Alerje’s Digital Tech Universe
The Brief
As a fractional Chief Marketing Officer at Alerje, Inc., a digital tech startup, my first task was to create a cohesive and efficient message that accurately conveyed the company’s unique value proposition (UVP). As is typical with most tech startups, the product was in the driver’s seat of the company’s marketing message. The product, in development, had a competitive, first-to-market advantage. This small, scrappy team had all the right stuff—imagination, ambition, tenacity, and drive. I asked to see the current core message that had been driving the team’s strategy:
Alerje uses proactive patient design to improve patient outcomes and reduce the cost of care in the food allergy industry.
This statement, albeit jargon-heavy, provided an accurate description of the intention of the product: improve patient outcomes and reduce the cost of care. When you break down the statement, there were four outcomes: commitment to deliver proactive patient design, improve patient outcomes, and reduce the cost of care for families managing food allergies. Even though these outcomes were central goals within a vertical market within the healthcare industry, food allergies, and oral immunotherapy, practically any health, digital tech-based company could claim these outcomes. Alerje’s technology could impact any of the before-mentioned industry-defined outcomes. We had to determine how to make Alerje stand out in a crowded market of other healthcare-related digital tech startups.
Why Alerje?
Finding what made Alerje unique and crafting a message that could resonate with our target audience required us to start at the end: the customer. Our primary customers were the caregivers who helped support and provide a sense of normalcy and stability for the person in their family with a food allergy. ‘Caregivers’ were the exhausted moms and dads. After looking closer at the data from our customer discovery work as a result of an SBIR grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), my team pushed each other to identify the primary, secondary, and tertiary problems that these audiences wanted to be solved:
A cure.
Resources.
A break.
A cure for a chronic, potentially life-threatening condition is a top priority but is currently not a reality. Access to resources is available to help a food allergy family make decisions. This next critical piece of insight was the show-stopper for us—a break. As we watched video testimony of moms and dads with kids crawling all around and over, they all had the same two looks: exhaustion and vigilance. We heard again and again from these families that they just wanted one simple thing: a break. They wanted a break from the constant interruptions throughout the day, from having to assess, on the fly, the readiness of food handlers at a coffee shop to tamping down the panic when their kids get invited to a ‘cool kids’ sleepover. As these food allergy families are thrown into a world filled with uncertainty and countless interruptions, protecting their child from the world takes on more profound and, some days, unrelenting levels.
There are obvious, tangible problems that families with food allergies have to manage daily. They must do whatever it takes to prevent accidental exposures which could trigger a life-threatening event. Beyond the physical threats, we found that this ongoing and relentless diligence had a cost. The rhythms of life for a food allergy family are complicated. More families reported struggling with their mental health, from the parents to the patients.
With that in mind, Alerje decided to give these families a break and created an unconventional marketing campaign to connect with these families. Instead of trying to communicate and build a connection as just a tech company, we decided to make meaningful connections in ways aligned with our values. So, we birthed a new “world” and invited these families into it every month.
A Marketing/Branding Experiment: A food allergy-inspired comics series for families
Why comics?
Psychotherapist Cecille Ahrens believes this approach is creative, less threatening, and serves as an engaging way to invite people from all walks of life into the complex world of mental health. Ahrens said, “Comic books can make people feel safer to explore their own mental health issues through the power of externalization, positive identification, and story-telling. There is healing power in seeing our stories and parts of ourselves reflected in these comic books. I think comic therapy can be therapeutic and extremely effective in helping people reclaim their power.”
“Comics are an engaging medium because our brains process visuals faster than text. Jolene Caufield, Senior Advisor, Healthy Howard notes that pictures and illustrations are easy to remember as they trigger our eidetic or photographic memory. She explains, “this is good news if you're trying to convey information through visuals as it will help the viewers remember it more, therefore, understand it more. Images with text enhance the viewer's ability to memorize and allow for easier information recall which means it will have a bigger impact on a viewer's mind compared to text only.” Ahrens agrees this ability to convey complexity in simple, relatable, yet powerful ways is what attracts both children and adults to comics, noting “with comics, students not only learn the material faster, they learn it better."
The Alerje Brand Type and Experience
There are three brand type categories: Functional, Image, and Experiential. Movies, books, food, etc., have ‘genres’ or ‘types,’ and so do brands. After determining Alerje’s brand type (70% functional / 30% Experiential), we used that realization to develop a brand experience to align with it.
The results: The Smart Defenders Comics Series featuring Myles Jasper Smart III as our central hero.
We leaned in and leveraged the experiential element of Alerje’s brand and used it as a competitive advantage. Most of the competitive market was squarely in the
From left to right: Aisha, Mom, Dad, Myles Smart III, Grandma, and Grandpa
Nestled in a creative and quaint neighborhood in the Midwest, the Smart family finds strength in each other and are incredibly close. They are quick to defend and be there for each other when the going gets tough. The power of their family bond will be tested when Myles Jasper Smart III has to navigate a challenge that will affect him for the rest of his life: managing a food allergy. With powerful illustrations from the multi-talented, Detroit-based Kingdom Blue Studios, Aaron Mickens, The Smart Family came alive. 10-year-old Myles Jasper Smart III and the loveable Smart Family have inspired our end users during their daily adventures of food allergy battles, surprises, and triumphs. From the initial reaction and diagnosis to the decision to onboard oral immunotherapy, The Smart Defenders Comic Series has given an inside and outside view of how food allergies can affect a family’s day-to-day journey. Myles' story visually shows how there are solutions when food allergy interruptions or challenges present themselves. Often, the story in comics revolves around the idea of a superhero coming to save the day. In this series, the Smart Family are the heroes as they come together to support Myles after a food allergy diagnosis.
The data showed that our experiment was working. Little Myles and the Smart Defenders’ impact was measured not only by a 50%+ engagement boost within hours of release, but each new episode was a consistent top performer.
You can check out the entire first season of The Smart Defenders here.
Along the way, we went back to craft a revised message better suited for the Alerje brand’s goals and mission. Here are the before and after impact statements:
Before: Alerje uses proactive patient design to improve patient outcomes and reduce the cost of care in the food allergy industry.
After: Alerje designs solutions that allow food allergy families to make every count.
INDUSTRY
Digital Tech | Oral Immunotherapy
LOCATION
Detroit, MI
BIG→BIGGER IMPACT
Brand’s Purpose Statement Clarity and Re-alignment
Increased its brand awareness
Developed a competitive edge in the market
Created strategies to allow the team to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Built a functioning department that included social media management and development, graphic design, public relations, website development and maintenance.
Built CRM strategy
Provided SBIR NSF grant support