Case Study
Archanan - Coding a Brand to Scale
After much engineering, planning, and plenty of sweat, start-up company, Archanan was taking serious form, and they had a product ready to launch for beta testing. The company founders had developed a cloud-based development platform that could simulate complex hardware environments, such as high-performance computing systems used at national labs and in cutting-edge enterprises. Using Archanan’s tools,instead of waiting in line for test systems that didn’t match the production environments that the newly developed code would be run on, researchers could use Archanan to develop their code at scale using a virtualized replica of the production system the code would eventually run on. With a funding round secured, Archanan was ready to up level their brand and tell their story.
A makeshift logo had sufficed during stealth mode, but it was time to professionalize the company’s image.
The team had already developed a make-shift logo and rudimentary website, but there was much work that needed to be done to professionalize the company, its brand, and direction. While the founders had some great ideas, they had not yet formalized a unifying mission or vision statement to guide brand messaging and get everyone on the team in lock-step. They were not particularly happy with their “placeholder” logo, and were ready for a start-up makeover. OmniScale Media was called in to help!
After a 40-point brand evaluation, OmniScale Media consulted with Archanan’s leaders on what was needed in order to create a brand presence that rang throughout the company. It started with a solid understanding of the potential of their technology and the customers they were targeting. OmniScale did a thorough evaluation of each customer group and their respective needs. With this information in hand, work began on a mission and vision statement that would help the company create focus that would resonate through the company, its customers and the influencer chain at large.
With core messaging in place along with a 360-degree view of their customer targets, work began on creating the visual elements that would bring the Archanan brand to life. The concept of “developing at scale” was a theme that repeatedly surfaced in our discussions and analysis, and we wanted a brand to help support this concept. Knowing that code development was inextricably part of what Archanan was doing, OmniScale Media started exploring logos with visual elements that would ‘click’ with developers. In the end, we determined that a logo treatment that included brackets typically used in code would help convey the brand and its mission – and give it plenty of visual material to work with for the marketing and branding aspects that the leadership team had envisioned.
The new brand was designed to convey an ‘alien’ image (see Men in Black), with the logo combining the letter ‘a’ with the brackets commonly used in coding, to form @
Website and Messaging
After establishing a brand foundation, OmniScale started work on developing an upgraded web presence for Archanan’s fresh brand. This included messaging that would resonate with its target audiences, including supercomputing centers, commercial enterprises, and OEMs – each with their own unique needs for Archanan’s tool kit.
With a situation analysis completed for each customer set that examined the market, the competition, and various strengths and weaknesses, OmniScale gathered information that would help the company define its unique position in the market. Key messages and relevant keywords were developed and an overall messaging strategy started to take shape. Customer-centric messages were built that aimed to convey the benefits of the Archanan Development Cloud and entice the website users to explore how it could be used to help their organizations “Develop At Scale.” Use cases started to take form, and corporate messaging that could be used to convey the company and its values were established.
The end result was a website that carried the Archanan brand in both visual aspects, as well as messaging. Visual elements were created to help convey the brand and its mission, along with a color scheme based on the psychology of color was implemented that helped tie it all together.
The new archanan.io website
Thought Leadership and Lead Generation
With a brand in place and a website in development, OmniScale Media worked with Archanan to produce a solution brief that the company could use to educate people on Archanan and its capabilities. The solution brief examined the challenges that exist in the status quo environment, how these challenges disrupt the progress of research being done by national labs and enterprises, and how the Archanan Development Cloud changed this paradigm for the better. The solution brief was integrated with the new web site as a tool to help the company generate leads, as well as a tool for sales people to leave with their prospects to help them understand how Archanan could help them develop at scale.
As a certified HubSpot Solutions Partner, one of OmniScale Media’s specialties is helping startup companies get their CRM and marketing automation systems established and ready to collect leads. OmniScale Media evaluated Archanan’s needs, their customer process, and their marketing requirements and advised the startup on a professional CRM system to integrate with their web site and company processes. Customer profiles were established, social media accounts were plugged in, landing pages were created and the new solution brief was served up for new customers to explore. With a new website and CRM system, along with integrated social media, Archanan was ready to attract new prospects.
Archanan Solution Brief – ‘Eliminate Testing Bottlenecks’
Media Relations
With everything in place, it was time to bring in the eyeballs! Archanan was getting set to launch its beta product and wanted to get some attention from publications that would help bring in prospects to its newly established web presence. OmniScale Media’s Public Relations division helped Archanan to write a press release that contained identified key messages, targeted to the audiences that they were looking to attract.
When launch day came, the results turned out great! The OmniScale Media team was able to secure coverage in several relevant outlets, including Asian Scientist Magazine, HPCwire, EnterpriseAI, Embedded Computing Design, DevOps, SDTimes, and others. The campaign was a great push for getting Archanan some visibility and exposure to their core audience targets.
Direct Email Campaign
Half-page banner
Promotional Campaign
To increase visibility and generate traffic to the landing page for the new solution brief, an advertising campaign was planned and negotiated by OmniScale. Relevant HPC media outlets were included in the RFP, and several different promotional vehicles were chosen; display advertsing to generate brand recognition and a sponsored article to demonstrate thought leadership leading up to a direct email blast to drive traffic The sponsored article was written to help explain the important work that Archanan is doing to improve large system code development. Titled, “Try Before You Buy? Test Driving a Supercomputer System,” the article ran as native advertising on HPCwire, and became an excellent resource for the fledgling company to spread its message and help new prospects to understand the benefits of their tools.
Leaderboard banner
THE RESULTS
“As technologists, coming up with the right brand and message to convey our vision was something that we knew was important, but not our strength. When we found OmniScale , we were thrilled to partner with a team that had experience with advanced technology companies like ours. As we approached our beta launch, they came in and quickly helped us establish a brand foundation that reflects our company, our values, and is attractive to our customers and partners. The knowledge, professionalism, and domain expertise from OmniScale Media was just what we needed to kick things off with a bang. We were able to garner considerable media attention for a fledgling startup, and immediately saw an uptick in new leads and website engagement that led to new busines opportunities. Any startup looking to define their core audiences, level-up their brand and messaging, and start generating new business should give them a look.”
Alex Nodeland
CEO, Archanan