User-generated content from Catch+Release fuels success for cybersecurity firm F5

“At a technology company, you don’t usually see this focus on what it means to be human first and adaptable and trusted. A technology company really has to earn that trust and it doesn’t come easily.”

Joel Ertsgaard was explaining why a software vendor like F5, specializing in app and API security, needs a creative director — a role he has filled for more than four years. “Our customers have a vision of what they can do to help their customers work, play and live better. We’re behind the scenes, a B2B company; we don’t directly serve their customers. What we do is give our customers tools and technologies to build and deploy more secure applications.”

F5 has been running a brand campaign focused on the positive. “That’s why Catch+Release is so important for us as a vendor — I’m not just blowing smoke, this is really intentional.” Ertsgaard contrasts F5’s approach with campaigns by their competitors that focus on fear and risk. “We wanted to steer clear of fear-mongering and scare tactics.”

Licensing and developing user-generated content

How does Catch+Release differ from other well-known suppliers of image and video content like Shutterstock, Getty Images and Adobe? We asked the founder and CEO, Analisa Goodin.

“After spending many years in the space of footage and photography research, I became intimately familiar with two things,” she said. “One was the limitations of stock libraries from the customer’s perspective. The other was the internet, growing at incredible speed with camera technology getting better every year.”

Standard stock libraries were convenient for customers with limited budgets on tight deadlines, but they’re not the first choice creatively, Goodin explained. Although it’s easy to find great content on Vimeo or TikTok or Flickr or other channels, the problem lies in contacting the creator to license it. This is the primary problem Catch+Release solves for — not only how to make great content available to clients, but also license it as fast as possible.

“How do you make the internet work like a stock library? Catch+Release was built from the demand side, understanding what the customer needed from a creative standpoint, and then building the licensing infrastructure to make that increasingly fast and predictable.”

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Customers can find content on the internet themselves and bring it to Catch+Release to handle the licensing, or they can delve into the Catch+Release creator community to find content where licensing is already in place. “Every licensing agreement leads us to creators who want to license again,” said Goodin.

Catch+Release claims a remarkable success rate of 87% in contacting creators for the first time, especially as many creators are not professionals. Plus, there’s now technology involved; a licensability score is associated with pieces of content showing the likelihood of successfully licensing it. Although members of the creator community in some instances upload to Catch+Release, the content is generally hosted on its home channels like Instagram and TikTok and simply made discoverable by Catch+Release.

The price point

It’s easy to see what licensing content from Shutterstock, for example, costs. This seems to be a much more complex and fluid situation. “One of the responsibilities we have in being a licensing layer for the internet is that we have to connect, protect and celebrate both the storyteller — the buyer — and the creator on the other side,” Goodin explained.

Leading with a price that’s fair increases the efficiency of the process. “We’ve developed a robust pricing calculator that gives the buyer some predictability, a baseline for what the content will cost, and gives us a starting offer for the creator.” Buyers can offer less; creators can ask for more. “Success lies somewhere in the middle,” Goodin said.

Catch+Release continues to work with well-known stock libraries as partners because their customers sometimes just need something immediately. Those customers include brands like Meta, Nike and Uber Eats.

Showing real moments

“The Catch+Release eco-system has been so important for us,” said Ertsgaard. “It helps us with our higher purpose, which is F5’s super weapon.”

F5’s creative team produces high-level campaign assets, “experiential marketing” like events, sales enablement materials, assets like ebooks and webinars, and even social media content. “The whole gamut,” Ertsgaard said.

It’s the brand campaign content that Catch+Release primarily supports. “One of the things that is different about the ‘Force For’ campaign, than what you might expect in a go-to-market or lead gen campaign,” said Ertsgaard, is that we want to be more emotive, showing real moments that demonstrate the positive human impact of technology, and combining that with images that show our customer personas.”

By combining stock images with user-generated content of the kind Catch+Release specializes in, Ertsgaard can tell technically relevant but emotive stories. “We were working with an agency at the beginning of this campaign,” he explained, “and this agency had been partnering with Catch+Release. Now we are working directly with Catch+Release we have an easy route to discovering user-generated content — having it curated for us, or finding it ourselves and getting it licensed.”

F5 started working with the agency and Catch+Release around February 2022. Previously they had leaned heavily on Getty Images, Shutterstock and Adobe Stock. “We still use these platforms,” said Ertsgaard, sometimes using Catch+Release’s curation services to discover suitable content within those services.

The campaign has led to an 11% increase in aided brand awareness among the target audience and a 22% increase in brand awareness by cybersecurity professionals at large companies (more than 1,000 employees). They optimized the campaign after launch, for example adding more images related to security professionals. “That led to an increase of 76% in social engagement rate and 30% more click-throughs.”

“It has been an eye-opener,” said Ertsgaard. “After our first engagement with the agency that helped us create the campaign, I knew right away that we needed to set up a direct relationship with Catch+Release.”