Webroot

Partnership type

Go To Market

Client type

Underdog

Industry

Technology
Cybersecurity

The work

Brand Strategy & Systems
Motion & Video
Landing Pages & Microsites
Awareness Campaign
Consideration & Decision Campaign

Overview

Webroot, a well-rated and well-liked consumer cybersecurity product, exists in a category with giant players; namely, McAfee and Norton. We knew we’d never be able to beat their level of name recognition or challenge their ample budgets. So instead we built campaigns around real consumer anxieties with a dash of humor. This allowed us to position Webroot as the reliable, relatable choice vs the faceless corporate behemoths. Paired with their tight, seasonal media spends, these campaigns have helped expand their reach and grow their audience year after year.

Brand

At the beginning of our relationship, we worked with Webroot to articulate their mission: to help people lead better digital lives. We didn’t want to fear monger, but we did want people to understand the stakes and recognize what they could do to keep themselves and their families safe. With the mission locked, and the perfect campaign north star in place, we refined their visual system in preparation for more robust campaign work.

Webroot SecureAnywhere app screen showing Protected

Webroot threat stats over a photo of a woman at a laptop

Campaigns

The personal cybersecurity product buying season begins around back-to-school before peaking during the holidays and slowly tapering off into the new year. Over the course of our partnership, we’ve brought a variety of seasonal campaigns to market. From the illustration-first “Cyber Scaries” campaign to our live-action football-themed “Ultimate Digital Defense” work, we’ve been able to reinvent the Webroot story year after year with fresh urgency.

The Ultimate Digital Defense

A live-action football campaign for the consumer security brands, run through the same placements. Webroot becomes a team in its own jerseys, and online protection is played as defense: draft a new defensive lineup, keep malware out of the end zone, deny identity thieves at the goal line. It launched for Cybersecurity Awareness Month with an offer of up to 50% off, and runs across feed and Stories as a set of ads, one for each product: Scam Protection, VPN, Identity and Antivirus. For the business it is the seasonal sales push: the offer and the product line in every ad, timed to the month when security is already on people’s minds, and all of it pointed at the landing page where the sale happens.

Four Webroot Cybersecurity Awareness Month social stories

This is ___

“This is ___”

A live-action campaign built on one line, “This is ___”, with a different person filling in the blank each time. Jim, Eli, Sarah, Ethan and the rest are each caught in an ordinary moment online, on public wi-fi, at a lunch table, answering a call from a “grandson”, and the spot turns on what Webroot does for them. The cast and the moments change; the line holds the series together. It runs as 10-, 15- and 30-second cuts at 16:9, 4:5 and 9:16, alongside behind-the-scenes spots from the shoot. For the business, one line and many faces means one shoot feeds a whole matrix of paid cuts, so each placement gets fresh creative without a new campaign, and every version sends people to the same landing page.

Animated campaign

An animated campaign

An animated ad campaign, made for the paid placements across multiple markets. Hand-drawn illustrations of keys, locks, shields and browser windows carry Webroot’s products in plain terms: all-in-one protection, identity protection and privacy on public wi-fi. It runs as 15- and 30-second evergreen spots and a VPN cut, made at 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16 so every placement gets a version built for it. As evergreen work it runs all year rather than for a season, keeping the paid channel supplied between launches so the sales and landing-page traffic it drives never go quiet.

Cyber Scaries

Halloween work for Webroot’s #CyberScaries Month. Online threats are drawn as the season’s monsters: a vampire at the keyboard, something watching your passwords, files laid to rest under a tombstone. Each carries a plain line, like “Don’t let your identity become a costume.” The work spans a set of 26 illustrations, social posts and Stories, a TV frame and display banners, all in Webroot green. For the business it turns a seasonal moment into a reason to talk about protection, with the product line and a “Learn more” on every banner leading to the landing page.