McAfee wanted to increase its share of voice in mainstream lifestyle media and set Red the challenge of getting a news anchor to say Brad Pitt and McAfee in the same sentence.

Red used McAfee’s SiteAdvisor technology, a free Web download that automatically ranks Web sites and alerts consumers to potential dangers like malware, to rank the most dangerous celebrity search terms online. Our research uncovered the fact that Brad Pitt had overtaken Paris Hilton as the most dangerous celebrity to search for online.

By timing the release of our story with Pitt’s new movie, “Burn After Reading” we succeeded in capturing the imagination of US entertainment hosts and radio talk shows. We generated more than 900 pieces of branded coverage including a three minute segment featuring commentary from Blender and Life & Style editors on CNN’s “Showbiz Tonight,” “TMZ,” “Good Day Chicago,” “KTLA Morning News” in Los Angeles and “CW Morning News” in New York.

To amplify the results, Red produced an audio news release detailing the findings and featuring McAfee spokesperson, Shane Keats, who talked-up the McAfee SiteAdvisor product on local and national radio stations. We reached nearly 14 million listeners in major cities including Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

This campaign was a finalist (Honorable Mention) in the Best Use of Broadcast category at the PR Week Awards 2009.  You can read the judges' comments below...