Promoting a Security Startup Without Selling Fear

Scout Alarm is a home security start-up based in Chicago. As they were getting ready to launch, they contacted gravitytank (my former employer) for support on their go-to-market strategy. What resulted was a series of design sprints to help them with their product, branding, offerings, and web presence.

One of the elements of this collaboration was a short promotional video to communicate the value prop and offerings of Scout Alarm.

One thing that was very important to the crew at Scout was not relying on a fear-based approach like almost all other security companies employ for their marketing.

With only about three weeks in our timeline, we had to move quickly. We spent a week finding locations and rapidly iterating the script and storyboard so that we could begin shooting on week 2. Thankfully, we were able to to work closely with Scout Founder and CEO, Dan Roberts for most of the preproduction.

The time constraints meant we had to lean heavily on family and friends for on-screen talent, but that was commonplace for the scrappy innovation work gravitytank was so good at. Our second week was spent driving around Chicago gathering footage at our scouted locations.

We brought it all together in week 3, recording an in-house voiceover, adding graphics that the gravitytank Design Team had created during their sprints, and cutting everything together into a nice, 90-second spot that they could use to promote their product and service online.

scoutalarm.com