Add The Branded Utility To Your Marketing Mix
For marketers to continue to be relevant and their communication to get noticed brands need to develop more applicability, utility, and function in their marketing that creates a more useful dialogue with consumers. Welcome to the new world of the branded utility, where marketers provide a useful service or a helpful application consumers can utilize to make their lives better.
Branding to this point has been largely about relevance. Good branding is seen as something that touches the target on an emotional level and inspires loyalty, market buzz, and purchase intent. In order to achieve all these things the product and the communication has to be relevant to get noticed. In the future being relevant alone will not be enough to get noticed; marketers will need to focus on ways to make people’s lives better through their marketing efforts. It won’t just be about making people’s lives better through product improvement, but through the marketing of the product as well.
Social media, branded content, widgets and the branded utility are all part of a bigger shift in how brands reach out to the consumers they’re interested in talking with. As traditional media declines marketers are now less willing to pay to interrupt consumers. Consumers are looking for more and more ways to block irrelevant content, and we know as marketers that with the right content and the right approach we can create an audience without paying huge media companies. This approach can give marketers a direct link into people’s lives, at the appropriate moment, earning not only awareness, but more importantly engagement.
Nick Law, Chief Creative Officer, North America for R/GA said in a recent Adweek article, “When you create a utility, you’re creating something that gives people time back. It becomes less about information as pollution and more about information to help people get through life.” As consumers isn’t that just what we want: less bombardment and new ways to make our lives simpler and less convoluted.
Ground zero for marketing utility is the mobile device and I believe it will continue to be well into the foreseeable future. The iPhone and Blackberry can track your FedEx packages, make bids on eBay, and test how moronic you are. And now your iPhone can even order a Burger King Whopper—with fries and a drink. The new app even acts like a loyalty card offering incentives and tracking order history. Nationwide Insurance offers an app that walks a driver who’s been in an accident through the steps required to file a claim. In addition to the details of the other person’s insurance, it uses the device’s GPS to create a map of scene and uses the camera to take photos (which the carrier is not obligated to use). Customers get a direct filing through the app and have the opportunity to call local authorities and get a tow. What makes mobile devices so useful is that they are now location aware, can retain your information and history, and also they are real-time capable.
A branded utility does not necessarily need to be digital either. A local bike shop here in Denver builds public bike racks and installs them around the city with a built in ad for the shop. They probably don’t look at it as a branded utility…more like good marketing karma. However, it is a great example of how companies need to shift their thinking about marketing in the digital and non-digital world.
Branded utility is part of a redefinition of advertising. It is about the move away from interruptive ‘push’ models towards more meaningful ways of connecting. As people become immune to ad clutter or tune out the noise, brands have to work harder than ever for their time and attention.
