Branded Utility: Interview With Elizabeth Talerman

Ad industry veteran Elizabath Talerman came by the office recently and we chatted about the series of Branded Utility posts and how it relates to the thinking of her start up agency Talerman+Partners. Here are the answers to a few questions we threw at her:

The more people we speak to about Branded Utility, the more we find that many marketers have been thinking about the idea of brands being useful too. Where did your thinking come from?

My thinking about Branded Utility started back around 1994 when I was the marketing director at the Harvard Business School.  We needed to share our executive education offerings with others in the university system – both throughout Harvard and beyond.  The best way to do that was to make sure all of our offerings were listed on Gopher.   In essence we created and distributed our brochures (sans photography) digitally.  Things really got fun when I got to Ogilvy in 1996.  I was recruited to be part of the IBM team.  At the time, IBM was heavily involved with sports including the Olympic Games.  Sports seemed to me to be a great metaphor for business process.  And better yet, leveraging sports content to deliver brand and business messages was inherently engaging.  We began to use the Web to create interactive games and trackers in banners and then in Java applications.  We were convinced if we could create sticky experiences that kept audiences engaged with the brand for several minutes at a time, we’d not only engender good will, but we’d also get qualified tech savvy prospects to eventually move from the sport content into the case studies and business content.  It worked.

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Then at Agile Industries, a small digital agency that I co-founded in 1998 we invented the process of Brand Immersion where, instead of running banner ads, we’d immerse brands into content.  We worked with Quokka Sports and NBC Sports to prototype several branded utilities for the Sydney Olympic Games including among other things, digital Pin Trading and an Olympic Torch Tracker for Coca Cola.  Fast forward to today where I’m working with Daylife, a start-up that is revolutionizing the organization and distribution of news and information.  In addition to defining the Daylife brand, we’ve been working on ways that advertisers can participate in the Daylife experience.  We’re convinced that the only appropriate way forward is to limit the number of advertisers and ensure that each, through their presence on Daylife is delivering service or is of utility to the Daylife audience.

Seen any good examples of Branded Utility recently?

I was staying in Chicago last week and was delighted to encounter an offer from the hotel in combination with Yoga Journal and Gaiam.  I called room service and received my complimentary yoga basket that included a mat, a block and an invitation to tune into a special Yoga Journal channel on the hotel TV.  A little bit of in-room Zen won over my loyalty not only to the hotel, but to the two other brands that made the experience possible.  Another favorite is the Time Square public bathrooms provided throughout the holidays by P&G’s Charmin.  My most treasured digital branded utility is online banking.  It ensures that I visit with my bank for 30-40 minutes online each month.  It keeps me loyal now that I’ve entered a dozen and a half payees.  And I’m eternally grateful every time I don’t have to remember to buy stamps to post my bills.

Do you think it’s going to be important for every brand to engage in such activity?

We hear over and over that advertising can no longer interrupt.  It has to be welcomed by consumers.  Something that is useful, by its very nature is not an interruption.   Were I managing a large brand budget – I’d be shifting a good deal of my spending in this direction.

Do you think we could create a formula for Branded Utiltiy?

We are in early days still so I don’t think there is a formula.  And because I’ve been a student of, and believer in innovation – I’m naturally skeptical of formulaic communication paradigms.  I do, however, think that there are some baseline principles.  Brands can be “of service” in many ways.  One of those ways is to entertain. Another is to enlighten.  And yet another is to make something easier, accessible, cheaper or more convenient.  The way in which anyone or all of these things is accomplished will be varied.  That variety will keep things fresh and new for audiences.  After, as its been said, variety is the spice of life!

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