"Traditionally, battery manufacturers serve a commodity market. Yet, with the emergence of highly complex battery systems for critical applications within portable medical instruments and data systems, we saw an emerging market for a higher-quality battery vendor. We had the knowledge and the facilities, but we needed to project that to an engineering community that looks upon battery manufacturers largely as cell-soldering shops."

Rob Mendes da Costas
Director of Marketing, Micro Power Electronics, Inc.




URL: www.micro-power.com

Client:
Micro Power Electronics, Inc., ranks among the top three industrial battery pack companies in North America. Producing mission-critical power devices for medical purposes, identification and data collection, and military, Micro Power’s expertise lies in custom battery packs and smart charger systems.

Challenge:
With the portable device trend surging forward, Micro Power wanted to be perfectly positioned for explosive growth. To do so, they needed a brand that would elevate them above the competition and fend off larger brands such as Motorola entering their category. The Overland Agency’s first main hurdle was battling brand relevance in two product categories that were natural expansion areas for Micro Power: chargers and power system integration. The second challenge was to take a company with little to no brand recognition in the design-engineering community and put them on the radar screens of R&D teams nationally. Overland needed not only to raise awareness, but create a brand that design teams would leverage in their development cycle and ultimately promote as their vendor of choice.

Solution:
When end users turn on their portable devices, they only want to know one thing: the power is on. Overland’s strategy was to use this simple idea to explain the value of partnering with a knowledgeable and quality-driven battery system provider. We developed unifying brand elements that embody the real benefits of partnering with Micro Power by first evaluating the end-customer needs in their three main markets: portable medical, field test, and data collection devices. To accomplish the second goal, we helped Micro Power develop a marketing partnership with a company with solid brand trust: Texas Instruments (TI). Since TI makes power-management chips and Micro Power builds power systems, they were natural matches for an online seminar series we created to spread their brand message. These seminars were well promoted through both companies’ websites, e-mail blasts, online advertising, and newsletter sponsorships.

Result:
Micro Power’s dynamic web presence uses targeted visual language to present a clear reminder of what’s important to the end users of their products—and Micro Power provides strong reassurance to its clients of this reliability. The seminar series was a resounding success, with hundreds of engineers across the globe attending each seminar. This, in turn, spurred steady traffic to the new Micro Power website for downloads of whitepapers, follow-up phone calls on related topics, and a full pipeline of leads. The large number of registrants for the seminars also opened the door for an ongoing permission-based marketing campaign.