Olibra’s BOND

What do you do when a company comes to you with a remarkable product, a top-notch engineering team – and little else? You get to work.

Olibra’s engineers had cracked the code of radio frequency (RF) for the smart home; meaning that they could connect existing remote-controlled appliances like ceiling fans to smart products like phones, tablets, and the Amazon Echo through their device, the BOND. Their product revolutionizes the smart home for consumers who don’t want to replace all their existing stuff with smart versions just to have a connected home.

The clock was already ticking when the company first connected with Ward 6. They had a working product and a signed agreement for CES (six weeks away), but no corporate brand, no booth design, no messaging, and no media awareness.

Ward 6 dived right in; creating messaging, developing a creative brief to help tell the new corporate story, and bringing on incredible design talent to execute. Together, we created a corporate identity that spoke to the current product and future endeavors; using form and color to evoke a comprehensive smart home ecosystem within their new company logo.

From there, it was a matter of prepping for the show. We developed a booth concept, backdrop, signage, and handouts that would catch the eye of passersby and set the team apart from competitors. We developed messaging that sold the BOND’s value proposition to consumers, retailers, integrators, and the press.

The show was a great success and enabled the team to build powerful relationships that would support the official product launch in Q4.

Over the next ten months, we built buzz with forward-looking media coverage in tech outlets like the Verge and DigitalTrends as well as inclusion in major-market television segments. Participation at industry events like CE Week – at which the BOND received a “Best in Show” award – further drove awareness. The team brought on digital capabilities and built a social program as well as back-end analytics to track digital spends all the way through to conversion. We developed video content to explain the BOND and excite consumers, further driving pre-sales.

As the Holiday season hit high gear, the BOND officially launched out of pre-sales into full availability with a Black Friday promotion through Home Depot and incentives from Amazon. The kick-off was further fueled by timely reviews and coverage from CNET, Popular Science, Geek Dad, Huffington Post, and others.