Peer 1

One of North America’s leading web-hosting companies, Vancouver-based Peer 1 had to reach a fairly niche audience – IT or tech managers that make company decisions about the type of web hosting services their business would use. It also had to make the most of a David-sized marketing budget in the shadow of a Goliathian competitor, the Texas-based RackSpace.

Rethink helped the little guy use his size to his advantage, focusing on small companies with big ambitions – the kind of companies that wanted to be the next YouTube. Talking with IT managers at these companies, it became clear that service was important, but scalability was even more crucial. Many tech companies run into problems when they grow too fast – their web hosting companies often can’t keep up. This leads to crashes, which makes IT managers look bad.  

One more thing became apparent: the IT guys invariably had twisted senses of humour. They were proud to call themselves “geeks,” and were big fans of irony and black comedy.

Rethink combined both insights into “Cursors,” a campaign to show what happens when you choose a hosting company that can’t keep up with you. In the ads, IT managers are literally inundated with countless cursor icons as their companies grow, asking “Are you ready for a million hits?”

Aware that most IT people tossed typical DM and stand-alone banner ads were also largely ineffective, the agency created a series of three long-format videos showing different companies being inundated with growth. The spots were placed by Video Egg on sites frequented by IT managers. Each embedded video included a link to the website, where managers could fill out a quick RFP from Peer 1. Online banners ran on industry sites and drove to Peer 1’s website, where, upon arrival, cursors filled up the landing page as quickly as those million hits would. Collateral and screensavers rounded out the campaign.

Results were very positive. Through the Video Egg online campaign, over 70,000 viewers engaged with the Cursors creative, and the videos were viewed over 8,500 times on YouTube. Just under 2,000 viewers clicked through to the microsite. Of those, 251 immediately requested quotes for web-hosting services.