Thanks to Product Hunt for featuring The Big Know and to all you product hunters for the positive reactions. I'm Joseph, Creative & Product Director at The Big Know.
We all have a favorite brand—a company or organization that constantly inspires us to live better in some way. Locked inside just about every one of those brands is many lifetime's worth of knowledge and expertise. At The Big Know, we wanted to find a way to unlock that knowledge and share it with the world. Cue The Big Know, the world's first brand-driven online education platform.
In the end, we believe by transforming brands into teachers, we'll create smarter marketing, better relationships between people and brands, and, most importantly, we think we'll improve lives in some small way. These are early days, but we're all excited to explore the idea of "brand as teacher" and to continue sprinting down TBK's feature road map.
So, who am I? I am a former agency man (Zeus Jones and GoKart Labs), part-time founder (Hum), and moonlighting children's book author (Beyond the Pond). I oversee product design, branding, and course creative here at The Big Know. I am on this road with a whole troop of amazing thinkers, like Don Smithmier, Tom Godfrey, Allison Gage, Brady Anderson, DauNae Clark, Adam Ramerth, and AJ Weydt, along with the team at GoKart Labs. Together, we're bringing The Big Know into the world.
Happy to answer any questions you might have.
@josephkuefler Wow Joseph. This could be an incredibly useful tool in the advertising space. Could replace a lot of "trial and error" learnings by taking lessons from big brands.
@robcromer@josephkuefler Thank you for the comment, Robert. We are, of course, biased, but we believe placing "campaigns of learning" at the center of your digital and marketing strategies will make every aspect of brand marketing better. Courses can so easily become a connector between all ecosystem touchpoints, from products to partner services to anything else. And yes, all the lessons learned from courses can be used to make larger spends more effective, be it related to TV, physical experiences, or new products.
Beginning a relationship by delivering something of value—by BEING what someone is interested in— will provide a massive halo over any brand. That's our hunch anyway....
@josephkuefler I can see that being the case! Also, I believe this would be helpful in streamlining strategy across all departments in an agency. There can be a lot of back and forth around advertising concepts and execution. Tools like this offer direction in that area.
Hey @josephkuefler! Digging the concept here. There's a storied tradition of brand-as-educator marketing here in the Twin Cities (hello Betty Crocker), and this seems like a natural evolution of that paradigm for the digital age.
Question: are there specific industries or market verticals that you think will benefit from a tool like this more than others? And if so, how did those assumptions inform the design of the product?
Congrats on the launch... looking forward to watching it grow and evolve!
@jgulden Hey, Josiah. You are right, there is a longstanding tradition of brands building their entire business around the sharing of knowledge. Betty Crocker is a great example of that. As a matter of fact, the idea for The Big Know came to be as Don was leaving a meeting at General Mills.
We believe just about every vertical can benefit from the "brand as teacher" idea. The only difficulty comes in deciding what from within their world is worth teaching. Brands and businesses that operate in the health and wellness space were an obvious place to start—in looking around at the broader world of online learning, we knew that health/wellness/personal betterment was a core area of interest for people. But that's just the beginning for us.
Lifestyle-driven brands selling tangible goods, like Patagonia or TREK, are exciting possible teachers. Retailers or product curators, like Whole Foods, Target or REI, are also a perfect fit, as they can surround a bunch of related products with more value through courses.
We're in advanced talks with a number of household brands interested in exploring a future with us. All of our conversations with them help to better guide our roadmap and feature set.
Just realized I got caught up and forgot to comment on my own hunt today!
I just wanted to say: I love that United Healthcare sponsored some of the initial content. As a health tech founder and someone who just generally cares a lot about healthcare, and know how stupidly difficult it can be to understand from the outside, big ups to the TBK team.
@thetylerhayes Life has a way of getting you caught up. Thanks so much for hunting us. We appreciate it very much. Plus, this interaction with Product Hunt readers was a blast.
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