“We can be the people who make brand building one of the most positive forces in the world, for doing well but also for making change for the good”

Marc sumps up with 5 points :

1°/ “Change the definition about why our brands exist, guide the brand to the purpose”

2°/ “Change your mindset about marketing, shift your marketing to consumers, so they buy our products and services to serving people with our brands to make their lives better“.

3°/ “Change the definition of who we serve, think of them not as consumers that we target to consumer products with the people that we seek to serve with our brands”

4°/ “Change your understanding of people to find those deeply human insights that drive behavior because they really get at the underlying truth motivations and intentions”

5°/ “Change from the small incremental ideas that only build initiatives and just keep as busy, too busy to inspiring big ideas that build brands, big ideas are so engaging they invite participation, big ideas make people want to be part of brand communities, become part of the conversation and become brand ambassadors and of course purchase more of the brand”

Getty images, the big image database.

What’s the utility?

You know this frustrating watermark on the images with a big logo on the middle of it? Here is an example :

Their new agency in UK, R/GA London, proposed to give a better experience to the potential Getty customers. They changed the watermark and making it useful. So now here is what you have on the UK version of the site :

The image url enables anyone to find quickly the original file and it’s nice for the photographer reputation.

Here is the video to explain the all thing :

Click here to view the embedded video.

via FastCo Create & Christine Champagne.

It could be Ray-Ban, but it’s a project from Swedish students at the Berghs School of Communication. (Again !)

What’s the utility ?

The app enables people to find sunny spots in New York, depending on the user’s location and the time of the day.

You can watch the video right here :

Click here to view the embedded video.

Looks like brand should get inspiration from students…

Via communication digitale

It could be Starbucks, the famous American café but the idea is just a student project at the moment.

What would be the utility?

Starbucks could help its customers to get up easily in the morning. If you don’t snooze your phone to try to sleep a bit more, the brand congratulates you. By giving you some points, the brand offers you a discount for your morning coffee. The student project is very clever and perfectly illustrates the context marketing. Have a look to the video to see how it works:

Click here to view the embedded video.

via Matteo & Influencia

As we told you before, we are beginning a series of interviews of marketing professionals, entrepreneurs and speakers who inspire us. They all have this “brand utility” touch and try to make the world a better place their own way.

After interviewing Tristan Nicolas from the awesome French startup Ben&Fakto last week, we had the opportunity to ask a few questions to Ingmar de Lange.

Ingmar comes from the Netherlands and has been shaping brand strategies for years. He had the opportunity to work for major brands sur as Amstel, Heineken, McDonald’s or Nokia. He founded Mountview, an agency for brand innovation, in 2003.

Ingmar has been to us a real source of inspiration, and we discovered great examples of brand utility thanks to him. If you are interested in brand utility, his presentation is a must-see.

1/ Hi Ingmar, could you introduce yourself in one sentence ?

I’m an independent marketing strategist on a quest for meaningful marketing.

• Helge Tennø’s slideshares
• Trendwatching on Brand Butlers
• Marketing with Meaning by Bob Gilbreath
• Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin
• Advertising Next by Tom Himpe
• Writings by Benjamin Palmer and Johnny Vulkan (note: you can find interviews of both in this paper)

Thank you Ingmar for your time.

1/ Tell us more about yourself, what are you doing for a living ?

I am 24, I am a runner and I love the Internet.

For a living (and beyond that) I am one the three co-founders of an online e-shop called Ben & Fakto. The aim of Ben & Fakto is promote ethical fashion by offering new brands, new fashion designers who think of the impact of their clothes on the society or the environment. We really wanted to avoid the “clichés” around ethical fashion which is not really “fashionable” and we also wanted to use another way to talk about it so we called it “mode happy” (happy fashion). We really wanted to focus the positive aspects of the brands. Happiness is a our way of doing business.

And we began working on this idea of e-shop, we soon realized that all brands had their own way to deal with the issue, so we wanted to do something on our own. We thought on what we truly believed, and this is “entrepreneurship”, the idea that you can create yourself your own jobs, especially in countries where there is “pôle emploi” (the French public agency to help you to find a job). It appears that the way to encourage entrepreneurship is micro-credit, so for each purchase on our e-shop, 10% is used to finance an entrepreneur somewhere in the world through micro-credit.

The two other co-founders are Kevin Straszburger and Harold Pognonec.

2/ How did you get into brand utility ?

I think that for a large part of our generation, it seems natural. We have lived for many years in a crisis on many aspects (environment, economy, ..). I do not want to work in a NGO, but I want to have personally a positive impact on the world I live in.
Besides, Internet changed the way we think brands and marketing. Instead of spending money on marketing and advertising, we can now spend money on doing something good, something truly useful, and because people have now the power to share more globally, they are able to recommend your brands among their peers and they are more eager to do it if they think you do something good.

3/ Have you any example(s) of brands, products or brand utility campaigns that inspire you ? Why ?

Well, for Ben & Fakto, our main inspirations were Tom’s shoes, Warby Parker in the US and obviously Jimmy Fairly in France. It was also Piola, MaïProject and a lot of the brands that we are very happy to sell today.

As a runner, I am also sensitive on the way Nike for example can show some “brand utility”. First, in their last campaign in Paris, in the “Goutte d’Or” for Nike Basketball. The “Goutte d’or” is not really seen as a clean, safe district but the videos show the pride of the inhabitants, the way they live through sports, etc… Another example is the “make it count”. I am more and more surprised by the way people don’t do any sports and do not have a healthy way of life. The commercial “make it count” is somehow useful to change the situation.

I saw on your blog the example of Adidas in Tokyo with the “runbase” where you can have a shower after your run. It is also a good example of something very useful for the runners.

4/ Any book or blog to recommend on the topic ?

A book that changed a lot of things for me was “tribes” by Seth Godin. In the book, one the ideas (or what I remember of it) is that we all belong to tribes. Tribes on the Internet are the new geography. We can be leaders our tribe if we think of we can bring to our tribe. The question : how can I be useful to my tribe ?

Who ?

The automotive company Audi, for its Quattro series.

What’s the utility ?

This is more of a PR stunt than a real brand utility, but that is cool enough for us to talk about it. Audi created a “Quattro Team” during the great snow in Bulgaria this winter. Most cars are not prepared for the vagaries of weather, so this team of muscled men helped stuck cars get back on the road.

You can watch the video right here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Who ?

We won’t introduce you to the global sportswear brand, Adidas.

What’s the utility ?

People living and working in Tokyo may have the urge to go for a run, but no place to shower, and stock their belongings. Near a subway station, Adidas created a facility called Runbase, providing people with lockers and showers. They leave their stuff here, go for a run, come back there and can go home. As simple as that, but very efficient.

You can read the full issue on AdAge.

Who ?

KLM, the airline company.

What’s the utility ?

KLM Meet & Seat is a program helping people meet other passengers with the same interests in life. While it can be a threat to privacy (the need to use Facebook connect to use the service), it can help people have a better experience through sharing and discovering.

We’ll let you watch the video here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Who?

Sherwin-Williams, a famous paint brand.

What’s the utility ?

While we do not like their logo much – cover the earth with polluting paint ? – we must admit that Sherwin-Williams recently had a good idea. They created a mobile app to match real-life colors with their paint references. Good job !

Thanks to Sandra Afeyan for making us discover this app.