Case Studies on Best Practice in

External Marketing Communication

Cases on

Horus Technology

Il Birrino

Memeoirs

Fluentify

Written in May 2015 by the Italian team of the University of Trento:

Michele Bassetto, Eufemio Ferrante, Carmen Iaderosa,

Enrico Libralato, Luca Manisera, Chiara Tilola.

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Horus Technology Ltd.

Domestic market focus and on the market since 1 to 2 years

1) Introduction of Horus Technology

Horus, in the Egyptian culture is a divinity. The eagle divinity.

“There are millions of blind and visually impaired people in the world. What can we do to

improve their lives? Introducing Horus, a wearable personal assistant”.

Horus Technology is offering a product, a wearable device that helps blind and low vision

people to regain their independence.

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Horus Technology is a company launched in 2014 in Genoa, a city located at the seaside in

the North of Italy, by two students, Saverio Murgia (CEO) and Luca Nardelli (CTO).

Saverio and Luca had this idea while walking in Genoa, when they were asked by a lost blind

person where the crosswalk was. If this information was easily given by a person, it could also

have been given by a wearable device able to see everything surrounding the holder of the

device, providing detailed vocal instructions by means of a headphone.

This is why, the representative slogan of Horus Technology is: “The invisible made audible”.

The Horus Technology’s team is now composed of eight members: Saverio Murgia (CEO),

Luca Nardelli (CTO), Benedetta Magri (CMO), Alessandro Caldini and Simone Vuotto

(Software Developer), Martina Cavalieri (Brand Designer).

The story of Horus Technology began with the participation of the founders to the Silicon

Valley Study Tour, which gave them the input to participate in the Startup Day - Vol II

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organized in Genoa with the support of Talent Garden. That first success marked the

beginning of a journey aimed at achieving the goal of developing Horus. In May, Horus

Technology received the first grant from EIT ICT Labs, a European network that has

provided many opportunities to stay in touch with technological excellences. Then Horus

was accelerated by Working Capital and it won a competition at IDIAP, a research

laboratory in Switzerland. Finally, Horus entered the network of Edison Start and from the

beginning of 2015 they are working at the accelerator chip that is part of the “European

project Fiware”.

Horus Technology is not producing only a software, but it is also producing hardware device.

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Horus is an arch-shaped device, compatible with any pair of glasses. Horus observes reality,

understands and describes it to the person providing information at the appropriate time: it

can recognize faces, objects, reading texts, the presence of obstacles or road signs, and also

crosswalks.

The device consists of two parts, the first, containing the visual sensors and guidance and the

second, which includes the battery and the central processing unit to be kept with you in

your pocket or purse. The user interaction with Horus is via buttons or via vocal interaction.

A headphone provides the detailed description of what the camera is pointing at. Leveraging

the human’s bone structure, the person’s ability to hear is neither limited nor distorted, and

you can hear the device even in noisy environments.

2) What makes Horus Technology an entrepreneurial company? How innovative are

they?

Horus Technology enters the market of the wearable device. In its specific function Horus aims

at becoming an indispensable device for blind and low vision people to regain their

independence. Smart wearable in the technology industry for 2015 will become a big and

profitable market. The technology that these new devices are employing is innovative.

Smart technology is certainly something that will be the key to the optimal operation of our

future society, especially when it comes to healthcare. The core of innovation is the use of a

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state-of-the art technology, which produces an innovative product. Indeed, the product

utilises up-to-date software and hardware in order to offer a high standard service for the

user. In particular, the software is made by the team headed by the CTO Luca Nardelli. This

software can recognise faces, zebra crossing, and other important images. In addition, the

software can self-learn from the owner, by saving and recognising the most frequent faces.

The information that the device provides are kept secret in order to maintain personal

information safe. In other words, this product offers a mix of technology and design which

helps handicapped people to enjoy everyday life.

In 2015 what is relevant is how this technology could likely be used on a greater scale to help

those who truly need it the most: people with chronic medical illnesses. The actual tendency

of existing companies’ technology in wearable is to provide wearable to tech aficionados and

athletes who marvel at tracking personal health data — but not ultimately benefit society at

large. Conversely, Horus Technology aims at providing to million people an irreplaceable tool

for the daily life. Horus does not require to be connected to the Internet in order to perform.

All the functions of the device do not rely on smart phones or other devices. The innovation

lies mainly in the ability to add functionality and then in allowing the user to customize the

information stored by the device such as objects that the user uses most frequently and the

faces of the customer’s dearest people. It is basically used to make the interaction with the

surrounding world as natural as possible. Horus Technology is keen in introducing

technologies in the everyday use.

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The main innovation feature of Horus is the application and development of new

technologies in computer vision and machine learning that provide a wide range of personal

support. The device offers more than help and is rather a real personal assistant. The

innovation is the ability to create a device for blind people that are completely built with

them. In fact each aspect of Horus is designed (or is planned) based on the comments that

Horus Technology get from people who would really be interested in using the device. In this

way Horus Technology can create a device that can truly meet the needs of the people,

restoring their independence.

The customer relationship is vital: Horus Technology receives messages from people interested

in trying Horus every day and contributes to the development of the device. The reaction of

the people who is testing Horus is immediate and tangible: blind people start smiling and

keep on listening to the voice of Horus in the headphone. Users are always providing the

feedbacks on the capabilities they believe are more important for them.

Another innovative feature is the use of the crowd-funding as one of the main mean used to

avoid the budget constraints represented by the huge investments that the hardware requires.

