Omnidian
Ask anyone in the creative department at Mindgruve, and I’d wager that nearly everyone would say that Omnidian is our favorite client. The reason? Mr. Brad Davis.
Magazine spread, and C&I display ads tailored to a complex consumer segment.
Client
Omnidian
Services
Print Advertising
Display Headlines
Client Presentations
Year
2022–23
Outcome
A Happy Brad
Overview
Absolutely lickable.
Brad was the CMO of Omnidian. He was a sixty-something who styled himself as an old school ad man. He loved creative presentations. When he liked our work, he’d coo with delight and call the design “lickable.” Creative work was either a “yes” or a “no,” he told us. In his view, clients should approve or reject work, but they shouldn’t dilly-dally with it. So we always worked harder to make sure that Brad said yes. Brad asked us to position Omnidian as an industry leader with creative that felt approachable and fun, in contrast to the type of messaging that so many other solar companies pushed — technical, no-nonsense, overly eco-earnest. Challenge accepted, Brad.
Omnidian doesn’t install solar panels. They monitor the panels to make sure they’re running at optimal capacity.
Let’s say a solar panel isn’t working anymore. Did a squirrel chew through a wire? Are lower absorption levels due to a faulty installation? Or is the shadow of a tree falling across the roof? Omnidian figures all that out. They’re a nationwide provider, connected to techs in practically every region of the country. No matter where you’re located in the US, they can monitor your system remotely and send a tech out to address an issue before it becomes a problem. Their business transcends routine operations and maintenance. Reducing false alerts means giving their clients back time and money, because those clients didn’t have to run fire drills all the time.
Gimme that ad.I want to lick it.
— Brad Davis, Omnidian CMO
Magazine Spread.
In May 2022, Omnidian asked us to create a full-spread ad that would run in print outlets from July–December 2022. The first publication would be in the July issue of Solar Power World. Anyone who understands media deadlines has already guessed that a kick-off in May for a print run in July means that we had to work frenetically. Twenty-four hours after the kick-off, this is what we came up with. Click it to see the ad in its full glory.
Audience
Commercial/residential installers. Utility partners.
Mission
Build Omnidian’s brand awareness.
Timeline
Insane.
Print Ad
The headline “Ride off into the sunset” conveyed how the solar installer can bolt in the panels and leave. The subcopy deepens the idea: “Sell it. Install it. Let us do the rest.” Omnidian ensures that the panels are running at their highest productivity — making the installer look like a hero. Elsewhere in the layout we wove in the client’s value props, the URL, and a testimonial. Yet subtle design decisions made much of Omnidian’s business approach instantly comprehensible. See the checkmarks floating atop the panels? They denote how Omnidian monitors all the panels yet can spot any issue that flares up — like the triangle with an exclamation mark in the center of the spread.
Landing Page
From the print ad we spun out display creative, with CTAs that drove to a landing page where clients could drop inquiries to Omnidian. Much of the layout incorporates the same RTBs and headline-subhead-body setup of the print ad, only with a form that users could fill out. Click the lightbox to see the whole landing page.
Display Ads
To keep the momentum that they generated with the print ad going, Omnidian asked us to iterate on more banner ads that extended the “Ride off into the sunset” concept. All the ads still spoke to the installers, communicating that Omnidian was happy to handle the gruntwork that ensured the installers didn’t have to worry about ongoing upkeep issues. To bolster the campaign’s cohesiveness, we included the strapline from the print ad in our new banners: “Sell it. Install it. Let us do the rest.” Scroll through the sampling of the work we showed Brad:
C&I Ads.
In early 2023, Omnidian asked us for a campaign that targeted their commercial and industrial solar (C&I) installers audience. This group was so complex that it bisected into two subcategories: Solar Experts are developers, financiers, and Independent Power Producers (IPPs). These clients might sell or lease a solar system that’s installed, sell the energy that the panels produce, sell the project at any stage, or keep it until it’s operational. Unlike solar experts, Solar Neophytes’ core business is not solar, and they usually don’t have in-house solar expertise. They’re more like REITs or corporate conglomerates.
