Ownr began in 2017 as a "business formation" service for entrepreneurs, simplifying the start-up process by cutting through the red tape of registering a sole proprietorship, finding the right name, and incorporating all in one place.

Following the 2020 acquisition of Founded, an online legal platform, Ownr expanded its digital offering to help growing small businesses with more sophisticated legal tasks like filing corporate returns, equity management, and tailoring contracts for IP or NDAs.

However, despite expanding to help businesses through their entire journey, Ownr was still mostly thought of as a platform solely for start-ups. We needed to show entrepreneurs that Ownr is the go-to destination to help start AND grow their small business.

Owning a small business is never going to be easy. There’s no way to get around all the red tape, legal jargon, mountains of paperwork. But there is finally a better way to get through it. Ownr helps small business owners with all the “businessy” stuff that can get in the way, so they can focus on what they’re truly passionate about. From incorporation, to legal services, and even employee management, Ownr provides people with a support team that can make business ownership, well, a little less hard.

Anchoring our new platform with the playful tagline, “Ownr. Make Small Business Easy Less Hard”, we were able to relate to small business owners in a more honest and authentic way that stood out from the overpromises of the category, and better connect with the realities our target was facing.

The idea of starting a business is an exciting thought for many. Which is why almost 100,000 new businesses are launched every year in Canada.

While turning one’s passion into a profession feels exciting and empowering, reality can crash down pretty hard as 20% of businesses fail in their first year and fewer than half make it to year 5. Entrepreneurs are indisputably the experts in their own fields. But there's a lot to running a business that falls well outside their expertise and most of them just “don’t know what they don’t know” when it comes to the business side of business. And that equals anxiety.

While most B2B advertising tends to present a sugar-coated ideal of entrepreneurship, we took a different approach by acknowledging the realities that a small business owner faces.

Running in major Canadian markets, the media buy includes video ads on connected TV, social and YouTube, radio, Spotify and out-of-home, designed to drive both broad awareness as well as targeted conversion.

At the center of the campaign are 3 highly-choreographed videos that feature unique scenarios and demonstrate just how chaotic it can feel to own a small business. Shot as true one-shots, we were able to showcase the overwhelming challenges that come with being a small business owner, but because of Ownr’s support, they can take it all in-stride.

Accompanying the video are still shots used for OOH and social assets that dramatize how all the paperwork can get in the way of small business owners doing what they actually love, while positioning Ownr as the solution.

Following a February 22nd launch, early results are strong with 52,000 unique visits to the campaign landing page from digital ad units and a 2.49% conversion rate, 19.6MM targeted video views from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Stack TV, Twitter, Reddit and Spotify and 1.1MM audio completes on Spotify (music + podcasts).

Overall Highlights:

The average video completion rate is 53.58%, exceeding standard tracked benchmarks

Facebook is estimating a strong brand recall lift with at least 250K members of the targeted audience.

Google estimates that users who saw our campaign are 359% more likely to search for Ownr in the future (314k lifted users).