Marco Ciappelli: we're still here. RSAC Conference.
[00:00:15] Sean Martin: We're still at
[00:00:15] Marco Ciappelli: RSAC Conference 2026.
[00:00:16] Sean Martin: Look at that.
[00:00:17] Marco Ciappelli: And I expected a break.
[00:00:20] Sean Martin: I have this little pin here --
[00:00:23] Marco Ciappelli: ITSPmagazine. You know how far back it goes.
[00:00:25] Sean Martin: I know.
[00:00:26] Marco Ciappelli: You want to make a guess? One of the first
[00:00:28] Sean Martin: pieces of swag we made.
[00:00:29] Marco Ciappelli: Ten years. Wow.
[00:00:31] Sean Martin: Yeah.
[00:00:32] Marco Ciappelli: Do you remember that time we had the pin with the pirates?
[00:00:38] Sean Martin: The pirate pin. I have some of those still.
[00:00:39] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. And then we had the one with the summer of love -- peace,
[00:00:44] Sean Martin: and love, ITSPmagazine.
[00:00:46] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:48] Sean Martin: Yeah.
[00:00:49] Marco Ciappelli: You know, I've always tried to brand ITSPmagazine in a different way.
[00:00:54] Sean Martin: Branding is important.
[00:00:55] Marco Ciappelli: And I wonder why.
[00:00:56] Sean Martin: Catch people's attention. Be yourself.
[00:01:01] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
[00:01:01] Sean Martin: Tell your story in a way that will connect with other people.
[00:01:06] Marco Ciappelli: Well, you know, it kind of goes with the joke I've been making here -- and I talked to you about it, and we've had this conversation. About how you walk the expo floor and, despite the fact that there are some incredible solutions, technology, and advances, the ones that really get advertised...
[00:01:31] Marco Ciappelli: Agentic AI is the buzzword of the day. And then you come around -- and we've done this at different events, the same kind of survey -- we ask the CISOs, we ask other people: does anything stand out? They don't say the name of the brand or the company. They say, well, that's what everyone is talking about.
[00:01:54] Sean Martin: The messaging is the innovation. And it kind of goes back to the point we were making earlier about the conversations I had with CISOs, where it's like: I see the innovation, I see the technology, but the less I can connect it to my job, the less likely I am to connect it back to the business.
[00:02:15] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
[00:02:16] Sean Martin: And who does this matter for in the business?
[00:02:19] Marco Ciappelli: But here's the thing. You brought me to RSAC Conference for the first time -- I think it was 2012.
[00:02:28] Sean Martin: Right?
[00:02:29] Marco Ciappelli: My hair was really long at the time. This is short compared to that. And we were working together on some cybersecurity companies. Where I was at that point, not involved in this kind of conversation -- I was just doing my job: branding, marketing, website development, social media campaigns, messaging, all of that. And when we came here, you remember my joke? I said to you: they're still selling the box.
[00:03:02] Sean Martin: I know, that's right.
[00:03:04] Marco Ciappelli: The upgrade --
[00:03:05] Sean Martin: Literally.
[00:03:05] Marco Ciappelli: The Windows 3 --
[00:03:06] Sean Martin: The box you buy with the CD or floppy.
[00:03:09] Marco Ciappelli: Disk. Yeah. Or the servers. Or the photo of whatever they were selling.
[00:03:14] Sean Martin: Yeah.
[00:03:16] Sean Martin: Many of our first jobs together were breaking companies free of that.
[00:03:22] Marco Ciappelli: Exactly.
[00:03:23] Sean Martin: That thing that was holding them back.
[00:03:24] Marco Ciappelli: Right. Why? Because I've always compared this to selling drugs -- pharmaceuticals, or insurance. What's the product? The pill? The pill is not the product. The insurance is not the product. In the eyes of the consumer, the product is what it does for them.
[00:03:47] Sean Martin: Right.
[00:03:47] Marco Ciappelli: So you are selling an end result. And here as well, you're selling not the tool -- but the outcome. Security. The sense of being safe. If you're talking about pharmaceuticals, the sense of being healed. And if you have insurance, the sense of being protected.
[00:04:12] Sean Martin: I haven't seen one side effect or disclaimer downstairs that carries that through. So there's a lot not carrying through there.
[00:04:20] Marco Ciappelli: Now, one thing --
[00:04:21] Sean Martin: One of my favorite ads was the sheep with the numbers on it. Remember that?
[00:04:24] Marco Ciappelli: Oh. Yeah.
[00:04:26] Sean Martin: That was a fun one.
[00:04:26] Marco Ciappelli: It was an encryption one.
[00:04:28] Sean Martin: An encryption technology. Yeah.
[00:04:29] Marco Ciappelli: The sheep of a different color. I think I still have it in my files. But I look at what's out there now and I see more of a circus to grab attention -- whatever you want, make noise, give free stuff away. Last year there was the petting zoo. I'm sure tomorrow we're going to talk about it again.
[00:05:05] Sean Martin: Right. Petting the
[00:05:06] Marco Ciappelli: goats. Yeah. And again -- how is that selling the product? How is a toy box, or soccer, or big inflatables doing it? I've seen soccer balls, balloons...
