Tag: Branded Utility

A Rose By Any Other Name

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Oh those crafty agency types, saying the same thing but calling it by a different name so that each can “own” it. And yes, we’re just as guilty as everybody else with both the carefully crafted Marketing for Good and Marketing as Service concept descriptors. That said, here’s a little index of who is calling what what so we can keep it all straight:

Ironically, both Marketing as Service and Marketing with Meaning were featured in AdAge this week. Since I’ve already covered the former, I’ll give you a taste of the latter:

Young marketers or agency executives don’t take long to learn they’ve dedicated their lives to creating stuff people seek to avoid, and with increasing success. But Bridge, a digital unit of WPP Group’s Wunderman in, of all places, Cincinnati, ancestral homeland of Procter & Gamble Co. and interruptive advertising as we know it, thinks it has a disarmingly simple answer: “Marketing with Meaning.”

Bridge’s alternative, according to Mr. Woffington: “How do you make sure your marketing is held up to the same standard the product is? … P&G says their products improve people’s lives. But how about the marketing? Does the marketing itself improve consumers’ lives? … That’s a much higher standard than just selling more product.”

The article goes to site some specific examples including one I really like a lot:

Kimberly-Clark Corp. this year rolled out a $2 million, three-year “Not on My Watch” program for a bus tour to teach nurses and others to combat hospital-associated infections that kill an estimated 100,000 people annually in the U.S. Not only could the program save lives, said John Amat, VP-global sales and marketing for K-C Health Care, it could help save some of the $4.5 billion spent annually to treat such infections, much of which soon will no longer be reimbursed by Medicaid.

I suppose I could try to explain the differences between their hifalutin marketing principle and ours, but I’m afraid I’d ultimately have to admit that Shakespeare had it right as usual:

  • What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
  • By any other name would smell as sweet.

Marketing as Service Goes Global

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I was amused to see an article on iMediaConnection UK called “The New Paradigm: Marketing as Service.” The author, Stuart Maister of UK-based Broadview, notes:

At the recent iMedia Agency Summit in the U.K., I heard two ideas that I think are now among the most powerful in marketing. One, attributed to Simon Andrews of media planners Mindshare was the concept of ‘Branded Utility’. This means providing a service or content to our target market without asking anything directly in return as a way of positioning the brand in the minds of the audience.

The second was the famous quote from Axel Chaldecott at the agency JWT: ‘We’ve got to stop INTERRUPTING what people are interested in and BE what people are interested in!’ …

In summary, what they say is this: if we really understand our target market — I mean really understand our target market — then we should know what is useful and interesting to them. If that is the case, then digital channels allow us to develop content and services to serve these needs in a way which clearly positions our brand as a provider of real service and differentiates it from others who do not.

This was the second time in a 24-hour period that I had heard the words “branded utility” as a euphemism for Marketing as Service. So I did a little homework and found an interesting article in Contagious Magazine called, “The brave new world of branded utility.” Here are some highlights:

Contagious ImageSo how about brands giving something back? Being useful? Having something interesting to say? How about creating a topic of conversation? Planning guru John Grant recently reminded me of a Stan Rapp quote – ‘Ask not what your customers can do for you, ask what you can do for your customers’.

Welcome to the brave new world of Branded Utility, where brands look to provide a useful service or a helpful application; to give people something they actually need – without demanding an immediate return. Web 2.0 means that it’s never been easier or cheaper to develop applications. A key element is gadgets and widgets – the new, new thing on the web, as people build applications that can be added to your homepage on Google or Microsoft Live or your MySpace page. Widgets are little desktop gizmos that range from a time and date clock to a mini Amazon recommendations page. Useful services, at your fingertips – and catching on fast. Yahoo! is said to be investing heavily in the expansion of their Widget Gallery.

Not all branded utility occurs online. Ideas like Nike Run London (where 35,000 Londoners pay to run 10km in an event organized by Nike) and Innocent’s Fruitstock (a family-friendly music festival in London’s Regent’s Park that is completely paid for by cult smoothie brand Innocent) fit the label – but they’re inherently limited in scale by their physical nature. Tesco’s Computers for Schools scheme gets closer – vouchers given away for free with groceries to be pooled and redeemed against PC hardware.

The good news for this blogger is that it should be a bit easier for me to bring you more and more good examples of Marketing as Service. Call it what you want, the idea is sure to catch on soon.