Brand Building in the "Application Economy"

Much ado has been made about the Domino's Pizza Builder. It has been praised, including here, as a great example of branded utility. While that is still true and deserved, one of their biggest competitors recently threw an oven-fresh piece of pan crust pie in their face.

Yup. Pizza Hut not only re-tooled their online ordering experience, but they also launched a slick application running on Adobe Air. Now if it's too much work to go to Pizza Hut's web site to order, you can place an order right from your desktop.*

Why am I pointing this out?  Good question.

Long before many of us got into this business, someone decided that they could stand out by putting their product in attractive packaging. They were right. At first this probably worked tremendously for them, but then all of their competitors started doing the same thing.

We're looking at a similar situation today, only in a different environment. The evolution of the internet, the growth of broadband, and expansion of WiFi (and soon the presence of a more powerful mobile web) have made most products or services a click or two away from virtually anywhere. The same is true for 360-degree information about those products.

As people dig for more and more information on what they buy and online shopping continues to grow, having a great digital experience for your brand becomes as important as, if not more so than, having the right packaging at retail.

The problem is, any brand can work with their agency (or hire a new, better one) to make their digital experience more engaging, rewarding, useful and valuable. While this is quite important to do, and it can provide short-term competitive advantages, it doesn't necessarily communicate what makes your actual product or service unique and special and it doesn't give you any real long-term advantages. It just makes it easier to procure/engage with your company today. (The content within a brand's digital experience most certainly can differentiate it and make it more meaningful to people, however.)

When every one of your competitors has essentially the same quality of application/utility/experience as you, and eventually they all will, then what? Mobile? Nope. We'll be having this same chat when the code gets cracked there too.

Now, I'm not saying developing applications, making better digital experiences, and creating greater brand utility aren't important. They are. They're new pieces you need to add to the mix that will help contribute to the overall feeling a person has about your product or service (otherwise known as your brand).

But they're not the magic solution to leap-frogging the competition that many are making them out to be. They're a cost of entry to doing business today and tomorrow. They're not the long-term solution to making people want to buy your product or service over a competitor’s.

No, this all points to why the essence of what modern advertising has been about - building emotional connections between people and brands - is still needed. (But let's stop with all of the annoying and interrupting people, o.k.?) Especially as advancements in technology continue to make borders disappear and markets open up.

It is precisely why despite all the talk about this being "the application economy," having an engaging and interesting way to communicate what actually differentiates you from your competition, and that helps people feel something emotional for your brand, matters most.

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*For the sake of transparency and honesty, I've not spent much time with their ordering tool, nor have I downloaded the application. The experience could fall short of what Domino's has done for all I know. But since the point of this post was about the importance of brand building today and not a review of their new application and online ordering tool, I didn't feel it required me to do so.

Comments

[eaon]

spot on paul. these applications are tools at the end of the day. The proof of the pudding (or in this case, the pizza) is still in the eating. If your product and service is not up to scratch then all the widgets in the world are just the fancy topping, to paraphrase Seth.

[Adrian Ho]

Like what you've done with the blog - very nice.

You're using two applications which simply improve access to their respective products to condemn an approach. The best applications and services won't just make getting the products easier - they'll actually improve the products.

[Michael Maurillo]

I don't think this is a point not worth making, but it is one that can be made at any point on the advertising/marketing timeline. Whether 1988 or 2008, the advertising tactic can only do so much for your brand. No matter if it is a widget or a radio spot.

What I do think, though, is that both Domino's and Pizza Hut ARE affecting their brand image/perception/value positively with these applications. By letting customers participate in the "making" of their pizza, it becomes more relevant, personal, and dare i say, better tasting. As result, I do think a line can be drawn from each of these examples to an emotional connection to a brand (or in this case, to your pizza).

[paul]

Eaon - Thanks for taking time to comment. Everything comes back to the quality of the product or service, doesn't it. Just like it always has.

Adrian - Thank you for the note on the redesign.

And... oh boy. I wasn't trying to condemn the approach. I tried to say they're important and a critical piece to marketing today. I think they're a great thing and if they're relevant and useful to a brand, they should by all means implement them.

My push though was that we can't simply just rely on them alone - that an application itself, if your competitors can do the same thing, isn't enough. We still need to do other things to help brands connect emotionally with people.

Create applications that make the product, service or experience with it better, but don't look to them to be the end-all, be-all for making people care more about your brand than a competitor's brand. No?

Michael - You're very right. It is a point we seem to have to bring up every time a new way to reach people gets some momentum because a few people start trying to claim this new thing is the ultimate answer to all of our marketing problems.

As for the applications affecting perceptions and images of brands... I think it depends dramatically on the brand, the role of the application/technology and how "ownable" it all is to that brand.

I cans see what you're saying here, but to play devil's advocate, one could say that these applications are simply a new communication tool to do something you've always been able to do through other communication tools - customize your pizza.

You can walk in to either of these places and do it in person. You can call in and do it over the phone. And at some places, you can fax your custom order in. Now you can do it through the web or an application.

That being the case, does my mobile phone make me feel better about Pizza Hut or Domino's? Not really. It's a piece of technology that enables communication of my order to them, just like the applications do.

Being that these two brands are among the first to do it, there is some excitement to it for a few of us, but go ask anyone in middle America who orders pizza if these applications make them like Pizza Hut or Domino's more than they used to. And five years from now when every place that should have some kind of digital application does have one, we'll look back at this and ask ourselves, "why were we excited, again?"

But I do see your point and I agree to some degree, again depending on the brand, the role, and ownability of the application/technology.

And thank you for challenging this. I appreciate that you made me think more about it.

[Stan Lee]

Great post Paul. I wonder if the issue with these clever apps etc is the same as the one that has plagued advertising for years - over promise and under deliver.

[Daniil]

You got it, Paul. Tools are extremely important today, but not to forget the basics. And the main thing to talk about are the new ideas, ideas of a new kind. My best benchmark so far is Obama:
http://lowemoscow.blogspot.com/2008/06/true-brand-of-today.html

[Ryan Moede]

Good post, Paul. If companies focus too heavily on their branded utilities, it becomes an unwinnable arms-race. Equally investing in the quality of the product and content needs to round-out a complete experience that fulfills the customer's expectations.

[Reed]

Props Paul, insightful post.

But, I'd take it one step further... a brand's true competitiveness isn't in it's ability to just engage current customers, but tomorrow's too.