Leroy the Hand

CLIENT

Hostway is the 5th largest web hosting company in the world. Hostway is an international company that is Chicago-based with additional offices located throughout the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Korea and Australia.

BACKGROUND

Hostway's primary business is selling web hosting services to consumers and businesses in need of a hosting provider for their online presence. With over 230 product offerings from Hostway, the amount of choice that a consumer had to navigate through was daunting. To ease the process, Hostway wanted to create an engaging and entertaining way to assist potential customers in their decision-making.

THE SOLUTION

We developed a product selection wizard to assist users in choosing the products most appropriate for them, in a unique way.

Product Wizard

A key visual element in this wizard product was a 3D character that strongly resembles a famous advertising icon. "Leroy the Hand" wisecracked his way through the questions, explaining everything from Linus Torveldt (founder of the Linux operating system) to the use of databases in a website in an easily understandable and humorous manner.

Viral Component

In conjunction with the launch of the wizard we also developed a viral site designed to create awareness and to drive visits to the web hosting selector wizard solely through word-of-mouth and pass-a-long. This microsite gave consumers a unique insight into Leroy, with a video that documented the life of the brother of the famous Hamburger Helper hand. This site also featured a few interesting surprises designed to reward exploration of the site and two games - one being a peer-to-peer game allowing users the ability to compete against one another.