Sourcefire Inc.

Viral Video Runner-up

Campaign: Breakdown of a Fake AV Scammer

Did you know that some computer scammers use the phone to find victims? Neither did we, until we saw this fascinating Sourcefire video. It grew out of a call Sourcefire software engineer Noah Magram got one night from a scammer who tried to talk him into visiting a website that would take control of his computer. Magram recognized the ploy immediately, but played dumb while he recorded the screen session.

Sensing a rare opportunity to dramatize a security threat through storytelling, the marketing team at Sourcefire worked with Magram to edit the video to a digestible eight minutes and record a narrative of his experience. Since posting on YouTube last May, “Breakdown of a Fake AV Scammer” has been viewed 183,000 times. Traffic to the company's YouTube channel jumped 37-fold the month after it debuted. Three months later, traffic was still more than three times the historic average. The company estimates total potential viewership of all coverage and syndication at 5.5 million.