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Horus is not only offering software, but a tangible product ready to be used. The objective

was to raise the necessary funds to provide prototypes to the “Italian Union of the Blind and

Visually Impaired”, which will help Horus Technology to identify people who can perform the

necessary tests. Horus’ commitment via the crowd-funding campaign is to create a common

path with the user who will participate in the development of the product, following the

implementation step by step in every customer’s need and discussing with the users for the

possible improvements.

Up to now, the main source of financing derives from “TIM #WCAP Crowd-funding” thanks

to which the project has been pledged and supported with € 30.750 out of the € 20.000

required for the implementation of the device. The TIM #WCAP Crowdfunding is the

Telecom Italia Reward Based Crowd-funding platform that supports innovative projects

turning great digital ideas into real projects with the support of the community.

3) What makes Horus Technology an example of best practice with regards to external

marketing communication? – How are these practices implemented

The relationship of Horus Technology with the association, such as Ageranv,

Talking newspaper Bridlington, Uici sezione di Chiavari and RP Liguria that are strictly

connected with the final customer of the product offered by Hours is the main driver of the

development of the company and of its best practices.

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The main national associations strongly support the product of Horus and are also one of the

main source of information and feedback for Horus Technology. Since the cluster of clients

can be considered a niche and since the final product is very specific and technically high

technological, the continuous relationship with the Italian national association is

fundamental. Horus Technology gathers information from them and through a continuous

feedback loop, it improves the quality of the product offered. The national associations are

one of the mean used by Horus Technology for entering the market: offering the product

directly to the national blind and low vision association is helping the company to both sell

the product and receive fundamental advices in how to improve a product that cannot be

easily tested by a person that is not affected by any disease.

Horus Technology is continuously passing through several steps, the so called “continuous

feedback loop effect”. The company is identifying, assessing, monitoring and controlling its

activities thanks to a tight relation with the users, using the outcome data as a reference for

learning and adapting to the customer needs, always evaluating its effectiveness.

Moreover, the strategy of the company of being with the customer is helping it in creating a

chain of contacts across the country that turns out to be a crucial mean that can be defined

in some way as “the word of mouth”. We will see in the next part of the new communication

features, how the presence in television and on the national media has been fundamental for

the diffusion of the product across the users. Luca Nardelli, the CTO of the company clearly

said that they had loads of difficulties in approaching the niche market they were trying to

penetrate, because the community of the blind people (for obvious reasons) do not have a

strong presence online. For this reason the majority of the communication and advertising in

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the very initial stage of the life of Horus Technology have been made offline, participating at

events and conferences dedicated to the specific cluster of customer that had also the

concrete possibility of trying the product. The video report attached to this case study analysis

clearly explains the reaction and the appreciation of the blind and low vision people to this

innovative product.

The following step included an online marketing campaign thanks to which the company

have gained, and is currently gaining, a social acceptance. This is visible also from the

response received from famous singer, actors and national VIPs that have suddenly joined a

viral online campaign of advertisement that has been really important for the national

recognition of the product offered by the company.

4) How is Horus Technology utilizing the new communications features?

Horus Technology uses actively five different social networks in order to promote its

product. These social networks are Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn. In

the social media Twitter, the company launched the hashtag “#OneViewForTheBlind”. The

central aim of the campaign is to support the crowd-funding process. The messages

associated with the hashtag explain how blindness and visually impaired can affect the

normal life. The social awareness message is the key of the campaign. In fact, it is designed to

reach a large audience and not only the final consumers. According to the company website,

this hashtag was aided by Italian VIP’s, among which television stars and international

athletes supported Horus Technology and its product. Thanks to this visibility, the project

of Horus spread through the social media. Moreover, this campaign was substantially

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without costs. We think the use of the hashtag was well-developed, especially for a company

such as Horus, which cannot utilize the classic media e.g. television or newspaper for budget

reasons. A step forward for the company was the participation in the TV show “Le Iene”

which is viewed on national TV channel. The televised report created a word-of-mouth

phenomena, which helped the company to create new contacts. In addition, the television

report was reported in the national newspapers. It meant free advertising for Horus

Technology, by utilising earned medias.

However, the top contributor in this social network is not the company. This means that

Horus may have difficulties in controlling the diffusion of the message. In fact, the hashtag

“#OneViewForTheBlind” is not focused on the company. We have utilised tweetreach in

order to track the twitter page of this company. The data confirms that the company is not

the main contributor.

Data from Tweetreach.com

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Another social network widely used by Horus Technology is Youtube. Horus produced a

short video with Italian and International blindfold VIPs. The final message of the video

invites to share the video clip on the personal social media page. Thanks to the briefness of

the video, and the presence of well-known people, the purpose of the video is to go virally

through the social media. We think this is a good practice in order to reach a lot of people.

On the other and, this use of YouTube has substantially the same problems stated above

with Twitter.

Facebook is used as showcase for all the news that involves Horus Technology. The

company’s page has 1438 followers. Horus posts a wide range of information for their

followers. Indeed, on the company’s Facebook profile there are information about a the

crowd-funding campaign, wishes for the festivity or the link to the video on YouTube. As for

the other social media, the company is trying to involve the financier in the project.

As stated above, Horus Technology uses LinkedIn as a professional social network, where you

can find the curriculum of the founders Saverio Murgia (CEO) and Luca Nardelli (CTO)

and all the others employees.

Finally, we can say that Horus Technology is trying to develop a promotional campaign in

order to finance the project. The company is still small, therefore the final aim in the use of

the social media is still not clear. The company mixes social awareness messages with

business, which can be an innovative and fast way to promote the product.

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5) International issues (if relevant)

At the moment Horus Technology has a complete focus on the domestic market. During the

product development the company received a lot of feedback and help from national blind

associations, which had influence in improving the technology. Basically thought for all

blind and visually impaired people, they actually aim at selling in the national market first,

and then expand abroad.