2023 C-Suite Awards
Small Private Company: Brian Morley | ResusciTech Inc. Chief marketing officer
WHEN RESUSCITECH INC. PLANNED to launch its CPR certification app, the Providence-based technology company decided to take a different approach when presenting the new tool to the public.
“To deliver an innovative product, we needed to innovate our marketing strategy,” said Brian Morley, ResusciTech’s chief marketing officer.
Morley has been a leader in product development, marketing, strategy and commercialization for more than 20 years, primarily in the medical device industry. ResusciTech hired him as a marketing consultant in 2020 and he was quickly elevated to his current role as chief marketing officer in 2021.
ResusciTech has seen significant benefits with Morley leading the company’s marketing efforts. Under Morley’s guidance, the company has gone from zero to $300,000 in revenue and expects to reach the $3 million revenue mark within the next three years.
Instead of focusing on sales, Morley builds strategic partnerships. Collaborators try the product, see how it addresses their needs and incorporate it into their own systems. One of Morley’s out-of-the-box ideas was the company’s donation of 1,000 CPR training certificates in response to the collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin due to cardiac arrest during an NFL game last season. ResusciTech’s leadership team saw what a critical role CPR training played in saving Hamlin’s life.
Through this outreach, the company provided training opportunities to coaches, teachers, parents and students, increasing the safety and wellness in the community while introducing its product to a new market.
“We try to be part of something bigger by offering a solution, not [just] selling a product,” Morley said. “Once they try it, they love it and they love the relationship we’ve built.”
ResusciTech’s client base, mainly in the fitness space, includes American Council on Exercise, Anytime Fitness, Yoga Alliance, National Association of Youth Sports, Positive Coaching Alliance and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Philadelphia.
“The fitness industry is quick to adopt new technology,” Morley said. “They’re more innovative. Everyone from personal trainers to instructors to front-desk staff needs CPR training and the app is the perfect way to deliver consistent certification across the board.”
Rather than targeting individual users, Morley took a vertical approach by focusing on large groups such as the California-based ACE, one of the leading organizations in personal trainer certification with more than 90,000 members. ResusciTech’s app was added to ACE’s personal training certification course so that everyone participating in the program could choose it as their tool.
The CPR certification model allows users to earn their credentials anytime, anywhere in 90 minutes, using only their smartphone. ResusciTech’s vision is to provide people with the best, most intuitive and easily accessible tools for training and emergency response.
“Now that we’ve established a fully mobilized CPR training device, we can build out new modules in other areas such as first aid, [automated external defibrillators] and even overdose prevention,” Morley said.
Developed by Brown University engineering undergraduates Abigail Kohler and Greg Fine, the app provides training by using smartphone-based feedback technology that evaluates performance and issues certification to successful students.
With more than 20 million people certified in CPR, the team brought Morley on board to figure out the best way to market the product to get it to the public.
“Every package requires CPR certification,” Morley said. “Through our channel partnership with ACE, we were able to make the app part of the package to provide virtual options for their members.”
In the app’s first year of use, ResusciTech saw a 20% adoption rate by new users. That was achieved with little money spent on marketing, which is unusual for a new product launch.
Morley continues to focus his marketing attention on the fitness industry. He regularly has conversations with organizations such as the YMCA. But the app could be applied to many fields and sectors, including health care, emergency response and education.
“We’ll continue to scale up within fitness as we explore other avenues [such as] athletics, private clubs and K-12 education,” Morley said. “We’ll leverage everything we’ve learned to move into the next vertical space.”
