Is this truly the age of brand utility?
Traditionally products & services do something and brands tell stories. Why does marketing have such a polarised approach? Could a promise and its delivery not be integrated in one single activity? This would allow brands to fill the gap between what they say and what they do.
After all, a brand is only the relationship between a company, a product and an audience. Like any other relationship, it most be nourished and built on tangibles, reasons-to-believe as we like to say. The real questions we need to ask ourselves here is: Why should an audience listen to us? In other words, we need to answer their “What’s in it for me?”.
The brand then becomes a useful service that creates preference through engagement. It is no longer about one way communication messages force fed through high reach and frequency media plans but more about truly experiencing what the brand is about.
Revolutionary? Well, not really. This approach exists since ages: far before the digital revolution and it’s wide range of interactive and relational assets.
For example when Michelin launched the “Michelin guide” in 1920 or when the beer brand Guinness launched the “Guinness book of records” in the early 50’s.
“Stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in” — David Ogilvy
Many other services illustrate this true shift in communication like « Nike + » a real social network for joggers including additional services, « ATM hunter » that geo-localises the closest ATMs that accept MastCards or even “Twelp” a Best buy tasks force of employees to advice consumers on technology.
What makes a utilitarian approach a success lies in the key insight from which the idea derives. It’s a marketing approach to communications.
What we need to keep in mind when doing brand utility is to always offer a real service, useful and in people’s everyday digital life. The service must embody the brand promise and act as a reason-to-believe in this brand promise. Be creative, innovative and ideally be the first/ unique person to offer this service. Be legitimate: People must believe that you have the expertise and know-how to delivery a quality service. Build a long-term strategy and leave time for word of mouth. “Brand utility” often requires a strong implication and induces changes in the organisation that goes this way. This change requires more concrete, believable brand.
What is brand utility really about?
It’s about creating additional value for customers/ stakeholders. The service provided is a complement. It’s a brand behaviour that matches what the brand says.
In times where new behaviours and new services are at the core of the customer experience, brand utility can play a key role in providing competitive edges.
Are we moving from the age of experience to a utilitarian age?
No, I don’t think so. This is the beginning of a new era where “better” is the new “different”. An era where competition has changed. Benchmarks will now be made on technology and use, not on traditional competitor. Google is the new competition for banks and Apple for cars probably. So in this respect, yes it is a utilitarian age.
On the other side, experience has never been so important in markets with high levels of competition. Customers are getting use to new experiences. And they are asking for more. The pace of technology product launches is accelerating.
What are the drivers of brand utility?
For Ingmar de Lange, major advocate of the brand utility concept, there are six drivers of brand utility:
USE
There is a difference between entertaining and useful. There are many funny apps, but only a small part is structurally useful. The essence of marketing is to create added value. Not occasionally, but always. The brand utility is marketing back to basics: use all means available to add value to consumers’ daily lives.
USP
A brand utility can be useful in many ways. What is important is that it fits the brand’s promise. Goal is to make it easier to experience the core proposition: action speaks louder than words. Many brand utilities are useful, but quite fare away from the USP. As a result, the brand itself does not become more relevant.
SUBSIDY
A brand utility partly uses the marketing budget for its exploitation. Thanks to this subsidy a customer can use the service for free, or for a small price. A brand utility is based on this tension: something special that is available for (almost) nothing. A brand utility is not about free futilities.
ATTENTION
A brand utility is not a normal service. It is not only easily obtainable, it also has communication power: people will talk about it. This can simply be because the service is freely available. But it is better to turn the utility itself into a ‘purple cow’ as well. Interestingly: because marketing subsides the service, eye-catching experiments are possible that would not see the light of day when only looking at the direct revenue.
DESIRE
This driver seems trivial, but is often forgotten. Something that is useful, fits the USP and attracts attention can still mainly be interesting for the marketer. The customer does not experience it as valuable. A brand utility should offer something that the customer needs and desires; else it can not be structurally useful.
CONVERSION
Finally, the most important question: what is the main KPI? The answer is simple: conversion. Something that is useful, fits the USP and is easy to obtain, should result in a purchase. The brand utility is the first step ‘in the store’, it is a ‘service sampling’. Conversion is the challenge of most cases: they are not enough aligned with the core products and do not lead to sales results. A strong understanding of the customer journey is therefore crucial: what distracts the customer from a purchase and how can a (free) service solve this? In short: online media have integrated communication and distribution into one channel. It is time that marketing follows this example
What are the various types of utility?
Functional Utility — How does the brand perform? Does it get the job done?
Economic Utility — Is the brand worth the cost?
Emotional Utility — Does the brand inspire confidence, satisfaction or enjoyment?
Social Utility — What does the brand say about me to others?
How does a marketer use this list of utilities to build, enhance and protect the brand? These categories, and appropriate sub-categories, frame the criteria a marketer might use to conduct regular marketing research on customers’ relative comparisons of one’s brand to competitive brands. By structuring marketing research, product development and brand communications to provide insight to performance against these criteria, a marketer will have a continuous flow of intelligence on the customers’ perceptions of brand strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). With this sort of brand monitoring in place, the marketer has a navigation system for the brand’s evolution to keep it on course.
In the digital age it isn’t enough for people simply to tell their friends about your product in the pub. True digital advocates are somewhere slightly closer to a mobilized sales-force; they must be proactive in sharing their experiences and bringing others in to the fold. This can only happen if doing it is easy, meaningful and if they have the right tools to go about it.
How do we measure brand utility programs?
Ultimately, brand utility differs from traditional advertising because it is about creating and driving owned and earned media, which behave incredibly differently to bought media and all the models of traditional advertising.
There are three major ways of measuring depending on the objectives assigned and the nature of the service developed:
- Image: what impact does this service have on the perception customers have of my brand?
- Engagement: What is the level of engagement, both quantitative and qualitative with the service.
- Transformation/ sales: Does this service increase sales?
Branded utility is all about relationships, engagement, loyalty and advocacy. Unlike traditional advertising, it doesn’t necessarily matter how many people see the app or service, it only really matters how many people find it useful; feel an affinity to the brand because of it; and talk about it to their friends. Whereas hateful and irritating TV ads can still create positive brand equity through recall, it simply doesn’t work like that here.
What are limitations to this approach?
Brand utility is all about service. But being a butler doesn’t provide purpose or entertainment.
Some brands have a much bigger role to play in society. And brand utility doesn’t fit all type of brand. If this marketing approach to communications is appealing and has worked on many brands, it is not a “one size fits all” situation.
Brand utility creates a practical bond between an audience and a brand. But emotions create even stronger bonds through purpose or even entertainment. Let us not forget that emotions changes in behaviour.
And purchase is behaviour.
A few interesting examples
UTEC — Potable Water Generator
IBM & Ogilvy France Create Ads With A New Purpose in its latest “People For Smarter Cities”
Behind-The-Scenes: Your Bag’s Journey On Delta
For more case studies on brand utility, visit http://bigbrandblog.tumblr.com/
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