Traction for ZoneAlarm

SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - Each week, The Examiner showcases an advertising campaign by a local company.

Client: ZoneAlarm

Job: ZoneAlarm ForceField product launch campaign

Agency: Traction, San Francisco.

Principals: Adam Kleinberg, Theo Fanning, Michele Turner, Paul Giese, Russell Quinan

Other clients: Virgin Mobile, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Livescribe, CaesarStone, ZoneAlarm, Bank of America, Hyperic, LightFull Foods, Dolby, Walmart.com

Creative team: Michele Turner, creative director; Theo Fanning, creative director; Eric Ryan, art director; Jim Reed, interactive director; Karen Gordon-Goldfarb, copywriter; Melanie Kaufman, account manager; Ronan Dunlop, director of strategy.

The plan: Create a rich interactive experience at the center of an integrated campaign to introduce ZoneAlarm’s new ForceField security software.

The theme: ForceField is like your Internet stunt double.

The concept: ZoneAlarm ForceField is the first software designed specifically to protect you while you’re on the Web — on any computer. Traction used the metaphor of an Internet stunt double to illustrate how the software actually works. ForceField creates a “virtual you” that takes the hits from online threats, so you can protect yourself on any PC, anywhere, anytime. Visitors to www.zonealarm.com/forcefield can pick a place, pick a threat and attack. By shooting live video against a green screen, we were able to create an interactive experience that was fun to use and explained how this completely new product actually works.

Michele Turner

Age: 40

Position: Creative director

Education/background: Bachelor’s degree in graphic design, San Jose State University; prior to co-founding Traction in 2001, she was a senior creative at Tribal DDB San Francisco. She has held positions at Think New Ideas, Organic, Apple, Tandem Computers and The Gavin Report.

What drove your development of the concept? ZoneAlarm had the opportunity to be the first company to define “virtualization” technology in the consumer security space. The product is intriguing and fills an essential need in the way people use their computers today. We saw an opportunity to show how ForceField works rather than describe what it is.

Working on next: Creating new advertising for CaesarStone Quartz Surfaces across television, print, direct mail and the Web.

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