About Us - Restricted Intelligence

Allow us to introduce ourselves

Who are we? The better question is, “Who aren't we?” We've been making entertaining security awareness films for more than a quarter of a century. We've been around longer than the term "content marketing." And, yes, we're aware that "entertaining security awareness films" may sound like an oxymoron, but have you met us?

More recently we were approached by two global organisations (in the same month) asking us to communicate the fundamentally dry subject of ‘information security’ to their many thousands of globally dispersed employees. We like a challenge. That’s when this all started.

By getting to the crux of issues via the company funny-bone we found that employees not only watched and retained the messages, but they shared them amongst their colleagues too. And they actually looked forward to seeing more. Encouraged, we began to create entire kits for lighting the fuse on info-security awareness campaigns worldwide.

Over 50 of these films later, we were being badgered for an off-the-shelf product that departmental budgets (and smaller firms) could afford. We created one: Restricted Intelligence…

After six award-winning seasons (and two spin-offs), the security community took notice. KnowBe4 partnered with us to host two seasons of content on their world-leading awareness platform, and then decided they liked us so much they wanted to marry us. In the corporate sense, of course. As of October 2019 Twist and Shout Media is now part of the KnowBe4 family of companies and Restricted Intelligence has taken its place as one of the crown jewels of KnowBe4’s content library. We couldn’t be more proud. View the full press release here.

“Engagement” Has A Lovely Ring To It

As hard as it is to believe, some people keep their campaign promises.

Your audience won’t bond with the characters if they only get to meet them once. In a series, the elongated storytelling opportunities give the relatable characters time to transform and for the audience to get attached to them. And anticipation of the next episode means people become emotionally invested in the ongoing story – it’s the psychology of box-sets and binge-watching.

Too much information in one sitting doesn’t sink in. A series is better at making your message ‘sticky’.

Keep It In The Familiar

Art is like holding up a mirror to the real world. Of course, our mirrors come from a fun house.

Putting comedy into context is important – the audience needs to relate to what they’re seeing on screen, so the environment and characters should feel familiar. That’s when the message feels authentic and resonates much more strongly. Get it wrong and the audience will tune out.

Getting Into Characters

A cast of characters so far out there, so beyond believable, they must come from real life.

We’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’ve used characters of all mis-shapes and sizes. We learnt early on that the quality of the cast is crucial. A convincing cast creates vividly recognisable characters who won’t fail to engage your audience. A method we often use to get a message across is the mentor/student double act.

The mentor appears as the voice of reason – they’re a shining example to the audience – while the student will have the right intentions but lack the skills needed to handle the situation. The mentor is someone likeable who avoids preaching to the audience. Because we all switch off when we’re lectured to, don’t we?

Hey, Good Looking

Our films look and sound just as good as what you’d find on TV. If what you found on TV were Infosec awareness videos

The quality needs to be able to compete with the best of today’s TV productions, to engage the intended “fan behaviour”. Cast and characters need to be believable and relatable. And the locations, props and soundtrack need to be authentic and credible.