Bringing a shadow AI hunter to market

Veeda brand development by Mighty, brand agency for startups

You can’t stop what you can’t see

There’s shadow AI hiding in practically every online service now. It’s in your payroll, in your CRM, in your social media scheduling. It’s in browser extensions, meeting notes and the tools your staff signed up for on a whim.

But how much of it do you actually know about? And, more importantly, how much of it is stealing your data? For businesses handling sensitive customer data, or those with tight compliance controls, the threat of shadow AI is always there lurking in the background

Building a brand story

Businesses have adopted AI really, really quickly. So quickly in fact, that they don’t understand exactly what they’ve signed up for, and what they’re exposed to. That’s where SIDEKICK Venture Studio saw a need – and an opportunity. What if there was a system that could sniff out all those shadow AI tools lurking in your system and let you know how they’re being used?

So, as with any new startup idea, we rolled up our sleeves and got working on a name for the product as our first step. We worked on names across a variety of themes – what’s ‘in the shadows’, what’s ‘dark’, and what happens when you shine a light on it?

After a few rounds, we settled on Veeda. Based on the Latin word ‘vide’, meaning ‘to see’, it sums up the whole idea in one word: shadow AI, made visible. Simple, brandable, exactly what the product does.

Once we got the name sorted, we needed a positioning and personality that would help turn Veeda famous. We wanted Veeda to make something complex into something easy to get your head around.

So we positioned Veeda like the older, more confident cousin who always knows what’s going on. A bit cheeky, a bit witty, but ultimately, there to put you at ease.

We made sure we said things plainly, moved quickly and never hid the messaging behind corporate jargon. The tone has bite, but crucially, never tips into panic or cyber theatre – it’s there to make shadow AI feel real, intrusive and slightly outrageous.

Putting strategy to work

The brand identity for Veeda needed to grab attention, immediately. If we’re putting the spotlight on shadow AI, we need to put the floodlights onto the brand. Our marque is simple and to the point, reassuring and welcoming – you see Veeda, you know you’re in good hands.
 
We went with a colour palette that shone with neons, but tempered by pastels so as not to overwhelm. Then, we stumbled across the perfect font – one that turned words into pixels, obscuring key words in our straplines.

Taking recognisable icons and screens, we showed pixellated data flowing away from folders, a torch on dodgy data leaks, and spreadsheets being consumed by malicious sources. And we topped it off with some tongue-in-cheek straplines, getting people to really think about where that shadow AI could be lurking.

Getting the brand to market

Veeda’s still getting the final touches on it, but we’re already signing people up to a waitlist online with some clever digital marketing and running a good old fashioned pilot programme with local businesses.

Think your business could benefit? Join the waitlist today.

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