Every day, more than half of all adults don’t drink enough water to meet recommended levels. Danone and Font Vellateamed up with NOBA to help people reach their daily hydration goals with a bottle cap device and app called coach2O.

Uncharted waters

NOBA’s first step was to conduct a Screen phase, where we laid out the key business questions: Which audience segments to target? Who are the best early adopters? What’s the initial interest in a smart bottle cap and the level of use over time? Which features provide the most value? And what will that value look like in terms of revenues from bottle cap and water sales?

Dipping our toes

Next, it was time for our Sonar launch, a 3-week “pre-sale” campaign to determine the product-market fit.

Here, we tested different value propositions (for instance, helping athletes to improve performance, or helping parents teach their children healthy habits, etc.), with different target audiences (like sports enthusiasts and parents) through an online campaign using a temporary “burner” brand name to acquire our early adopters.

The campaign went hand-in-hand with an initiative to gauge interest among existing corporate “healthy habits” programs as well.

Thirsty for more

In our 3-week Alpha phase, we offered a non-scalable version of the service to our 40 early adopters — who received personalized nutrition coaching and daily reports — to determine the ongoing level of interest and business metrics. We compared their water consumption to the control group who received only group messages and we identified a notable jump in water consumption. We then used those results to design the first version of the Coach2O app.

Diving in

NOBA applied these findings to a Beta launch phase to build the first “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) — in other words, to design the actual smart bottle cap, mobile app and other elements to turn coach2O into a viable business.

We created a packaging prototype and a simple app with new features added weekly, like messages about how “good hydration increases focus”, which turned out to be vital for encouraging the most healthy hydration habits among our testers.

From your lips
The coach2O cap fits snugly on top of an existing bottle cap and the sensor inside tracks how much you drink. The cap lights up to remind you when to take another swig.

To your fingertips
Stay on top of your hydration history with the coach2O app and set personalized hydration goals based on your body’s specific needs.

Riding the wave

With a successful business model and exciting device ready for market, Danone asked NOBA to build up coach2O in a Growth phase, where we scaled the user base, handled payments and delivery, identified and measured growth levers and handled customer support.