Eaton’s Whole Home

Visitors to Eaton’s booth can learn more about today’s connected products, including compatible wireless solutions for tech-savvy homeowners, new feature-rich solutions and products to help homeowners live safely and securely with minimized energy costs.“The future of home connectivity is bright and home buyers are looking to builders and contractors to provide the latest in innovative, energy-efficient solutions,” said Brad Paine, vice president and general manager, Eaton’s Lighting Division. “Whether building residential properties, renovating a residence or raising a family in a single- or multi-family building, builders and homeowners can rest assured that Eaton’s products help increase safety and security, reduce energy costs and save time and money.”

Eaton will also highlight and preview some of its newest technology offerings at PCBC, including:

• Eaton’s Energy Management Circuit Breaker (EMCB), which combines circuit breaker technology that protects circuits in the customer’s loadcenter, with internet connectivity and on-board intelligence, making a home’s circuits “smart.” The intelligence made possible by this technology opens the door to better energy use information, helping simplify residential energy management and optimize utility grid reliability.
• Eaton’s Halo RL56 Wireless LED Downlight, a complete light-emitting diode Baffle-Trim Module that provides smooth continuous dimming, white tuning from 2700 Kelvin (K) to 5000K, scheduling, grouping, geo-fencing, automation and remote access. The downlight works with both the Wink and Samsung SmartThings platforms, as well as Alexa via these platforms.
• Eaton’s MS180BT Bluetooth-enabled motion sensor, allowing users to control outdoor security lighting from the convenience of a smart device. Adjust motion sensitivity and duration settings, photocell sensitivity, or control a fixture manually without touching a light switch. This motion sensor comes with an app for iOS and Android devices and is compatible with any LED or incandescent fixture utilizing standard ½-inch threading.

Eaton’s broad range of products for residential building, including advanced LED lighting technologies, loadcenters, circuit breakers, surge protection devices and backup power will be on display at the company’s booth.

Some thoughts / observations:

• Application marketing can be powerful. It is helpful for the audience as they can then envision how the “parts” can come together to provide solutions.
• According an an analyst, Eaton says that a standard 3000 sq foot house can represent $1500 in total material sales.  With this application approach, Eaton, and its distributors, could capture significantly more spend.  The difference, showing the value of the services and how these products add value to a homeowner’s lifestyle (not the home value.) Who wouldn’t want the convenience, the upgrades, the “wow” factor in their home? (and do you think a contractor is going to (or can) sell the upgrades? Will a builder, unless a high end one, want to mention for fear his contractor can’t perform or that it will delay timelines?”)
• Distributors, as aggregators of product and aggregators of information can also be aggregators of marketing and either leverage from what Eaton can provide (assuming that they can offer application-oriented, coordinated, marketing resources to a distributor for end-user usage) or develop their own tools with support from their manufacturers.
• Audience targeting is critical and will become more important for distributors. In this case Eaton is targeting builders. For distributors to be successful in this residential scenario, they need to reach out to builders, identify which of their contractors are construction, renovation or service and reach them with the right message and tools, and also consider the consumer / homeowner market to identify how can generate demand for some of these residential solutions.
• And yes, there are other products that Eaton could have included, or that a distributor could include.  In Eaton’s case these items would be more “infrastructure” products … ones that go into the walls that have less perceived value-added than circuit breakers, load centers, lighting, surge protection, wiring devices, lighting controls, back-up power and connectivity.

Integrated marketing approaches designed from an application viewpoint bring value to your customers (and for manufacturers … bring value to distributors … and manufacturers could work together to develop these through national chains and marketing groups (AD / IMARK)) as they present a coordinated effort to educate the audience and generate demand while leveraging resources.

Over the years we’ve developed comparable strategies for datacom, arc fault, safety, energy efficiency, power quality, residential upgrade programs and more.  Need ideas, give us a call.