Purple Spread is an agency that helps startups launch on crowdfunding platforms. Their campaigns have collectively raised over $1 million and have been featured on Forbes, Fast Company, and GQ.
The Brief
We like to believe that it’s the best ideas that naturally rise to the top, but it’s simply not true. It’s people that push ideas — they don’t spread by themselves. My co-founders and I started Purple Spread to help creators turn their grand ideas into popular reality through platforms like Kickstarter. As a crowdfunding agency, we provided services such as: campaign strategy, brand positioning, marketing, campaign management, and more.
What were the obstacles?
1. Pervasive myth: ‘build it, and they will come’.
Many creators have backgrounds in engineering and industrial design. This naturally causes them to value the science of creation while ignoring the art of communication. By finding the act of sales as evil, they don’t bother to spend time on marketing or crafting their story. This ultimately leads to great products but failed campaigns.
2. Crowdfunding is seen as easy money.
Huge news stories populate the sellable narrative: ‘an average person has one big idea and gets millions of dollar instantly on Kickstarter’. It makes it seem like anybody can get rich as long as you have an idea and a crowdfunding video. However, the truth is very far from it.
3. Short attention spans of media and people.
Trends come and go faster and faster. Attention spans shorten and desires become more fickle. This rapidly evolving marketplace makes it increasingly difficult to cut through the noise and reach your customers.
What did I do?
- Co-founder
- Marketing
- Strategy
- Branding
- Graphic Design
- Content Creation
Section 1: Campaigns
Our campaigns have collectively raised over $1,000,000 on crowdfunding.
The majority of crowdfunding campaigns launch to silence and utter failure. Getting crazed fans kicking down your door and having the media shout your name from the rooftops is what everybody wants. With our clients, we applied our specially designed crowdfunding framework to maximise their chance of success.
Our work has been featured on:
Client Case Study: JUISIR
Product: Cold-press Juicer
Raised on Crowdfunding: $800,000+
Funding Goal: 11x Over
Platform: Indiegogo & Kickstarter
View CampaignClient performed campaign execution. Purple Spread was responsible for brand positioning, campaign strategy, marketing communication, and general consultation.
1. The Situation
We were engaged by JUISIR’s co-founder Leo Chen, listed in the ‘Forbes 30 Under 30’, to launch his new venture with crowdfunding. After much excitement, the team quickly realised there was much work to be done. Specific problems on the project included a lack of clarity on the product’s core benefit, no clearly identified customer group, and no compelling message.
2. Building The Foundation
We started our crowdfunding framework by first ignoring the product and taking a deep dive into the team to discover their purpose, identity, promise, tribe, niche, and story. By building a strong brand foundation first, this made it easier to create a more consistent and effective campaign down the track.
3. Delivering The Campaign
After digesting all the data points, we constructed a campaign strategy based on this insight: people love fresh juice, but hate washing their machines. Combining this insight with an angle around ‘building habits’, the JUISIR campaign was born. In our final deliverables, we provided the company’s brand positioning, campaign storyline, video storyboard, script, and landing page copy.
4. Execution And Results
The client followed through with all of the campaign execution to blow past their funding goal to eventually raise over $800,000 with features in Forbes, Designboom, and more.
“Purple Spread is a very professional and helpful team. During our Kickstarter campaign, Purple Spread provided invaluable advice and resources such as brand positioning and marketing strategy. With their strong support, JUISIR had amazing performance on Kickstarter!” — The JUISIR Team
Section 2: Education
Training others on how to brand their project, craft their story, and launch to the world.
With a huge number of teams planning to launch on Kickstarter, but with limited bandwidth in our own team, we needed to find a way to service this larger scale. We distilled our experience and skills into an easily digestible crowdfunding framework. With this, we crafted multiple formats of crowdfunding training, each adapted to the different development stages of a team. By combining our successful campaign experience with the crucial tactics of other million dollar campaign owners, we greatly improved the chance for success of our clients.
Bootcamp
The Purple Prep
A two-day intensive bootcamp that trained clients through every crucial facet of crowdfunding. In conjunction to this, we provided a brand audit, a campaign strategy session, and a campaign storyboard — leaving the team with clear direction. This short and intensive session provided the maximum amount of help possible under tight timelines.
Resources
The Purple Handbook
All clients were given our Purple Handbook, which is a 100+ page manual that provides play-by-play instructions on everything needed to successfully crowdfund. It explains theory, breaks down exact how-to’s, and provides training on areas beyond crowdfunding. Some examples of the resources: breakdown of million dollar campaign videos, fundamentals in digital analytics, etc.
Events
The Purple Community
Our team believed in ‘paying it forward’ and helping as many startups as we could. Therefore, we built a community of crowdfunders and often spoke at events, such as CES Asia and Startup Grind, helping new teams navigate the crowdfunding space. In addition to openly sharing our experience and best practices, we helped connect founders to the best partners for PR, creative, digital ad buying, etc.
Section 3: Outcome
The main achievements that made a difference.
1. Helped teams successfully launch their startups.
In reality, it’s extremely difficult to make something that somebody will pay for. With crowdfunding, I’ve helped teams get strangers to pay them money before they’ve even created the product. This allowed for the dreams and ambitions of founders to continue when they didn’t have the funds to move on.
2. Created comprehensive product launch framework.
Although focusing on using the crowdfunding medium, the work I created with my co-founders at Purple Spread extends to general startup work and product launches. These resources allow many teams to easily navigate the fundamentals of exceptional marketing communications.
“Rob is genuinely one of the most talented brand marketers that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. He has a genius for taking complex marketing problems and refining them into simple and elegant messaging. Rob really cares about the strength of relationships he has with people and the quality of work he delivers.”
Holly Sharp — Co-founder & Partner
Purple Spread