The National Cyber Security Centre is launching a new ad campaign designed to get UK businesses to sign up to its Cyber Essentials certification by insisting that there is no escape from online criminals, even in far flung places including on the Moon.
Launched in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT), “Cyber Resilience” has been created by M&C Saatchi Group UK to increase awareness, consideration and uptake of the scheme among UK businesses.
The multichannel push responds to a growing gap between cyber threats and UK businesses defences. In 2025, over four in ten UK businesses experienced a cyber breach, yet many SME leaders continue to believe that their size or scale makes them less of a target. The work positions cyber security not as a purely IT issue, but as a core business imperative.
The campaign aims to drive more users to the Cyber Essentials website and boost certifications over 24 months, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises and a secondary audience of larger organisations.
At the heart of the creative idea is the insight that cyber attacks can happen to any business, anywhere. The campaign brings this to life by placing everyday businesses in fantastical locations, including on the Moon, underwater and on the side of a cliff trying to evade the threat of cyber criminals.
These dramatic landscapes juxtapose the extraordinary with the familiar, in a move designed to reinforce the message that nowhere is out of reach from cyber crime.
Each execution captures a moment in time, with subtle details that aimed at adding richness to the scenes while quickly landing a simple story: no matter where your business operates, hackers can still reach you.
The work is running across social, digital and radio channels in the UK. Media planning is handled by MGOMD, with buying by OmniGOV.
M&C Saatchi Group UK creative director Richard Morgan said: “Cyber resilience probably isn’t top of most business owners’ minds right now, with everything else the economy is throwing at them, but the truth is, it’s more vital than ever.
“Our challenge was to break through the daily barrage of communications our decision makers faced and land cyber security certification like a lunar module in their news feeds. Unfortunately, a shoot on the Moon’s surface (or Mariana Trench) was out of bounds, so we enlisted the powers of AI wizards and an epic landscape photographer to bring our out-of-this-world campaign to life. The result: a bold new production approach and a piece of work that dares to go somewhere different.”
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