What keeps you up at night?

HOW WE built a brand by tapping into the hopes of an audience, creating trust – and raising over $1,000,000 in a record-setting 8 weeks.

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What keeps you up at night?

HOW WE built a brand by tapping into the hopes of an audience, creating trust – and raising over $1,000,000 in a record-setting 8 weeks.

Imagine you're juggling 5 balls while running a 100 yard dash. In a blizzard. That's a little like running a crowdfunding campaign for a hot medical device startup. The challenge was to raise awareness and build trust with a huge audience in just 4 weeks. The problem: there was no media money. And no product prototype.

“I wanted to RIP the mask off."

B2Me Insights

BEFORE WE ASKED PEOPLE TO INVEST UP TO $500 IN A NEW PRODUCT THAT DIDN'T EXIST, WE HAD TO UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES THEM TICK.

People with sleep apnea feel trapped. They can’t even remember what it’s like to get a good night's sleep. And the main treatment option – a clunky CPAP mask – is almost as bad as the condition itself. The majority of patients loathe the mask so much that they quit wearing it after a week.

With little confidence in existing treatment methods, our audience was immediately skeptical of Airing’s revolutionary size. It seemed too good to be true and anything that made them feel like they were being sold to would trigger skepticism. Before they could hear us out, we had to earn their trust.

The Story of an inventor.

To BUILD TRUST IN Stephen Marsh, Inventor of the Airing device, it was essential that his passion, energy, and brilliance came through. The audience needed to believe in him to contribute.

The Story of an inventor.

To BUILD TRUST IN Stephen Marsh, Inventor of the Airing device, it was essential that his passion, energy, and brilliance came through. The audience needed to believe in him to contribute.

Video

Crowdfunding pages with well-executed video raise 115% more money.* When you capture the right emotions and tell an authentic story, the results become exponential. For Airing it meant 896% of their fundraising goal.

Airing Feature Video [4:42]

Airing Trailer 1 [:58]

Airing Teaser 2 [:47]

Working the crowd.

The average age of a sleep apnea patient is 35 and older – right in Facebook’s sweet spot. So we focused our energy on a handful of strategic, focused, and ultra-targeted paid ads. Once we hit the right influencers with the right message, the campaign took off like wildfire. And, by rapidly responding to comments - negative or positive – immediately, we built more trust. The community even began to answer questions for each other! Airing had turned into a movement.

Emanating Trust

To further project trust and credibility, a simple brand toolkit was just what the doctor ordered to jumpstart Airing.

We began a simple logo as airy, light, modern and friendly as the product itself. A bright, but simple color palette provided an upbeat, fresh feeling - an aspiration for this audience indeed, many of whom hadn't had a good night's sleep in years. And the iconography style riffed off the simple lines of the logo, while the photography focused on comfort of both the device and the feeling of truly restful sleep.

The success of the brand look and feel is summed up by Engineering.com who wrote about the campaign website and promotional materials, "Airing is a huge company with lots of money backing the venture." Their assumption couldn't possibly have been further from the truth. In fact, the media spend on the campaign was a mere $372.