Orange Honey | Switchyard Creative

Goal

Since 2007, Seattle-based development company Orange Honey has been building a vector photo editing and sketching technology that provides desktop application quality to the browser and mobile experience using HTML5. In 2010, Orange Honey officially released the MugTug suite of applications, including Sketchpad, the vector sketching application, and Darkroom, a photo editing application. Used in concert, the two apps give designers the tools they need in a device-agnostic package. Although the technology was not mature enough for widespread use at first inception, the suite’s HTML5 implementation brought tremendous support for Orange Honey’s vision and attracted attention from thought leaders within the HTML5, graphic design, mobile and photography spaces.

Orange Honey contacted Switchyard to act as an independent marketing and media relations arm during continued development of the suite. The company had developed a powerful, cutting edge software suite, but in order to be successful the company needed to generate a complete press kit, revamp its social media outlook, revise its strategic vision, and pursue strategic relationships with technology partners and relevant media sources.

Solution

Switchyard immediately began serving as the equivalent of an internal marketing team, allowing the Orange Honey developers and CEO to continue their focus on technology and important milestones such as iPad and iPhone app release dates.

Switchyard created a wide array of press kit materials that highlighted Orange Honey’s unique story and communicated the value that their suite is capable of providing. Simultaneously, we created documentation for Orange Honey CEO Charles Pritchard’s keynote speech at the 2010 Google I/0 Conference, which the team used as a soft launch of the software suite. Switchyard built and managed a target media list, increasing the MugTug software suite’s international visibility by propagating the press materials to key sources within the high-tech, mobile and photography spaces. After six weeks of collaboration, Orange Honey increased its partnership with Switchyard to include strategic direction consulting, online identity guide development, and strategic partnership recommendations.

Together we reconsidered Orange Honey’s technology and partnership activities with an increased emphasis on profitability. Switchyard established a series of measurable objectives and corresponding strategies, followed by specific tactics designed to deliver on those strategies.

Results

The MugTug suite received coverage in the New York Times’ Bits Blog, CNET Asia, Netbook News, DigitalCamera.com, PetaPixel, ZDNet, and The Photoletariat.

In addition, Orange Honey continues to focus development resources around the strategic direction authored by Switchyard, with an increased emphasis on building strategic partnerships as a major component of revenue generation and long-term viability. Switchyard’s contributions to that documentation has helped focus the company’s growth and technology decisions.

Looking forward, we believe the MugTug suite is positioned to leverage its cutting-edge platform independence and HTML5 visibility into new partnerships and a rapid increase in entertainment and productivity application market share.