gabor vida

We’ve been having a lively debate about trying to define Branded Applications over here at Teknision. From one end we look at it from a development viewpoint and debate the differences between Rich Internet Applications and what we consider Branded Applications. From the other end, we look at potential clients and try to show how building branded applications instead of the typical presentation based web sites creates a stronger bond between the audience and the brand. It got me to thinking about Branded Applications, or branded utility as a movement that is part of a bigger change in consumer attitudes.

I think that the rise in of Branded Applications is part of a trend towards personalizing experiences. Take the popularity of shows such as Lost. I find myself constantly complaining that it is nothing more than a big drawn out tease, but I keep watching. The reason why I keep watching is that it is not simple entertainment, it makes me think. Lost has no easy answers and leaves a lot up in the air without even a hint as to when mysteries will be revealed. Lost forces me to build my own theories about the storyline. In doing so, I have an intensely personal experience of Lost. In fact, my experience with Lost is completely different than anyone else’s. I have personalized a TV show.

When people who watch Lost get together, they share their theories. In essence, they share their experience with Lost. This conversation adds to our individual experiences. Image being able to do this with a brand? In order to get this level of internalization, a brand has to do more than entertain. A brand has to make itself meaningful to a person. I believe this is where where Branded Applications excel. By providing a valuable service and entertainment at the same time, the user builds a personal relationship with the application.

So what has this got to do with Bittorrent?

According to TorrentFreak, Lost is the most downloaded TV show on Bittorrent. An average episode is downloaded over 500,000 times. Thats’ 5% of all Lost viewers!

1 in every 20 viewer downloaded the show and joins the Lost experience without a single commercial interruption.

How many more do the same with a Tivo or DVR or…. gasp!… a VCR?

The number 2 and number 3 most downloaded shows are Prison Break (> 320,000 downloads) and Heroes (> 190,000 downloads). What do all these shows have in common? They are all shows that demand viewers build their own relationship with the story.

People want to have personal relationships with their entertainment. Branded Applications mirror this online. I think this is only the beginning of a bigger trend.

About a year and a half ago, I came up with the term “Branded Applications” for what we do at Teknision. The term arose from a need to clearly explain our niche in the web design and development world. I couldn’t find a good description so I made one up. It looks like I was on to something.

First, a little background…

I’m a firm believer that the path to success lies in differentiation.

The best thing a company like ours can do is pick a specific vertical in which we can demonstrate a unique viewpoint and a measurable level of expertise and then market the shit out of our services to that vertical.

The beauty of differentiation is that it simplifies your marketing and opens your company up to more clients, two things that sound completely counter intuitive.

We used to say: “we are a multimedia design and development shop that focuses in Flash based marketing solutions. Our award winning designers follow a proven process to ensure our client’s success.” How many times have you heard a version of that speech? The problem is that any shop can say the exact same thing. The only point of differentiation in the entire sentence is the focus in Flash, which is really a horizontal not a vertical and only reduces our competitors from a pool of hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of companies. The whole awards and process bit is nonsense. Everyone has a process and everyone who is in the game long enough wins an award. Smart clients know that. Thank god we don’t do anything outside of Flash or, heaven forbid, traditional design such as print or broadcast. The worst words you can use are “full service”. The point is that if the message you put out to the market can be said by anyone, then there is very little reason for a client to choose you over a competitor. In fact, the deciding factor is often whittled down to one dreaded thing: price. Never ever ever compete on price. It’s a losing game.

The funny thing is, a clearly differentiated company can talk about design awards and process and get away with it. If we were a multimedia design and development company that focuses on solutions geared specifically for the skiing and snowboarding industry in North America, then all our talk about awards and processes suddenly get qualified. Plus, your list of clients becomes very clear and easy to build. And, best of all, when you call a client out of the blue, you have something important to tell them.

So this was the problem I was faced with; how to differentiate Teknision. I looked at the types of projects we did, what we liked to work on, what we were really good at working on and the types of clients we liked to work with and I noticed some similarities. We excel at making rich internet applications. We have a strong background in understanding user behavior, but also have a background in understanding consumer behavior. Plus, we hate designing anything thats boring.

So we came up with “Branded Applications” as a way to describe projects that are both valuable applications and entertaining experiences.

The more we thought about it, the more we realized that Branded Applications is more than a description of what we do, it is also a growing trend in marketing. The concept is getting a lot of traction lately under a slightly different name, Branded Utility. It started as an article in Ad Age about the future of advertising and then spread to the blogshere with posts in Jack Cheng’s blog,  Dino Demopoulos’ Chroma and, ultimately a series of articles in Piers Fawkes’ PSFK.

So the moral of the story is to try as hard as possible to clearly differentiate your business. When you are stuck for a description, make one up. Who knows, maybe there is no description because you are riding the wave of something new.

Branded Applications or Branded Utility, they both sound good to me.