Opal · screen time and focus app
Buy a New York billboard saying "Scrolling Kills" with no app link
No effect on downloads or revenue; helped close one school deal
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
- Effort
- one large billboard in New York
In their words
Why Opal Stopped Chasing Revenue – Kenneth Schlenker, Opal
Kenneth SchlenkerYeah. What I would say is it's probably like we bought this billboard that says, "Scrolling Kills," in New York.
Kenneth SchlenkerOkay. I would say it's a fail in the sense that we intentionally didn't make attribution really obvious. It didn't say clearly opalapp.com or getting Opal. It's a fail in the sense that no impact on downloads, no impact on revenue, but that wasn't the point. The point was really kind of a brand statement.
Kenneth SchlenkerActually, and just I think to finish on that, we signed a school in New York. The moment that we signed the deal, the head of that school actually didn't tell us that he saw the billboard. Because he saw the billboard, he actually was more comfortable signing. It's kind of those things that are not really directly measurable, but that do make an impact. It's, I would say, like a half failure here.
David BarnardI just Googled that while you were talking. When you Google Scrolling Kills, at least for me, pretty much everything that shows up is Opal related. You have scrollingkills.us, Scrolling Kills, Opal Saves. It's kind of cool to have this secondary tagline that you can own. Almost a trademark of you created this phrase that you can just put on a billboard, and that even though you probably, like you said, it didn't impact downloads, but it created …
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More from this episode
- Drop the hard paywall and give the core app away for freePaying share of users fell 20% to 9%, but organic growth, 1M+ DAUs and revenue rose
- Test how many app blocks free users get; settle where free users still love it3 free blocks gave free users a great experience while power users still pay
- Sell the app to schools as a phone policy after students asked for itGrew from one school to many US high schools; front-page LA Times coverage
- License a stranger's viral video about phone overuse and run it as your adSeen by dozens of millions; still running 1-2 years later
- Hire a user who posted about you to run her own educational channel for you0 to ~700K followers and millions of views in a few months
- Add focus streaks with an animated flame and gemstone rewards at milestonesBiggest win of the year for retention and growth; no numbers
- Let users tap to crack open a gemstone when they hit a focus milestoneThe app's most loved moment; users remember it and talk about it
- Hand out thousands of "Scrolling Kills" stickers that don't mention the app
Tags: billboard, brand, ooh, no-attribution, message-campaign