Thanks to the likes of Dropcam, Nest, Ring, and Arlo, home security cameras are as commonplace as throw pillows around the house. Easy to install, instantly connected to mobile, constantly protecting your home and able to alert you to trouble no matter where you are in the world – in the span of about 5 years, home video security went from ADT to DIY.Â
But, frankly (and thankfully) not that much happens in the home. Sure, you may have the occasional package stolen around the holidays, you may be able to catch a funny moment when your family member was living the motto “dance like no one is watching,” and you may even catch the rare intruder. Statistically speaking, though, we need security in our cars far more than in our homes. From crashes, to break ins, to insane drivers you just want to catch and share – we see more during any given daily commute than we do in our homes all year.
Enter the Owl Car Cam. The brainchild of Andy Hodge, whose career launching “first ever” products included the iPod, Microsoft Hololens, and Dropcam, the Owl Car Cam set out to take the cloud-connected, easy-to-install, always-protecting home security camera and make it travel at 70 miles per hour.
“Wait a minute,” we hear you say in your most skeptical voice.”Dash cameras have been around forever. They’re practically government issued in Russia. You can buy one for $20 on Amazon.”
Congratulations, you just encapsulated Clarity’s challenge: How do you get the world to take a second look at car security as a space ripe for innovation, rather than a “solved problem”. To meet that challenge, the Clarity team embarked on an ambitious program that combined a steady drumbeat of product announcements, in-person meetings with hundreds of tech, auto, and security journalists, an aggressive review program, and a nationwide local media campaign to highlight Owl success stories.
Here were just some of the results: