Branded Utility: Interview With Johnny Vulkan of Anomaly

Alongside Benjamin Palmer of the Barbarian Group, Johnny Vulkan of New York agency Anomaly has been developing his thoughts too on the concept of Branded Utility. As part of our search to understand this emerging theory, we asked him for his angle.

Johnny, how would you define Branded Utility?

Brands being genuinely useful to their customers, employees, suppliers and the people they touch.

We spoke yesterday to Benjamin and he told us a story that when you met in a bar a while back, you realized that you were both thinking about the concept of Branded Utility that you both seemed to have coined the phrase too! Where did your inspiration come from?

I think that’s probably why we like working with Benjamin and the guys at Barbarian – I think we share many of the same philosophies and the area of Branded Utility is just the latest. For me the idea, if not the language, had been bubbling away for a few years.

For a while I’ve felt uneasy about certain brands’ desires to interrupt people’s lives with irrelevant messages. Technology means that messaging should now become more targeted so that this level of interruption should decrease but many companies have chosen to take the worst habits of advertising and take them online. They’ve chosen to get in the way.

At the same time many new companies have built great brands not by interrupting people and telling them how they should feel or think, but rather by spending time and effort to be useful in people’s lives. Starbuck’s provide a place for me to get online and hear new music, Yahoo gives me answers and to Benjamin’s example, Michelin tell me where to find a great meal.

Ultimately my inspiration comes from good companies doing good things and earning a good brand because of it. Flickr, Method Home, Interface Flor, Innocent Drinks etc.

Can you give us any examples of how brands could take advantage of this strategy?

Be good. Produce good products, that provide customers with real value and deliver them in useful, thoughtful and interesting ways. In the long run its will be far easier than producing mediocre products and services and then putting pressure on communications to deceive the people you want to become your customers. Advertising shouldn’t be used as a band-aid for a poorly thought through product.

What would be the key benefits for a brand that undertook such a strategy?

Profitability – which is what we are employed by the majority of our clients to deliver. Importantly it will deliver that over profitability in a long term and sustainable way as the strategy and the action that comes from will earn loyalty, respect and a genuine like for the brand and the company behind it.

You are a partner at what is considered a progressive agency. What is the agency’s future role in the development of Branded Utility?

It’s present in some form in every answer we give and it has become very natural for us. One of the things that I love about what we are building at Anomaly is that we have removed any secondary agendas. There isn’t a "what do we, the agency want", component to the answers. The answers start with what would be good for people, then what can this brand/product/company do to be a part of that and then how we can help that brand, product, company deliver that. It has led us to get involved in highly technical R&D conversations with our clients and to be present at the birth of new products and IP whether it be in food science or the latest web applications. We go far deeper into our client’s organizations then we ever used to and it’s not only highly stimulating work it also leads to fundamentally better solutions.

Many of the examples of manifestations of Branded Utility seem to be online but with so many agencies late to digital media, do you think they can keep up?

I think they can. I firmly believe that it’s never to late for anyone to do anything. My mum learned to swim in her fifties, learned to drive in her sixties and just got her doctorate at aged 70. She joined flickr last month. It’s about a willingness and desire to keep learning. The more established agencies just need to find that desire and get stuck in.

On a personal note, what inspires you about Branded Utility?

It’s inextricably linked to being and doing better. We are lucky to live in a time where ideas can be translated quickly across the planet and that can used to do good. There are thousands of great companies with great products and services out there – not only do I believe we can help them, I also hope and believe we can become one of them.

Anomaly

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