project overview:

Advanced Ventilation Applications, Inc. is building a first-of-it’s-kind personal air filter. The amazing team, made up of doctors and professors from Stanford, is focused on providing a smart solution to the global issue of air pollution, which affects 1B people in the world today.  Their innovative in-nose IOT device filters out the most dangerous contaminants from the air and uses a connected app to keep customers informed about the hazardous air in their environments.  The team already had a prototype and was moving into production, when we connected with them to help rebuild their brand and define their go-to-market strategy.

As a seed funded company, we knew we had to take a scrappy approach to helping define the next steps for their business. We dug right in and researched the air pollution market to better understand the landscape, while also analyzing their current brand. After building our knowledge base, we put a plan together to get them from relative obscurity to a globally recognizable brand.

Building a brand with meaning

Through our air pollution and filtration research we found a massive market, with very little differentiation. Masks (which are inefficient) dominate international sales and very few companies are focused on building intelligent solutions. Working with such a differentiated, innovative filtering product like the AVA Breathe, we knew we had to develop a unique brand identity. Once we landed on the company mission (“To help people in communities with polluted air live healthier lives”), we created positioning and a voice that mirrored the importance of this statement. The result is clean, crisp colors and visuals, combined with an educated and trustworthy voice. This approach bleeds through every channel that the brand lives

creating the market approach

Once the brand was clearly defined, we put together a market approach that aligned with the company goals, to more clearly identify the market opportunity. they wanted to focus on  (1) brand awareness, (2) email list growth, and (3) sales /waitlist signups. With this direction in mind, we developed a strategy revolving around direct to consumer sales and digital marketing. We got to work shooting lifestyle photography, building a website from scratch and creating a curated, strategic approach for social channels. With limited budget, we built the avabreathe.com website on the Shopify platform, implemented Mailchimp for customer communications and created Google ad and Facebook/Instagram ad campaigns to test the market and grow subscribers. our low CPC facebook ad campaign quickly helped validate the interest in the AVA Breathe product, specifically in the Korea region. we leveraged this data to help the founding team build compelling pitch decks in their series A fundraising.

OTHER SUPPORT

MARKET RESEARCH: IDENTIFied MARKET SIZE, COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE AND MORE

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: ASSISTED IN PRODUCT TESTING, FEATURES/FUNCTIONALITY IMPLEMENTATION

APP DEVELOPMENT: WORKED WITH TEAM TO DEFINE UX/UI AND TEST IOS AND ANDROID FUNCTIONALITY

PACKAGING DEVELOPMENT: CREATED MESSAGING, WORKED WITH VENDORS ON UX AND IMPLEMENTATION

INVESTOR DECK: CREATED INVESTOR DECK TEMPLATE AND ASSISTED WITH DECK CREATION

INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH: WORKED WITH PARTNERS IN KOREA ON INT’L EXPANSION exploration

TOOLS AND SYSTEMS

-       Website: Shopify

-       Website: Shogun

-       Email Marketing: Mailchimp

-       Customer Service: Zendesk

-       Social Planning: Hootsuite

-       Translation Tool: Weglot

-       Legal: Iubenda