• by Aaron Baar , October 25, 2010

As Internet security products go, Webroot is lacking the name recognition of Norton, McAfee and some of the others. But the company is trying to make up for it in personality with a $4 million print, outdoor and digital campaign from advertising agency TDA Advertising & Design.

"We wanted to distance ourselves from our competitors, letting [consumers] know who we are and what we do in a human way," Christi Tucay, account director at the Boulder, Colo. agency, tells Marketing Daily. "When we looked at the landscape, there's some quirky personality but there's a lot of scare tactic advertising."

What the agency discovered through research was that consumers don't really care about the details of how their Internet security operates, "they just wanted to know that it works," Tucay says.

The heavily digital campaign features banner ads that ask whether users would rather see a video of Webroot's chief technology officer, Mike Kronenberg, explaining the ins and outs of Webroot's technology, or doing something sillier (like arm wrestling a "very strong woman" or "get hit with a pie in the face.")

"I think we expect consumers to click on the fun stuff," Tucay says, although she adds that the technical information is easily accessible if people want to see it.

Other ads in non-digital media (i.e., print and out-of-home) compare learning about Internet security to watching paint dry, taking a sleep aid or being tortured. The campaign's theme is: "You don't care how it works, as long as it does."

The company is targeting those with more than $75,000 in household income in the U.S. and Western Europe. Online, the campaign will be seen on sites such as Yahoo, CNet, PCMag.com and PC World.com. Print publications include Fast Company, Wired, Us Weekly, Fortune and others, and out-of-home will include billboards in tech-intensive markets such as Minneapolis/St. Paul, Austin, Tex., and the San Francisco Bay Area.