Like a product but can’t find it? This Brandery grad can help
Oct 25, 2013, 2:58pm EDT
Andy Brownfield
Reporter-Cincinnati Business Courier
One startup brought props to theBrandery’s Demo Day earlier this month.
All of the attendees — investors, mentors, startups and press — were handed a bag of Skinny Pop popcorn. That wasn’t to sate their hunger but was rather a calculated move by one of the startups to show off their product.
If anybody was particularly struck by the popcorn and decided to use their phone to go to Skinny Pop’s website, they would have seen that there are three downtown locations where the brand is sold.
That’s because Skinny Pop’s website is powered by Donde, one of the nine startups in the Brandery’s class of 2013.
“Donde is a mobile platform to connect traffic and transactions to retail stores,” co-founder Anthony Nicalo said during Demo Day. “The future of advertising isn’t going to be about making an impression, it’s going to be about driving purchases.”
Donde uses location data gathered from a mobile device and data fed into it by brand partners to show consumers where they can buy products. Visiting Skinny Pop’s store locator webpage will show a customer all of the nearby locations where the popcorn is sold. Visiting LasikPlus’ locations webpage on a mobile device will show nearby centers but also allows users to schedule a consultation right from the phone.
Nicalo told me on Friday that it can take anywhere between two hours and 30 days to plug in all of the location data and build the framework for something like booking an appointment at a nearby LasikPlus surgery center or offering a coupon for Skinny Pop at the nearest Kroger.
Donde also provides analytics on which stores consumers are looking at, what they’re visiting and whether there’s even a demand to visit a physical location. The data is proving there is — Nicalo said consumers use store locators 63 times for every one time they make a purchase using their mobile phones.
The idea grew out of a side project Nicalo was working on at a previous company for an organization called Certified Humane. The goal was to build a way to direct customers to nearby places they could buy certified humane foods. While that was in development, he got a similar request from a non-food entity.
“Even before that I had started a wine brand and had struggles with simple things like you have a glass of wine at a restaurant and can’t find out where to buy it at a wine store near you,” he told me.
Nicalo and co-founder Fabien Allanic decided to spin that off into Donde and move to Cincinnati from Vancouver for the Brandery.
Nicalo credits the startup’s early success to help from Empower Media Marketing, its branding mentor during its time at the Brandery.
“They’re one of the few agencies in town that’s actually a media-buying agency,” he said.
“They helped us recognize the opportunity to connect the digital spend, if ultimately the consumer action is to go to a physical store, our data shows which location they’re going to, is there a demand to go to a physical location, all of that is relevant to determining their ROI.”
The company currently stands at four employees, though it’s in the process of hiring a fifth and Nicalo expects they’ll expand to a team of eight to 10 in the coming months.
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/blog/2013/10/like-a-product-but-cant-find-it-this.html
Cincinnati Business Courier
Posted: November 5, 2013 by Certified Humane
Like a product but can’t find it? This Brandery grad can help
Oct 25, 2013, 2:58pm EDT
Andy Brownfield
Reporter-Cincinnati Business Courier
One startup brought props to theBrandery’s Demo Day earlier this month.
All of the attendees — investors, mentors, startups and press — were handed a bag of Skinny Pop popcorn. That wasn’t to sate their hunger but was rather a calculated move by one of the startups to show off their product.
If anybody was particularly struck by the popcorn and decided to use their phone to go to Skinny Pop’s website, they would have seen that there are three downtown locations where the brand is sold.
That’s because Skinny Pop’s website is powered by Donde, one of the nine startups in the Brandery’s class of 2013.
“Donde is a mobile platform to connect traffic and transactions to retail stores,” co-founder Anthony Nicalo said during Demo Day. “The future of advertising isn’t going to be about making an impression, it’s going to be about driving purchases.”
Donde uses location data gathered from a mobile device and data fed into it by brand partners to show consumers where they can buy products. Visiting Skinny Pop’s store locator webpage will show a customer all of the nearby locations where the popcorn is sold. Visiting LasikPlus’ locations webpage on a mobile device will show nearby centers but also allows users to schedule a consultation right from the phone.
Nicalo told me on Friday that it can take anywhere between two hours and 30 days to plug in all of the location data and build the framework for something like booking an appointment at a nearby LasikPlus surgery center or offering a coupon for Skinny Pop at the nearest Kroger.
Donde also provides analytics on which stores consumers are looking at, what they’re visiting and whether there’s even a demand to visit a physical location. The data is proving there is — Nicalo said consumers use store locators 63 times for every one time they make a purchase using their mobile phones.
The idea grew out of a side project Nicalo was working on at a previous company for an organization called Certified Humane. The goal was to build a way to direct customers to nearby places they could buy certified humane foods. While that was in development, he got a similar request from a non-food entity.
“Even before that I had started a wine brand and had struggles with simple things like you have a glass of wine at a restaurant and can’t find out where to buy it at a wine store near you,” he told me.
Nicalo and co-founder Fabien Allanic decided to spin that off into Donde and move to Cincinnati from Vancouver for the Brandery.
Nicalo credits the startup’s early success to help from Empower Media Marketing, its branding mentor during its time at the Brandery.
“They’re one of the few agencies in town that’s actually a media-buying agency,” he said.
“They helped us recognize the opportunity to connect the digital spend, if ultimately the consumer action is to go to a physical store, our data shows which location they’re going to, is there a demand to go to a physical location, all of that is relevant to determining their ROI.”
The company currently stands at four employees, though it’s in the process of hiring a fifth and Nicalo expects they’ll expand to a team of eight to 10 in the coming months.
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/blog/2013/10/like-a-product-but-cant-find-it-this.html
Category: news