Nextrio

Alternative Media Campaign

Nextrio is an IT business that supports small to mid-sized companies with technical expertise and networking know-how. They deliver smart products and build, fix, troubleshoot, maintain or overhaul any system of computers in virtually any office environment.

Nextrio wanted to differentiate themselves from the crowded marketplace and solidify their existing relationships. They also wanted to make their customers smile so that they were more apt to refer Nextrio to their peers.

We learned, through one-on-one client interviews, what sets Nextrio apart from their competition. Yes, Nextrio is a smart company that delivers terrific products and services to their customers; but what keeps clients coming back is their friendly nature and irreverent style. So it made perfect sense for us to demonstrate how savvy, fun and approachable Nextrio is.

We crafted a word-of-mouth campaign, and we used the Internet as our mouthpiece. LP&G developed two microsites — IT Horror Story and IT Love Story — to make people laugh and give them something fun to pass along to their friends. The IT Horror Story site launched one week before Halloween and contained actual stories of IT catastrophes and asked people to post their own for a contest. To drive more traffic to the site, LP&G created a giant 30-foot sculpture of a severed foot, surrounded it with Nextrio branding and drove it around town on the back of a flatbed truck. It turned many heads and got a ton of press.

We also created embedded videos for each microsite. Vintage black-and-white movie footage was redubbed to make two comical videos "Burn the Tech" and "Heads on a First Date." Extremely tongue in cheek, these clips were an instant hit.

The sites did their job. Nextrio had tons of visitors to both sites and lots of customer feedback calls. And the severed foot was picked up as a front-page story in a local business publication.