We read this sketch of the customer in the kick-off, but we still didn’t know much about their motivations or pain-points. The ads scrunched up to the right — those are selects from the first round of banner ads that we created. Remember how Brad said that creative work was either a yes or a no? This presentation was a no. He thought it was clever, but it wouldn’t wow this particular audience. Brad asked his team, “Is any of this stuff gonna stop our clients dead in their tracks? Is anybody gonna get this stuff?” They agreed with him: This stuff bombed. Total wipeout.
The beauty of a discovery call.
So, okay. The first round of creative flopped. Definitely not lickable. Yet Brad said he suspected that we were dealing with more of an input issue rather than an output issue. So we scheduled a discovery call with Omnidian to discuss their C&I audience in depth. A variety of key insights bubbled up in that conversation:
⸺ False alerts are a huge problem for C&I clients.
Solar panel monitoring systems kick off alerts when they detect a production problem. But those systems might not specify what the problem is. Alarms force the client into checking for systemic problems, but they might discover that the only issue is that it snowed last night on the solar panels. Omnidian’s remote monitoring technology can identify the core issue, which saves the client the expense of sending a truck roll and a technician out for no reason (other than the weather).
⸺ C&I clients also want reliable field service partners.
Some of the service techs in this industry operate in a type of fly-by-night capacity. Omnidian’s customers call them “knuckleheads.” Omnidian has 500 field service partners nationwide. Their techs are vetted and dependable, and Omnidian knows what their specialties are, so they know who to call to mow the grass — and who to call to replace a panel. (And none of them are knuckleheads.)
⸺ C&I clients depend on a nationwide platform.
The solar experts may handle their solar upkeep themselves, but the solar neophytes outsource it to providers in different regions. Thing is, they can only pick from a few options in each area. Hence the benefit of partnering with a national platform like Omnidian: The client doesn’t have to micromanage multiple providers. Omnidian takes care of the work and organizes the reporting inside a standardized platform.
⸺ Omnidian keeps its promises.
Because Omnidian is consistently monitoring the productivity of any given solar system, they can tell their clients a thousand things that their installers are keeping from them. Installers are often more interested in bolting in the panels and leaving. (Riding off into the sunset, if you will.) Signing up with Omnidian means agreeing to a performance guarantee, which de-risks their clients’ production.
Nothing like some good old solar panel humor.
We soaked up these insights and rewrote the copy doc, which we presented to Omnidian to make sure they approved the messaging before moving to design. At first, this call felt tense. But Brad roared with laughter as he read our headlines.
The inside angle.
This was one of the best presentations I ever had at Mindgruve. We felt like comedians, rolling out jokes that hit every time. I cannot tell you how relieved we were — in large part because we didn’t think the messaging was funny. But that’s what I learned on this project: Our first round of ads was quippy enough, but it didn‘t play on the insights that only people working day-in, day-out in this industry would get.
We were slinging around solar argot, and Brad was delighted. “‘Solar panels love to cry wolf’ — yep, everyone’s gonna get that,” Brad said. “‘Mo’ knuckleheads, mo’ problems’ — they’re absolutely gonna get that.” For him, this latest round of messaging was a resounding yes. Omnidian selected their favorite headlines and we polished them into four ads that we sent off into the market.
Outro
Toward the end of the meeting, Brad said: ”You have always come through for us.”
Brad told us that Omnidian was under tremendous pressure to perform on its marketing KPIs in the first and second quarters of 2023. He had been nervous coming into this final presentation meeting, he said. But through the years of our collaboration together as client and agency, we never failed them. We always mustered the creative force they needed, even when the deadlines were absurd and the goals were undefined — and always at the right time. Another reason that we love Brad: He sends new business our way. Now he said he was looking forward to keep referring us to his contacts, and to work with us on many more projects for years to come.
