Security Industry Insight: How to Stand Out When Everyone’s ‘Next-Gen’

Doug Hansel, Technology Evangelist at Bubble in the United States, shares his thoughts on why all security vendors sound the same and how to avoid blending in. Doug’s 30 years of experience working with video security companies gives him a unique insight into what it takes to stand out. 

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Walk any security technology trade show floor and you will see banners competing for your attention. “Next-gen.” “AI-powered.” “Future-proof.” “Unified end-to-end solutions.” By the third aisle, you start to wonder: are these companies selling access control systems and video platforms, or just auditioning for a game of buzzword bingo?

I sometimes wonder: if we swapped the logos on these booths, would anyone even notice? Probably not. Which is precisely the problem.

When Everybody Sounds the Same

The physical security and IT industries are full of smart companies doing important work. But if you judged them solely by their websites or trade show booths, you would never know it.

Take a spin through vendor sites and you will find the same language repeated again and again: “digital transformation,” “intelligent edge,” “cloud-ready,” “next-level analytics.” These terms are meant to showcase innovation, but overuse has stripped them of meaning. Buyers end up asking the most basic of questions: What does this company actually do?

This is more than just a marketing annoyance. When your differentiation is buried under a pile of jargon, trust suffers. If you can’t explain your solution clearly, why should a customer believe you can solve their actual problem?

The AI Effect: More Words, Less Meaning

Enter Chat, Claude, and Gemini, the eager, straight-A students of corporate jargon. These tools are great at producing clean, grammatically perfect paragraphs. The problem is, they do it without judgment or context. Type in, “write a press release about our new platform,” and AI will happily hand you 400 perfectly-written words of “innovative, cutting-edge, next-gen, end-to-end” content.

What none of them will do is ask the questions that matter: What makes this different? What pain points does it solve? Why should anyone actually care?

So yes, the AI chatbots can generate well-written words, but they can’t generate an authentic voice. And a voice (of the human kind) is what your customers are desperate to hear.

Why We Fall Back on Buzzwords

If you’ve ever been guilty of relying on jargon (and haven’t we all?), you know why it happens:

• It feels safe. Everyone else is saying “AI-driven,” so we do too
• It looks professional. Plain language feels risky, like it might cheapen the message
• It helps with search engines. Or at least, that’s what the SEO reports tell us
• It avoids specifics. When you’re not ready to commit to measurable claims, “future-proof” feels easier than “reduced false alarms by 40%”

But the unintended consequence can be tough on your bottom line: when everyone says the same thing, customers simply stop listening.

How to Stand Out (Without Inventing a New Acronym)

So how do security and IT vendors cut through the noise? Not by leaning harder on the buzzwords, but by doing something more difficult: speaking in a way that’s plainspoken, relatable, and meaningful.

1. Cultivate a voice with a pulse

“Reduced investigation time by 30%” lands a lot harder than “accelerated incident response through innovative, AI-driven workflows.” The first is measurable, the second is vaporware.

2. Tell stories, not specs

Yes, you need to mention your features. But the stickiest messages are about outcomes. Did your platform help a campus improve emergency response? Did your cloud deployment save a retailer millions in bandwidth costs? Those are the stories that resonate.

3. Publish thought leadership consistently

And no, “thought leadership” is not code for product brochures dressed up as blog posts. Share something useful: explain new privacy laws, walk through the realities of hybrid cloud, or unpack what AI can (and can’t) do in investigations. If your content makes your audience smarter, they will keep coming back.

4. Get outside perspective

Every company drinks its own Kool-Aid. Sometimes it takes an outsider – a  PR/communications pro, an editor, a brutally honest colleague – to call out when your “seamlessly unified, fully integrated platform” actually tells buyers nothing.

5. Embrace imperfection

Not every message needs to be polished within an inch of its life. Sometimes the most memorable content is the one that sounds a little conversational, personal, and anecdotal. It feels human.

A Simple Test for Credibility

Here is our personal rule of thumb:

• If you can measure it (“cut response time by 20%”), it’s credible
• If you can tie it to compliance or standards (“SOC 2 certified,” “meets NDAA requirements”), it’s useful
• If it sounds like a Silicon Valley pitch deck (“next-gen, future-ready, best-in-class”), it’s filler

Security leaders don’t have time for filler. They want clarity, evidence, and reassurance.

Why This Matters Now

The security technology industry is in the middle of one of its biggest transitions in decades. Cloud deployments, questions around the ethics of AI, tighter data privacy rules, and escalating cybersecurity threats are changing how organizations think about physical security. These are serious, high-stakes conversations. They need clarity, not clichés.

The companies that will stand out are the ones that explain, educate, and engage with authenticity. They are the ones willing to admit when things are complicated, and to offer real guidance instead of polished slogans.

Those that do not? They will remain lost in the crowd of “leading provider of end-to-end, next-gen solutions”.

For more information on how to reposition your security company and refine your messaging, contact us to talk through our approach.