Columbus OH Startup: Brand Thunder Connects Brands With Fans’ Browsers

As the smartphone gains popularity more and more smartphone users are making their phone more personal with themes, wall papers and skins. Sure you can change your computer wallpaper, and you’ve been able to forever, but with smartphones, themes became totally immersive. Now all of the sudden your favorite sports teams, celebrities and even brands took over.

A Columbus OH startup called Brand Thunder, is creating that experience for your web browser. Now a fan of just about anything can trick out their FireFox,Chrome or even Internet Explorer (people still use that?) browser. The background, buttons and just about every corner of your browser is transformed into the theme of your choice. The only browser they don’t currently support is Safari.

While Brand Thunder offers themes from most of the major sports teams, celebrities, news, and holidays, what they also offer is the ability to brand businesses in a new and immersive way. Now a really cool startup or company can use BrandThunder to make their own custom theme that doesn’t just turn the browser into a great advertising and branding vehicle, but it also allows end users to connect with information in a variety of ways for the brand.

We got a chance to interview Brand Thunder, check out the interview below:

With its extreme makeovers for Internet browsers, Brand Thunder creates a persistent communication channel between major brands and their online consumers. These are interactive browser themes, an easy-to-install browser add-on, which transforms the end user’s drab web-browser into an immersive experience. They feature official logos, colors, images and style, plus content and functionality that extend the browser’s capabilities and can include video, music players or other Internet apps. Brands enjoy new revenue streams, expanded sponsorship and advertising inventory, and enhanced ROI for their web site, while fans are treated to an amazing browser experience.

Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder, is a first-time entrepreneur in Columbus, OH. He took a consumer-facing product, in a geographic location better known for medical research, and attracted top-tier brands from around the globe.

Recognizing the branding and communication potential within the Internet browser, Murphy built a business that helps companies establish a persistent connection with their online audience.  Clients of Brand Thunder’s interactive browser themes include: Major League Baseball Advanced Media, CBS College Sports Network, the Huffington Post, professional sports teams, IAC properties, Universal Music Group and many more.

Prior to Brand Thunder, Murphy worked with Internet marketing and technologies within the banking and online media industries. Murphy built “entrepreneurial ventures” within Swiss Re, Bank One and Netscape that migrated to the primary businesses once market viability was demonstrated.

Columbus Ohio area – Dublin, Ohio specifically

The startup culture is an emerging one. It’s a very supportive community with plenty of networking and startup programs like 10xelerator.org. Columbus is also home to one of the nations largest angel investor funds, Ohio TechAngels, who invest in early-stage Ohio-based ventures in the fields of information technology, advanced materials and medical technology. We’re seeing more successful exits, and some large investments coming in. The startup culture will really bloom as we enjoy more of that success.

The problem of a lack of attention, too much marketing noise, too little time on a webpage and too infrequent of visits to a web site is the struggle of today’s digital marketer. Brand Thunder creates a persistent communication channel between a brand and its online customer.  The result is thousands of incremental monthly visits to the brand’s web site and digital presence on social media that delivers increased traffic and revenue.

Distribution, but distribution has key dependencies on scale and monetization. As an affinity marketing tool, we’ve been able to leverage the distribution channels of our brand clients – their website, email lists and advertising inventory. However, maintaining ongoing promotion necessary for product success requires a meaningful ROI for your clients. Without meaningful revenue flowing back to the client, the commitment to promotion fades. Revenue is also tied to scale, and since the deal cycle for large brands can be long, building a self-serve product that web communities of any size could use allowed us to grow the business without additional resources.

By improving monetization and scale, we’ve enabled the most effective distribution channels to remain open. And distribution is vitally important for a small company with limited budget to break through the clutter.

Mentors evolve. As a supportive community, the right people for helping at the right time emerge, so the business and technology community of central OH is a mentor. The Internet itself plays a similar role. The smart people who share their knowledge via blogs and podcasts ensure that the needed information and insights are there for the taking whether it’s This Week In, Mixergy, Quora or the thousands of blogs that offer help.

We’re a virtual team. The first two employees were located in Dublin, OH and Victoria, British Columbia. The third person added was in Austin, Texas. The company continued to grow in that manner, being focused on capabilities first and location second.

There’s a lot of room for growth in the desktop browser space, and a lot of improvement to be made to BT:Engage, our self-serve browser theme creator. Looking beyond that is mobile where the metaphor of our product will likely need to evolve. On the desktop, the browser is the gateway to the vast amount of time spent on the computer. In mobile, functionality is fragmented into apps and we’ll need to operate at a higher level than the app to maintain the same level of visual experience and engagement.