This work was undertaken as part of Linaro. Linaro is an open source software development company. With the members such as Google, Facebook, Samsung, Qualcomm and many more. Linaro along with its members embarked on entering the Single Board Computer space. My team was responsible for delivering the end to end digital transformation strategy and execution. This case study covers the work undertaken to get 96Boards to where it is now.

Project Red Rose.

We were presented with the new red rose project and to come up with the marketing plan. We had a clear understanding of who the target audience, the price point and the USP. We have conducted the competitor analysis and were confident penetrating the market. We created a detailed project plan with itemised work stream. Big ticket items included branding, content creation, website, digital marketing plan and launch plan. As part of the brand strategy, we had to create the brand name. I conducted a branding workshop with the senior stakeholder, over the weeks we hit the jackpot with 96. In the technology world, if you add 32 bit + 64 bit, it adds up to 96. The board also serves this bit processing. After several rounds, we settled for 96Boards. The next step was to create a brand logo. It was both challenging and exciting. We outlined several ideas, style and analysed logo placement on small screen, i.e. favicon and on a billboard. I believed in the product and wanted to be the optimum logo we can use in any marketing and digital collaterals. The final logo was approved. Now we had the CVP, brand name and the logo. It was time to establish brand guidelines. Brand guidelines is a functional document that helps end users use the brand assets appropriately. If brand guidelines don’t exist you will soon see the logo shape, size colours, feel being abused. Which in return brings an adverse effect on the company. 96Boards was going to dominate the SoC space. We wanted a reliable brand as well as sub-brands to differentiate its offering. House-of-brand was the most appropriate methodology for 96Boards. We trusted the open source community to make this business successful. There are various elements to building a community. Providing users with the necessary tools, documentation and quick support are the top priority. My team build a support forum with dedicated moderators. We established an open source editing platform, this would encourage our users to collaborate in open source. Over the years we see how our community grew. Users who were seeking support now helped other users. We invited top contributors to our events and even managed to hire one.

Marketing strategy.

We have managed to get placed. A brand which didn’t exist a year ago now bring in. 30% of the website traffic. We were ranking for top keywords in Google. I also launched a video marketing plan.

OpenHours

The execs wanted a marketing strategy that would cost the minimum and help grow the brand. I presented with OpenHours. OpenHours was a weekly video conference which will include our engineers, execs, members and community members from joining. Started as a supporting tool OpenHours soon become an Industry known place to hang out. We guest speakers from various technology landscape. OpenHours soon became added value to be part of 96Boards. If you want to launch your own brand, build an online community or just talk about this project get in touch.