"Don't just stand there shouting. Make yourself useful."

Editor's Notes

1. How brands can transcend simply broadcasting promises and deliver real benefits in their communications. Brand Utility. Or just Brutility™.
2. How brands can transcend simply broadcasting promises and deliver real benefits in their communications. Brand Utility. Or just Brutility™.
3. Advertising. It’s a busy marketplace. Every surface is a potential ad. How do you stand out above all the noise and invite consumers to come to you of their own volition?
4. Banksy is just one dissenter, fed up with the sheer volume of messages being thrown at him (or her…).
5. Curiously, his ‘ad’ bears an uncanny resemblance to a Coke campaign I did 18 years ago. #flattered
6. “Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing.”
7. Samuel Johnson, arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history. Some days he could see up to 6 adverts. Enough! This is 250 years ago. He’s talking about the work of a handful of printers – long before TV, radio, internet, spam, shoot the bunny to win an iPhone banners.
8. So how can we provide more value to potential customers in the way we communicate with them?
9. So where does one start?
10. This is a brand wheel. How consumers know what to buy without knowing every brand wheel, I do not know… At its core is (usually) the brand essence, the basic truth the brand stands for; the place it wants to occupy in consumers’ minds. You can use this as your starting point to find the most relevant way to be useful to people and reinforce your core proposition.
11. Coined by M&C Saatchi. Creatives love this. A clear, sharp proposition to focus the mind.
12. You can probably guess Coke’s.
13. BMW is not so clear.
14. They spent years trying to own ‘joy’ and then stopped. Without anyone noticing.
15. Here’s an interesting strategy.
16. A brand ideal is a higher purpose of a brand or organization, which goes beyond the product or service they sell.
17. Millward Brown has identified 50 companies who each have a brand ideal and one that has done their business enormous good. There is real substance to this strategy.
18. And you can use this as your jumping off point for exploring where you can go with brand utility.
19. So when you have a brand ideal it gives you a channel that makes the way ahead clear and keeps everyone on track. And that’s where to start to implement some brand utility.
20. Gasoline companies would give away maps to show where their gas stations were located. Then they grew to become more useful as road maps and tourist guides.
21. Then Michelin introduced restaurant guides and tourist maps which became so useful, people were prepared to pay for them.
22. …so useful in fact that Nazi Germany used them to plan their invasions in World War II.
23. And then to complete the circle, Michelin then sold maps after the war showing famous World War II battles. These aren’t Martin Sorrell’s travel plans for Cannes next year.
24. I’m going to show you some examples. Some way have had half an eye on the awards juries, I will grant you.
25. Ogilvy and IBM demonstrated smarter thinking (and utility) in this jury-friendly campaign.
26. Pacific Gas and Electric – message is empowerment / can-do attitude. The billboard generates 3.4 Kw of electricity during the day - as enough for a family of four. 
27. Achoo from Kleenex track the spread of cold and flu across America and warns you if it’s heading your way (in time for you to stock up on tissues). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPv7JWcqG0E
28. Grey London created this eco-font for Ryman. The design made it just as readable but used 33% less ink, saving its customers money on the (exorbitant) cost of ink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4XcdpXtkmQ
29. Ogilvy again. Users who wanted free wifi could log into the Scrabble hotspot and be served a tray of letters. They had to try and make a word from the letters and for every point they scored they minutes. If they shared it on Facebook they got a double word score. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgSma5aypMI
30. I can’t list successful examples and extol the virtues of brand utility without sharing an example of my own work. Cif’s brand ideal is to protect your family at home. It felt like they had every right to take that same principle and apply it in the digital space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLXcjF_-0HU
31. This strong Austrian beer came with a free bus ticket home, so you wouldn’t be tempted to drink and drive home.
32. Draft FCB Brazil created this press ad that came complete with a solar panel that could charge your mobile while you were hanging out on the beach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYy1GmJgFXA
33. Draft FCB Brazil also create this NFC wristband prepress ad and app that helped you keep track of your child on the beach. I guess if you had more than one child you just had to pick your favourite.
34. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgXrTGIiFV8
35. JWT Brazil produced this piece of genius for Coke, a press ad with instructions on how to turn the magazine into a speaker for your iPhone.
36. DDB Spain. To promote their energy-saving Stop-Start technology in their cars, Audi created an Android app that helped save your phone’s battery by helping you turn off processes that were wasting energy.
37. Ogilvy again. Every hour, this Vittel bottle cap reminds you to drink more water. Good for your health, good for Vittel’s bottom line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRgQJzILus
38. So, offering brand utility, something of value, enhancing the product or experience, going beyond an advertising message and actually demonstrating a benefit has these great advantages.
39. You can go from promising a benefit to delivering a benefit – right there and then. Something real a customer can experience to prove your point.
40. Back to Big Sam.
41. If you can create value in your communications, you can get from here…
42. …to here.
43. Follow me in all these places for all eternity.