Branded utility and empathy
For a brand to create an online utility is like saying ‘ask not what your customers can do for you, ask what you can do for your customers’. With this approach, brands can be genuinely useful to their customers, and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Utility works not by interrupting people while they are trying to do something else, as most advertising does, but rather by taking time to be useful in people’s lives.
By being useful the brand earns loyalty, respect and affinity.
We created an online utility for Radox with ourfamilytime.co.uk, which was a utility that allowed mums to search online for and quickly access family activities in their area, as well as giving special offers to treat themselves. We based the site on a real concern from mums, with the message that families need to spend more quality time together.
The reason behind our success with Radox was empathy; the ability to relate to people and their lives and make a connection in order inspire and empower or simply help them solve their problems.
Most stay at home mums and working mothers don’t have a scrap of time to spare for technology or marketing that doesn’t benefit them by making their life easier or better.
By facilitating meaningful activities a brand can make an emotional connection far more effectively that with advertising alone.
Eaon Pritchard, Head of Digital
for New Media Age