[00:05:23] Sean Martin: Celebrity sells, I don't know, but what's the connection?
[00:05:26] Marco Ciappelli: But I don't know
[00:05:28] Sean Martin: who that is.
[00:05:29] Marco Ciappelli: I remember there's someone kicking balls or playing golf or --
[00:05:35] Sean Martin: There's a boxing ring in there too.
[00:05:38] Marco Ciappelli: Whatever. Yeah. But for the life of me, I do not know -- sometimes I don't even remember the brand, and for sure I don't know the product. And that's a missed opportunity.
[00:05:50] Sean Martin: I can tell you -- and I'm not going to name them -- but the way some things are presented down there, I remember the brand in a negative way. It's a step right up.
[00:06:01] Marco Ciappelli: Because you are a marketing guy too, right?
[00:06:04] Sean Martin: Yeah.
[00:06:06] Sean Martin: People forget that. My whole career has been go-to-market strategy, messaging and positioning, content development -- working with analysts and journalists to help connect that to the community and the audience that cares.
[00:06:22] Sean Martin: And I started a podcast and people think I'm a podcaster now -- they forget that
[00:06:29] Sean Martin: I have decades of experience beyond that.
[00:06:31] Marco Ciappelli: Not just podcasters, because we are that in a way -- but there's something more to what we do. And this is why we're having this conversation about branding, and how I see everything through that lens. You worked with so many agencies before we connected.
[00:06:48] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. I see everything through the lens of: what is this image projecting about the persona of your brand? I do that with everything -- I even do it when I go buy a new pair of shoes. But we have made our careers, for a while, in journalism.
[00:07:14] Marco Ciappelli: And as analysts, telling stories. For me, it's always been a sociological approach -- how technology and cybersecurity affect society. But my lens is always: how are people perceiving this product? How are people perceiving this message? Even in the conversations I have on the podcast.
[00:07:40] Marco Ciappelli: We're taking this opportunity, I guess, Sean, to do an advertisement.
[00:07:47] Sean Martin: There you go.
[00:07:48] Marco Ciappelli: There you go. So -- Studio C60. People have started to see that on LinkedIn where we call it Studio C60 and ITSPmagazine. We launched it a few months ago.
[00:08:01] Sean Martin: Yeah.
[00:08:01] Marco Ciappelli: We already have a few clients, which we love.
[00:08:04] Marco Ciappelli: Hello, everyone.
[00:08:05] Sean Martin: Yeah. Love
[00:08:06] Marco Ciappelli: our clients. So -- why?
[00:08:11] Sean Martin: Why? Because it's hard. It's hard for organizations to -- I'll put it this way: it's easy to see what you've built. It's easy to say, we spent so much money on this innovation, and it's easy to talk about that. It's hard to connect that to what I like to talk about, which is how teams use that to achieve an end goal.
[00:08:39] Sean Martin: Even harder to get to what you were saying -- which is: I use this technology to do this, which achieves this goal, which enables the business to generate revenue, grow market share, please customers, and all the other good stuff that comes with it.
[00:08:56] Marco Ciappelli: When you are in an agency and you get a new client, you always have to look at what the competitors are doing.
[00:09:04] Marco Ciappelli: That's one part of the brand and product assessment.
[00:09:06] Sean Martin: And if you sound just like them --
[00:09:08] Marco Ciappelli: You can say, okay, you have a great product. But that's the same message everyone else is delivering. So there's this cacophony of noise and no music. These are the instruments. What instrument are you playing? You have to ask: what is the benefit, what is the value of what you're presenting, and what makes you different from everybody else? So, in short --
[00:09:37] Sean Martin: Yes.
[00:09:37] Marco Ciappelli: Studio C60 is putting together our experience in cybersecurity, technology, and all the stories we've told -- both editorial and brand stories.
[00:09:50] Marco Ciappelli: And for me, going back to my origins -- creating campaign content, production, multimedia approaches that communicate why your company is different, what value you bring to the table. And we can start even before that. You don't have to come to us knowing what you want, because we also do consulting. You build a good product --
[00:10:23] Marco Ciappelli: I can't build the product for you, but I can help you position it. And we understand
[00:10:34] Sean Martin: thousands of those conversations. Yeah.
[00:10:35] Marco Ciappelli: We understand, and we can sit together -- and if you don't have a message, if you don't have a brand, we're going to work with you to actually make it happen.
[00:10:46] Marco Ciappelli: It could be an hour of consulting, it could be a bigger project, it could be a retainer, whatever it is. I love working with startups.
[00:10:56] Sean Martin: So the goal is to take the cool thing that you have, connect it to an audience that cares, get them excited about it -- build a persona for the brand so that they trust it and want to do business with you. That takes time. But it starts with an analysis --
[00:11:26] Marco Ciappelli: of you, and all the collateral that comes with that.
[00:11:28] Marco Ciappelli: We can help you with all of that.
[00:11:30] Sean Martin: So --
[00:11:30] Marco Ciappelli: So anyway --
[00:11:31] Sean Martin: Anyway.
[00:11:31] Marco Ciappelli: There you go. This is our promotion. We're always promoting other companies -- hey, this is us. Studio C60.