MCAFEE

See how members of today’s PositiveBrand leadership team supported McAfee across SMB acquisition, partner marketing, customer retention, channel enablement, enterprise storytelling, and interactive sales tools. The work included an award-recognized rich-media campaign that achieved a 10.9% interaction rate, increased average time-on-brand to 15.7 seconds, and revealed that 85% of attributed conversions occurred after prospects returned to purchase later.

Members of today’s PositiveBrand leadership team supported McAfee across a series of acquisition, retention, sales-enablement, and enterprise-marketing initiatives.

The work extended well beyond a single campaign. It included SMB lead generation, partner marketing, customer-retention programs, channel sales enablement, enterprise storytelling, interactive sales tools, and advanced conversion tracking.

Our Challenge

McAfee served audiences ranging from very small businesses to large enterprises, and each audience presented a different marketing and sales challenge.

Small-business buyers often ignored security messages until an urgent need emerged. McAfee’s research showed that many SMB decision-makers entered a concentrated two- to three-week purchase process only after recognizing that their existing security software was approaching expiration. Outside that narrow window, security was often a low priority. At the same time, the rising cost and declining response of rented email lists made McAfee’s traditional acquisition model increasingly inefficient. 

Other initiatives presented different challenges:

• Existing customers needed relevant reasons to deepen their relationship with McAfee.

• Channel partners needed frictionless offers they could confidently present to their customers.

• Call-center representatives were already being heavily incentivized to promote competing software products.

• Enterprise decision-makers needed complex security strategies translated into clear business value.

• Internal sales teams needed better tools for connecting customer pain points, regulatory requirements, installed technologies, and competitive displacement opportunities to the right McAfee solutions.

McAfee did not need one more isolated campaign. It needed an integrated system capable of supporting acquisition, retention, sales enablement, and enterprise growth across multiple audiences and channels.

Our Approach

Across a series of engagements, our team developed coordinated marketing and sales programs designed around the behavior, priorities, and decision environment of each audience.

The work included:

• SMB audience and purchase-cycle research

• Rich-media lead-generation campaigns

• Search, email, direct marketing, and landing-page strategy

• Partner co-marketing and customer-retention programs

• Free-trial and promotional offers

• Channel sales incentives and internal communications

• Enterprise product and strategy storytelling

• Interactive sales presentations

• Buyer pain-point and regulatory-compliance mapping

• Competitive-displacement guidance

• Guided-selling and digital sales-playbook tools

• Post-click and post-view conversion tracking

The common thread was integration. Each initiative connected audience insight, creative strategy, sales enablement, digital experience, and measurement.

SMB Acquisition: LAN Network News

McAfee’s existing SMB acquisition program relied heavily on rented email lists. Even when lists were carefully targeted by company size and job title, only a small portion of recipients were actively ready to purchase security software.

We helped shift the model from repeated “buy now” messages toward a more complete process built around awareness, education, lead generation, and follow-up.

The centerpiece was an expandable rich-media campaign built around the fictional LAN Network News Team.

McAfee’s security service continuously monitored and protected customer networks. We translated that benefit into a newsroom staffed by animated anchors reporting from inside a McAfee-protected network. The twist was that because McAfee stopped threats before they became serious problems, the news team had very little breaking news to report.

The campaign featured 30-second video segments inside multilayered expandable banners. Viewers could request a white paper, register for a product demonstration, begin a trial, or explore additional product information directly from the ad experience. The characters were also extended to landing pages and ShopMcAfee.com, creating continuity from initial exposure through product consideration. 

The campaign was supported by a broader acquisition strategy using online media, search, email, direct marketing, landing pages, and structured follow-up. McAfee also implemented tracking designed to identify leads, trials, and sales occurring as long as 90 days after an initial advertising exposure. 

Partner Marketing and Customer Retention

For Verio, a web-hosting provider and McAfee partner, our team developed a co-branded holiday initiative designed to strengthen customer relationships and encourage product adoption.

The program paired physical Hallmark holiday cards with a dedicated digital offer and landing experience. Customer segments included high-value accounts, profitable cross-sell opportunities, and customers considered at risk.

