Brands&Ninjas

The Brief

Brands invest heavily in product placement inside retail stores, by contracting specific placement in aisles, promoting special deals, and other similar physical services, in the expectation of raising customer awareness and product visibility.

Given the geographic extension and the distance that can separate these retail locations, most brands find it difficult to verify whether the conditions of these services are fulfilled and risk investing without being able to validate their proper implementation.

With this problem in our hands, we set out to build a platform that makes it easier for a brand to audit what the contracted service looks like when it’s out there, even if it’s based in a remote location.

Strategy

Looking at other companies based in the gig economy system, we chose an approach that relied on a community of task doers (crowdsourcing) to perform the remote verification of these services in retail locations in representation of a brand. In return, every user who completed the submission of feedback would be paid for it.

Result

Brands&Ninjas is now a software-as-a-service platform for companies who sell products in brick-and-mortar locations to confirm if/how the contracted services are set up.

Brands have access to a web app where they can create assignments (missions) for the community to complete. The community, on the other hand, has access to an Android and iOS mobile app where they can find additional information about nearby available missions, execute them, and provide feedback, plus manage their profile and credit wallet and withdraw the money they earned through Brands&Ninjas.

My role in creating Brands&Ninjas

Head Of Product

At Brands&Ninjas I serve as a Head Of Product, managing the strategy, development, and delivery of the two main apps within the company’s ecosystem - a web platform for Brands and a mobile app available for Android and iOS for the Ninjas to use.

My role started as a Product Manager, helping the founders define and prioritize the features to bring the highest value in the shortest time frame, managing and delivering the MVP.

I was then moved to a more high-level role providing input for strategy, and owning and executing a roadmap with a cross-functional development team.

Aside from Product Management, I’m also sitting on the board of the company, providing guidance for long-term strategy on product development.

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