Just tell me what it does: Digital Bootcamp speaker argues for utility in advertising

The notion that calculated messaging can create emotional ties to your brand is outdated, according to Kip Voytek, SVP of communications and experience planning at Rapp Collins Worldwide. He argues in favor of showcasing product utility. Voytek, who will speak at the Boards Presents Boulder Digital Works Digital Bootcamp in San Francisco, wrote about the importance of utility in advertising in a recent article on Boardsmag.com.

He argues that modern consumers have the tools they need to research and review products on their own without having to make judgment calls based on appeals to their emotions. The real difference maker, though, is that thanks to Yelp, Twitter and other social media technologies consumers can get help deciding what products are right for them.

Utility is good enough for iPhone

To be clear, Voytek isn’t saying that emotion doesn’t play a role in modern advertising. His position is that successful advertising shows how a product fulfills consumers’ needs and wants, as opposed to directly targeting emotions. The process is actually vice versa; as consumers realize how a product can improve their lives, emotions begin to form around a product.

Voytek points to the 2009 iPhone commercials as an example of successful advertising in which utility trumps appeals to emotion. In Apple’s spots, a pair of disembodied hands illustrate the devices utility while deploying few resources (poppy music and a clean white background) designed to appeal to consumer emotion.

There’s an app for that

Voytek is not alone in his view. In a 2009 article in AdNews, Founding Partner of Naked Communications and Consumer Psychologist Adam Ferrier states that advertising has erroneously favored emotional mimicking over utility. The results have been hokey:

Like Voytek, Ferrier also cites Apple’s marketing for iPhone as successful “utility marketing.” But he sees the SDK (software developer kit), which is the technology that allows third-party developers to create and sell their own iPhone applications, as the real genius behind Apple’s strategy. More applications equals greater utility, which supplies Apple with endless advertising opportunities.

For Voytek, the ability to ask around the Web for buying help empowers consumers in ways that haven’t existed before. This puts brands in a position to heed Ferrier’s advice and put utility at the forefront of their messages. Add a still-struggling economy to the changing consumer environment and you have a situation in which consumers are more apt to make decisions based on usefulness rather than emotion.

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