The offer emphasized a complementary security story:

Verio protected the customer’s web server, while McAfee Total Protection protected the broader business.

Eligible customers received a 90-day trial without having to submit a new credit card because Verio already maintained their billing information. This reduced conversion friction while allowing the partner to provide a useful, relevant customer benefit.

Channel Sales Enablement: Mission: McAfee

For an HP call-center sales environment, our team created an internal enablement program designed to help representatives understand, remember, and promote McAfee Total Protection Service.

The audience consisted largely of young adult representatives in Albuquerque who were already being encouraged to upsell Microsoft, Adobe, and other software products. McAfee therefore had to compete for attention inside the sales environment as well as in the marketplace.

We developed the Mission: McAfee secret-agent theme and extended it across:

• Die-cut cubicle reminders

• Repositionable internal flyers

• Rep communication templates

• Sales messaging

• Promotional incentives

• A Final Four-themed sweepstakes

The messaging positioned security protection as an essential part of a new hardware purchase rather than an optional add-on. The program helped turn a technical product story into a more immediate, motivating sales proposition for frontline representatives.

Enterprise Security Storytelling

Our work also extended to enterprise security initiatives involving Security Risk Management and Data Loss Prevention.

The audience included sophisticated directors and C-level technology leaders at organizations with approximately 1,000 to 10,000 employees. These decision-makers did not need lengthy product catalogs or fragmented feature presentations. They needed a clear explanation of how McAfee could help manage security as a coordinated business discipline.

We created high-end interactive presentations designed for internal sales teams and partners to use in active customer conversations.

The creative approach was deliberately clean, restrained, and modern. Rather than presenting a collection of disconnected security products, the tools framed McAfee’s value around:

• Business discipline

• Coordinated processes

• Risk visibility

• Regulatory requirements

• Enterprise-wide management

• More consistent security decision-making

• 
  

This helped sales teams communicate complex enterprise strategies in a clearer and more executive-level form.

Interactive Sales Playbook

We also helped develop an interactive sales knowledge system that connected customer needs to appropriate McAfee solutions.

The tool was designed to map issues such as:

• Cost avoidance

• Operational efficiency

• Security risk

• HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance

• Existing infrastructure

• Missing deployment categories

• Competitive technologies

• Relevant McAfee products

• Customer proof points

Based on the information entered during discovery, the system could help generate a customized plan of attack for the sales conversation.

The initiative brought product knowledge, competitive guidance, compliance considerations, customer evidence, and solution mapping together at the point of sale. In many ways, it anticipated the guided-selling and AI-assisted sales systems organizations use today.

Our Results

The most fully documented performance results came from the LAN Network News SMB acquisition campaign.

The expandable rich-media units achieved a 10.9% interaction rate, compared with the established PointRoll FatBoy benchmark of 9.8%. 

Average time-on-brand reached 15.7 seconds, compared with the PointRoll benchmark of 12.6 seconds—an increase of approximately 25%. 

The campaign also generated registered sales leads that McAfee transferred to its telemarketing team for follow-up during each prospect’s expected purchase window.

Most importantly, post-view tracking revealed that 85% of attributed campaign conversions did not occur through an immediate banner click. Those customers first saw the advertising and later returned to purchase, sometimes as long as 90 days after the original exposure. 

That finding demonstrated that click-through reporting alone would have significantly understated the campaign’s contribution. The advertising was building awareness, creating memory, supporting consideration, and influencing later purchases through other paths.

Across the broader relationship, the work helped McAfee:

• Move beyond declining rented-email performance

• Build a more complete SMB acquisition model

• Support customer retention and partner marketing

• Reduce friction in trial offers

• Motivate channel sales representatives

• Communicate complex enterprise strategies more clearly

• Equip sales teams with more intelligent, structured selling tools

• Improve its ability to measure the full path from exposure to purchase

The result was not simply one successful campaign. It was a more integrated marketing and sales ecosystem capable of supporting customers, partners, sales representatives, and decision-makers across multiple stages of the buying journey.