GTM Sauce

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

Mixedoffline-ads

What they did

Bought a large billboard in New York with the message 'Scrolling Kills', intentionally without clear attribution (no opalapp.com or 'get Opal'). Intended as a brand statement; the phrase is now tied to Opal in search (scrollingkills.us).

What happened

No impact on downloads or revenue; the head of a New York school later said seeing it made him more comfortable signing with Opal. Founder calls it a half failure.
Stage
scale
Effort
one large billboard in New York

In their words

Why Opal Stopped Chasing Revenue – Kenneth Schlenker, Opal

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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

Tags: billboard, brand, ooh, no-attribution, message-campaign