Background

ProtoPie is a Seoul-based, award-winning software company that makes the most high-fidelity digital prototyping tool on the market. It is used across industries and has become the best kept secret of Silicon Valley’s top tech firms, major automative manufacturers, home appliance companies, television production companies, and more. It had amassed a sizeable market share without making a single piece of brand advertising, but when it decided to push for greater presence across North America, it anticipated a challenge. Their software is absolutely critical for their clients, but explaining what it does to a wider audience proved really difficult. High-fidelity digital prototypes with hardware integration, multi-screen functionality and cloud-based collaboration? That’s a mouthful and a mindful.

Brief

Define and launch a brand idea and positioning for ProtoPie that lifts their perception above product functions and features and creates meaningful resonance with the North American design community. 

Insight

Ideas stuck in your head are worthless.

The general public thinks that having ideas is a blessing, but designers and other creative minds know: having unrealised ideas in your head is both a blessing and a burden. They are exciting, distracting, annoying, all-consuming, thrilling, terrifying and everything in between. 

The best way to deal with those unrealised ideas? Turn them into a prototype with ProtoPie. 

Idea

Free Your Ideas.

Execution

We imagined a world where, thought bubbles are physical objects. And they are annoying. Those ideas floating above your head are distracting. They get in the way, they cloud your mind, they preoccupy you. In this world, the ideas in your head are almost a curse. But there’s a cure. The way you free yourself from the ideas in your head is to set them free. To start making them. To put them into a prototype. 

To bring this story to life, we worked with the world-class storytellers and animators at Psyop. We created a visual style that is relatable and elevated. We developed it specially to capture the design eyes of our audience and deliver a message that speaks so clearly to all creative minds. 

Results

In just the first few weeks of the campaign, the performance is already exceeding targets. The 60 second film currently boasts over 7 million views on YouTube and counting. A running brand lift study has shown tremendous lift in both aided awareness (7% to 16%) and, more importantly, unaided brand recognition (0% to 7%) for ProtoPie among target audiences. 

Completion rates, click-through and likability are all well above industry averages, and the comments tell us the full story. Countless designers have told us, both online and in person, how much the story resonated with them. And most importantly, we’ve seen a new found appreciate of ProtoPie as a company that truly understands the design community.