Brand utility + Brand generosity = Brand giving
Ok, we all know that advertising’s first aim is to sell. To do that advertising used many vehicles during the decades. In the message- oriented marketing era the USP was a good way to destill the strategy and the idea to one simple truth, then imprint it by repetition to the prospect’ mind. In the content-driven marketing era this is not the case anymore.
Nowdays advertising isn’t allowed to interupt but engage, entertain and inspire. Now the latest thing advertising should do in the era of the democratization of the tools of production and long tail economics is to be useful for people.
Advertising gradually departs from the short-termish interruption model and media neutral planning and starts to use and produce long -term, stuctural and multi-layered platforms that help people experience and enhance existing behaviours. Systems that open a dialogue and keep people interacting with the brand and to each other. Systems that build up and enable people to re-engage beacause many times it has to do with their very own achievements. Self-sustaining initiatives that are based on brand communities formation and word of mouth.
As very wisely Henry Jenkins puts it : produce something that pulls them together and gives them them something to do, i don’t have to control the conversation to benefit from this. To me succesful brands of the future will have to be expert in giving, giving solutions, giving experiences, giving love. More and more the success of a brand will depend on what a brand’s doing and not what a brand says. Moreover succesful brands should rely on what their actions stand for and not their sayings.
In recent years brands were winning by making big statements about what was their view on the world. awareness is too small a word to describe what a brand needs to prosper, words like love, faith, worship, warmth are closer to what a brand needs. It’s a mistake to believe that transmedia planning demands only brands with complex DNA, brands that need faith instead of just trust. Complex, multilayered, polyphonic campaigns demand high emotional involvement but that is irrelevant to the depth a brand owns. On the contrary is more dependant to what a brand gives and not only to what represents. some times it’s all about bringing people together like T-mobile did in its latest campaign. I mean that a chewing gum brand can use storytelling and unfold a new brand platform in the same way a ,objectively, deeper brand will do, like sony, but in a differrent context.
After all a brand is a loved person you seek for and a product is just someone you bump into in the street. Or said differently if brands want to be loved all they have to do is give, give, give, like a mother that gives to her child but she doesnt want back, she may not be loved back in the same way but the relationship is given, it exists because its there from the start .
The usefullness of a brand can be understood trough two forms: brand utility and brand generosity. brand utility is a brands ability to be utilized by people in order to help them achieve something. brand utility is practical usefulness, take for example Nike+. Nike+ was a social platform that encourage people to run more and specifically run more by lithening to music.
Brand generosity is the emotional disposition of a brand to give, to build things that go beyond the ephemeral nuture of the products, go under the cultural surface of things and connect with people through experience and emotion. an example is absolut kindness.
to be continued…
