Add a little smartness to your things.
Samsung SmartThings
Agency of Record · Branding · Content · Website
Pain points
When SmartThings went from a successful Kickstarter campaign to being Samsung’s ‘Internet of Things’ unit they had to scale up fast.
The identity had grown organically since their founding in 2012. This resulted in inconsistent and scattered brand messaging that confused customers and employees, plus hindered global scalability.
We saw an opportunity to bring consistency to the brand.
The rollout
To support SmartThings rapid growth as their global agency of record, we work as an extension of their marketing & communications team.
Following the brand identity redesign, a series of product and brand manifestations were rolled out:
• Brand identity
• Packaging
• Content
• Website
• Retail interactive experiences
• Retail merchandising
• Online merchandising
• Digital Banners
• Marketing collateral
• Channel and sales toolkits
• Retail sales training materials
A flexible communication system
SmartThings is an open platform and works with a wide range of devices from varying brands.
With an ever expanding partner catalogue we needed a communication system that was fast and flexible to work with. We also wanted to further enforce SmartThings new, friendlier, tone of voice.
The solve was a world of simplistic and quirky illustrations with characters that could be used and re-used across all communications.
Education and inspiration in retail and online
With IoT still being considered in its infancy, we needed to speak to the average homeowners and educate them that having a smart home isn’t just about flipping on the lights with your smartphone.
For retail, our team iterated through prototyping and user tests to design an interactive retail fixture that draws attention and educates them how to get started.
A key insight during testing was to focus on speed, since the attention span of consumers in busy stores are extremely short.
The fixtures rolled out in thousands of stores in the US and the UK, including BestBuy, Home Depot, John Lewis and Dixon’s.
Scalable website build
Designing the new smartthings.com began with examining data, interviewing, and rigorous user testing, which informed the direction it had to take. The result was an uncluttered online platform that guides, educates, and informs users about the value proposition and product ecosystem.
The site is designed and built from the ground up:
• Powered by Contentful CMS.
• Component-based design system.
• Scalable and adapts to future business needs, making conversion optimization a breeze.
Iteration towards perfection
The work does not end with the launch of the brand identity. Our analytics team continuously informs our design and tech teams so they can iterate on design, content and functionality in order to increase the performance of the new brand and its communication.
Visit SmartThings.com
