From Utilis to ASTERRA
Rename and rebrand
Larry worked with the VSSL Agency team on the project to “build the ASTERRA brand from scratch.”
On this total rebrand project, Larry was responsible for finding new names for the company and its product line; creating the company’s new mission, vision, and brand pillar statements; copy rules; most of the website, aterra.io; SEO blogs and white papers; product brochures; and promotional videos. Role: Senior Writer. Agency: VSSL Agency
Announcing the new name
Video was the best medium
ASTERRA developed a technology for quickly and efficiently locating underground leaks in water distribution systems and substantially reducing treated water loss.
Larry was responsible for explaining the technology so that non-technical professionals would instantly grasp how it worked, why it was different, and how it would solve their issues more cost-efficiently than their current system.
Clarifying the technology
A website for the non-tech audience
ASTERRA developed a technology for quickly and efficiently locating underground leaks in water distribution systems and substantially reducing treated water loss.
Larry was responsible for explaining the technology so that non-technical professionals, including city managers, planners, and other decision makers, would instantly grasp how it worked, why it was different, and how it would solve their issues faster and more cost-efficiently than their current system.
SEO blogs
Earth observation
The purpose of these SEO blogs was to build search demand for a technology no one was searching for because they did not know it existed: satellite-based leak detection for underground water delivery networks. The strategy, devised VSSL Agency for their client ASTERRA, more than doubled impressions (up 266%) and search volume, (up 275%).
“Road infrastructure planning dates to at least 4000 BCE, when engineered roads were planned and built by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, now Iraq. That makes roads and highways¹ one of the earliest examples of major infrastructure built to support and expand civilization. Sumerian road planning and building used precisely manufactured mud bricks set in place with an oozy, sticky form of petroleum called bitumen as a durable, water-resistant adhesive. The Sumerians were on to something. We still use bitumen today.”
“The dam was 218 feet high with a 736-foot-long crest and a notched spillway in the center. Its slender width of 22.2 feet, the thinnest arched dam of its height, made for an elegant appearance. Mr. Coyne was one of his era’s leading experts on concrete arch dams. Yet like the Dale Dyke Reservoir before it, the Malpasset Dam failed just as it was filled for the very first time. On December 2, 1959, five years after it first began to fill, Malpasset collapsed and killed 421 people. Damage was estimated at $68 million. “
“Ms. Evelyn Pruitt, a research geographer who studied coastal environments for the U.S. Office of Naval Research, is credited with introducing the term “remote sensing” in the 1950s. Today, remote sensing is part of the life of every human on the planet and of the planet itself. Weather, climate, earth movements, infrastructure, mapping, navigation, wildfires, drought, ocean temperatures, glaciers, and military actions are all observed and studied by some form of remote sensing technology using various wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. “
“Brumadinho is a municipality in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, in the country’s mineral-rich southwest. In 2019, “Dam I” at an iron ore mine about five miles outside the city collapsed. Dam I was a tailings dam, storing bi-products of mining. Tailings are mine waste, often a toxic slurry of dirt, water, and rocks, with metal and chemicals mixed in. With no place else to go, it’s expediently stored in earthen retaining structures called tailings dams situated near the mine. The dams themselves may be constructed from tailings.”