I was turned on a few years ago to the concept of a “Branded Utility” from Johnny Vulkan at Anomaly NYC. It’s a way to twist branding away from convincing in a traditional sense, what I sometimes think about as moving people down the awareness-consideration-purchase ‘funnel’, and toward something quite different but much more powerful. Make the advertising *work* for people. Advertising that works, that has some utilitarian function is a branded utility.

Let me give a local example that’s been a boon to me this summer.

The Lexus Lot.

There is a baseball team in Atlanta, the perennial contenders but rarely world-champion (except for that one year in H.S.), Atlanta Braves. And seeing games in person often requires parking, since public transit to games is weak. The subway only gets you with in a 10 minute bus-ride, or a 10-minute walk of the stadium. And it costs enough that if you’re with 2 people, it already works out as a wash to park when compared with riding the train there and back. So enter the Lexus Lot. The Lot is the same price as other Turner Field parking spots — $12. And it’s the closest lot to the main entrance to the park. And it’s never full, which is not the case with the Blue Lot and Orange Lot which are nearby (but further from the entrance). But, as you may have gathered by the name, it’s for Lexus cars only. It’s a special perk of driving a Lexus, beyond the quality of the cars. It’s like a special pass to fun and convenience in the lately too-hot-for-any-comfort Atlanta summer. In fact, the last time I was at a game, an attendant at the gate told me that I should “show my key” to get a free Italian Ice and free kettle corn from one of the local lexus dealerships. And they’re not even *my* dealership (or, who are we kidding, my wife’s dealership, since it’s her car, a hand-me-down from her father). But they don’t care — brand loyalty and brand experience trumps any dealership loyalty or experience.

Lexus does this at many stadia around the country. Here’s a beaming Lexus owner at a Florida Panther’s game. I don’t much care about this “free” and grass-roots advertising. Don’t care much for word of mouth marketing (did you know there’s a word of mouth marketing association? Huh?). But the actual, useful, life-improving value that I get from driving my wife’s lexus is worth more to me than every single Lexus ad I’ve ever seen. It’s even better than the fawning praise Lexus owners can’t help but pass along to me.

How can your brand provide branded utility?

Here’s a couple of ideas for developing branded utilities:

1. Think about the context of use. Car brands are used getting people from A to B. That destination is important. So whatever you can do to improve the pain points that come with the context of use will really shine. If Coke, an actual homegrown brand had a “Coke lot” at Braves games, I think that this would provide less value to them and their brand. Lexus solving a car problem, i.e., parking, is a lot more impactful than Coke solving a car problem, or Lexus solving an office-paper-recycling problem.

2. Solve a real problem. Find something that nobody’s helping people with, and take away their pain. Don’t solve a problem that you *wish* people had. Giving away letter openers, t-shirts, pens, and other conference shwag is not really a branded utility. Yes, a pen has utility. And the pen is branded with your (oh so modern and swooshy) logo. But that’s not a branded utility. Because pens are cheap, especially the crappy pens that you can brand. So you’re not helping me one iota. In fact, you’re just filling up my desk drawers and our landfills with crap. Here’s a good example: Netflix could solve a real problem and convert a ton of these freebie-utility users to boot (but that’s not why they should do it — they should do it to provide a great service even to non-customers. Perhaps this idea is so expensive that it might cost some “toy” amount, like $1 / month.) Here’s the problem: “I totally forget what movies I want to watch, *as soon as I walk into a video store*” Here’s the fix. Let non-customers create accounts on netflix and have a queue that’s not a Netflix queue at all. It’s just a queue of movies to rent. Or buy. Wherever. It’s got Neflix branding. It could be converted to a “real” netflix queue at any time, with 2 clicks. But it’s also a great place for anyone to keep their movies. And to share in the social (they have cool social networking functionality now). Since I’ve cancelled my netflix subscription, the thing I miss most, is not the movies, it’s the queue. I’d pay $1/month to get a monthly list of movies that I’d like to see. Easy. I’d love to give somebody my money. And netflix *already has this*. All they’d need to do is to let me get at it… All they need to do is add a field to this page (at $.99 per month) and I’d be the happiest non-netflix subscriber in the world!

3. Drive behavior changes. Branding is at its core about changing people’s behaviors. Marketing tries to do this via a shotgun approach. Branded utilities can do this via a carrot, a payoff, that actually does change behavior. I’m a Lexus lot parker for life. I’d be a netflix social movie liner-upper for life, too. I think about branded utilities as ways for brands to get inside the lives of potential customers. And to change their behaviors — by making them reliant on the service / utility / item you provide. Life is about the small things, and behavior change is about the items, services, and systems that we have on hand. Pushing your brand into small items that change behavior is what branded utilities are all about.