2050 LONDON

London

Awakening a German tech giant.

CHALLENGE

Create a brand campaign to gain traction in the UK market.

Founded in Germany, they’re the biggest web, hosting and domains company in Europe.

IONOS offer a suite of online tools to help SMEs with growing their business. The offering even comes with a 24-hour personal assistant to help sort issues and get websites up and running smoothly.

The brand had low awareness in the UK and little affinity amongst SMEs. They were hidden in a commodity market driven by price. We had to change this with a differentiated brand position and fame-building campaign. So that IONOS cut through vs. Go Daddy.

CHANGING THE FUTURE FAST

The team’s idea was to develop a salient heroic character with a distinctive point of difference.

In a category where brands want to be your friend and help you 'create' a business, most SMEs simply want web hassles taken away so they can get on with doing their day job. Enter Aunt Helga, a German tech whizz who sorts out your website with a no-nonsense efficiency. She epitomised the efficiency of IONOS’ high-performing tech and service.

In TVC and online films, Aunt Helga’s pocket-rocket demeanour and tech powers come to the rescue of different SMEs who need her tech prowess. Small in stature but big in personality, she arrives (and exits) via a futuristic portal built from IONOS’ logo, creating strong recognition between character and brand. To help the IONOS name stick, Aunt Helga has a certain catchphrase; ‘I own this’. A statement of her sense of responsibility and pride in her tech skills, but also a phrase for her empowered customers too.

40’’ & 20’’ TVC films & 2 x 15’’ digital films directed by Armoury’s Marc Sidelsky aired.

Results

Effects

Broke IONOS records for site traffic on the first weekend.

Prompted Awareness increased 9% to 19% (Mar ‘21 - Mar ‘22) smashing the 10.8% objective.

Sales

Market Share of Online Sales increased +3.8 percentage points [May ‘21 - Apr ‘22

Average monthly new customer inflow from online marketing increased +136.8% [Aug ‘21 to Aug ’22)

IONOS - Awakening a German tech giant

Founded in Germany, IONOS are the biggest web, hosting and domains company in Europe, but the brand had incredibly low awareness in the UK and little affinity amongst SMEs. We had to change this with a differentiated brand position and fame-building campaign.