The age of brand functionality?

The web should have been the death of the brand.

The web was measurable and rich with meaning, meaning that could be extracted and associated with tangible goods and services (Planting a garden? Buy a shovel now!).  Things that are less tangible, whose only unique differentiator is brand identity itself, should have faded away.  It should have been the rebirth of advertising, providing information on differentiators and attributes so consumers could make informed decisions on the product or service that was just right for them.

But brand advertisers were tenacious, and were used to aggressively spending without measurable results. They tried their best to exploit the web.  They created sites with games, sites that entertained, and while they and their ad agencies won many awards,  ultimately a brown fizzy liquid is just a brown fizzy liquid. And really, there's just not much more to say about it. While one can create a perception of value in more traditional, less data-oriented media, it is much, much harder in an information-rich environment.

Then social networks came along and saved the brand.  Like chugging a fizzy brown liquid, social media is, at its best, immediate and fleeting. While it rarely provides value in revisiting (and more often than not embarrassing in retrospect, though the facebook timeline feature may prove me wrong -- or right), there is a persistent, nagging longing for more.  Thus the challenge for brand advertisers is that they must maintain a constant presence in and around these networks, ready to exploit those brief, fleeting moments when they are #mentioned.

There is another way. What if brands built and delivered web-based functionality that made their customers' lives easier, better and more efficient? Functionality that reinforced brand expertise and unique selling propositions? For example, what if realtors, who expend enormous amounts of effort and money to endear themselves to neighborhoods and communities, instead built a website to support community interactions (calendar, bulletin board, directory, etc.) and gave it away free?

The challenge, of course, is when trying to make people's lives easier, intrusions (er, advertising) can greatly diminish the offering and experience.  Sure, the real estate company's name would be omnipresent but it would have to be non-aggressive and of less visual weight than the functions that attracted folks to the site in the first place. Of course, tasteful and subtle are not necessarily popular notions in branding, but in the long run, delivering functionality that improves your customers' lives will pay far greater returns and be a much better investment than spending on social media buys.