Marine Magnetics

Marine Mag­net­ics make mag­ne­tome­ters that help find ores under­wa­ter. Their prod­ucts are used around the world by researchers, aca­d­e­mics, urban plan­ners and even trea­sure hunters. It’s an indus­try lead by engineer-thinking.

How do you teach old dogs new tricks? Lead the pack

In 1998, a young engi­neer saw an oppor­tu­nity to change the game. He started Marine Mag­net­ics to bring user expe­ri­ence and the real­i­ties his clients and prod­ucts would face in the field into his prod­uct design. He cre­ated mag­ne­tome­ters rugged enough to be dragged along the bot­tom of the sea and sen­si­tive enough to detect the dif­fer­ence between “noise” and mean­ing­ful data.

But estab­lished niche indus­tries are made up of net­works who have thrived dur­ing their sta­tus quo and are under­stand­ably leery of new ideas. Espe­cially bet­ter ones.

Research: What’s the conversation?

Our research revealed that this mar­ket was ripe for a player with new thinking:

  • Marine Mag­net­ics’ com­peti­tors’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions were rid­dled with engi­neer think­ing and lan­guage. They were uni­formly painful to look at and even more painful to understand
  • Com­mu­ni­ca­tions focused on fea­tures, not ben­e­fits leav­ing con­sumers unclear whether sophis­ti­cated tech­nol­ogy would ren­der bet­ter results
  • Years of indus­try iner­tia had trained many con­sumers to expect lit­tle in the way of progress or tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. Devel­op­ment stagnated.
  • Com­peti­tors delib­er­ately attempted to con­fuse prospects by point­ing out improve­ment to their prod­ucts that didn’t affect data col­lec­tion capa­bil­i­ties. As a result, con­sumers didn’t under­stand what data was most valu­able in assess­ing a magnetometer’s performance.

When we researched Marine Mag­net­ics’ approach we saw some­thing com­pletely different:

  • Marine has a design sen­si­bil­ity from con­cep­tion to devel­op­ment. They don’t fetishize equip­ment, they make equip­ment peo­ple can use
  • Unlike many other mag­ne­tome­ter man­u­fac­tur­ers, Marine ONLY designs marine mag­ne­tome­ters (Doing it right requires focus)
  • Marine has a feed­back loop in place that con­stantly informs the design process. They dili­gently test their prod­ucts and incor­po­rate con­sumer feed­back at every stage of development
  • 10 years in busi­ness still makes Marine a young com­pany with new think­ing. This is the kind of issue we can turn into an opportunity
  • The industry’s pen­chant for obfus­ca­tion makes it dif­fi­cult for prospects to focus on the met­rics that mat­ter. Con­versely, Marine is all for edu­cat­ing prospects and part­ners on the sci­ence behind their tools

Strat­egy: How can we influ­ence the conversation?

The indus­try needed an expert, and we decided to give them one. The direc­tion would influ­ence Marine’s look and voice.

The courage to leave plenty of white space sug­gests the con­fi­dence of an orga­ni­za­tion with some­thing valu­able to offer-and one with noth­ing to hide.

The voice speaks plainly and col­lo­qui­ally about sophis­ti­cated tech­nol­ogy and design. The object is to make it eas­ier for prospects to make informed deci­sions about their pur­chases. Ide­ally to be in a posi­tion to explain the value to others.