Adero
Overview: Adero is a consumer tech startup breaking into the bluetooth tracking industry. The hero feature about the brand’s trackers is this parent-child feature. In layman's terms, the device alerts you that your items (like a wallet) are separated from your bag (like a purse or backpack).
Objective: Build a new brand and launch its first product in just four months.
Challenge: To most, Bluetooth trackers are confusing, misleading, and unreliable. Users only vaguely understand the technology, and the result is an industry that overpromises and under delivers.
Role: Lead Strategist
Industry: Consumer Tech
*Download the research deck here.
Research Methodologies
In-home ethnographies: To gain an authentic and in-depth understanding of the lifestyle our target audience leads. During our study, we were able to gain insight into shared pain points as they relate to our category.
Competitive audit: To gain a deeper understanding of competing brands, products, and their positioning in the marketplace. This audit helped us find an ownable position in the industry.
Cultural analysis: Understanding what is going on in the world allowed us to craft a strategy and creative work that was culturally relevant and impactful.
Beta user testing: Put the product in the hands of users to see how they utilize and engage with the product. What aspects of the brand and product experience trip them up?
Key Learnings
Cultural Analysis: We identified four cultural themes in our audience’s lives.
Just trying to keep it together: The desire for effortless organization has spawned an entire industry full of books, TV shows, and organization gurus. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Marie Kondo Effect. We’re all looking for ways to simplify the overly complex.
Overwhelmed and Unfocused: The glorification of busy has become a badge of honor as we increasingly ascribe to the Cult of Busyness. Every day there is more fighting for our attention. These unrealistic demands render our attention fractured and unfocused. Indicators of this busy life crop up everywhere from popular memes to casual “how have you been?” “so busy” conversations.
Groups of Things: The complexities of modern life necessitates a larger and more complex group of things to enable meaningful experiences. Increasingly, we must remember larger and larger groups of things to participate in today’s world.
In-home ethnographies: Over the course of our study, we identified our target audience we call “CEOs of the Home.” In addition, we uncovered three crucial pain points in our audience’s life.
Avoiding “oh shit” moments: they hate being caught flat-footed and actively seek to prevent moments of forgetfulness that fill them with frustration and guilt.
Fear of Nagging: what they see as helpful and supportive, others may misinterpret as nagging. Our audience seeks control but doesn’t like being labeled as a nag.
Staying Present: their number one goal is to take care of all the stuff that gets in the way of living life and experiencing the moment.
Competitive Audit: We found that the lost and found industry is full of interchangeable, similar looking brands that serve the same purpose. In addition, we found that our competition makes the same promises, highlight the same use cases, and focus their message exclusively on lost and found.
Beta User Testing: After observing participants engage with the product, we validated many of our use case hypotheses but found that many of our users utilized the product in ways we had not imagined. We quickly adapted our messaging content to be more inclusive.
Opportunity
No brand has successfully solved the consumer’s problem of forgetfulness, and as a result, dissatisfaction and frustration persist. While our competition focuses on lost and found, we have the opportunity to shift the conversation to one of remembering.
Positioning
Who We Are: We are an intelligent organization system that aims to simplify the complex.
Why We Exist: We believe there is a better way to remember the things that go together.
How We Do Things: We create tools that keep people organized.
The Results
Defining Brand Identity: A knolling approach allowed us to visually realize the strategy in a quick, sophisticated, and calm way. We featured our most popular use cases on the packaging in a way that is immediately relevant to our audience.
Website and E-commerce: We designed the Adero website and e-commerce presence around twelve use cases.
Social Launch Campaign: We created paid and owned social content around the following pillars:
Product Education: educational content that explains how Adero works through use cases.
Utility: tips and tricks useful for our audience
Lifestyle: editorial and influencer content around organization
Influencer Campaign: as a new brand with no following, we leveraged influencers’ existing communities of our target audience. Our influencers communicated our brand and product to their audiences with authenticity.