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QUIRKY INVENTION CHALLENGES
WHAT IS QUIRKY?
Quirky is a community-base product development company. People can submit their product invention ideas to Quirky for free, and if it gets the most votes Quirky will turn it into a real product. Quirky then promotes and distributes the products on its e-commerce platform and to retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond, Target, Best Buy & Home Depot (to name a few). The inventor then makes 10% of the revenue and the community members that contributed make a piece of the pie too.
THE CHALLENGE
Quirky was changing the process and speed of traditional product development with 3 new products being launched every week! The only problem was the world didn't know about them yet. And those that heard about them had the perception they were a 'gizmos & gadgets' company. In addition to this they had to overcome the fact that, from a consumer perspective, the Quirky process was quite complex and intimidating.
Our challenge was to grow the brand - increase sales, expand the community, get more idea submissions and turn Quirky into a household name.
STRATEGIC APPROACH
Our brand team at Quirky developed a strategic plan and brand repositioning strategy that aimed to bring the brand mission to life 'to make invention accessible' through the new positioning 'Reinventing invention'.
We wanted to elevate Quirky to be a leading lifestyle brand and to do this we needed to ensure the quality of the products was at that level too. Since the products were invented by our community we needed to start with them.
We spoke to inventors, engineers & designers and analyzed our current product portfolio to discover that the most successful products were invented by people who were passionate about something (e.g. technology, fitness, gardening, organization, cooking, parenting).
Our strategy was to target these passionate people through partnering with major lifestyle brands and retailers (that already had large followings from passionate people) and challenge their communities to invent in their area of passion in a new marketing program called ' Invention Challenges'.
QUIRKY INVENTION CHALLENGES
We partnered with brands like The Katie Couric Show, The Home Depot, and Real Simple to launch Invention Challenges that allowed us to start drawing in their passionate communities who would bring in game-changing invention ideas.
The top ideas submitted were voted on by a panel of experts and an audience at a special live-streamed product evaluation night themed around each particular challenge. For The Katie Couric Invention Challenge, the evaluation was done on the show, gaining us national TV exposure.
Social media and digital platforms drove people to the site to submit an idea. The response was impressive with thousands of ideas pouring in just days after the challenges launched.
VIDEO CONTENT
A video promoting and explaining each invention challenge was released on our (and our partner's) social media channels in the week leading up to the challenge deadline.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media was utilized to promote the challenge, release the videos and trigger engagement with the Quirky community. The response on social media showed a dramatic increase in engagement than normal Quirky posts.
TV EXPOSURE
For the Katie Couric Invention challenge we did a Quirky product evaluation on live TV, with our CEO and founder Ben Kaufman getting the audience to help crown a winner.
THE RESULTS
1000+ new ideas submitted in the first day for each challenge
Got 10 minutes of free national television exposure
Increased consumer online engagement by 200%
Strengthened relationships with retailers
Gained 6 new Quirky products
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