By giving an audience widgets that provide a service and make their lives more interesting or convenient your brand will be on its way to far more free real estate than you ever expected.
In helping brands develop widget presences, I can say that for brand managers and agencies alike, the first time through can be an emotional roller coaster. Early in the process, brainstorming sessions are filled with far-flung, fantastic ways to bring enterprise information into the everyday lives of the audience.
Then, as the realities of internal bureaucracy and resources needed to generate content sinks in, so does the gripping terror that the application will fall flat on its face, leaving the brand worse off.
It is this process of trying to think of widgets as a constant traditional campaign that I have dubbed: "Climbing Content Mountain." Eerily similar to the Cliffhanger game on "The Price is Right," the more ideas generated for widgets, the more complex they become, the more content they need, the more resources they'll take, the more corporate buy-in they'll need.
Before you know it, the project is so involved that the marketer is about to fall right off the peak of this mountain they've created, yodeling, lederhosen and all.
Yes. There is a better way, and it's an easier path to a more effective widget: focus on service. No mountain required. Here are a few examples to help shed light on the difference between fueling a widget channel, like a traditional campaign, and fueling a utility that provides a branded service for your most valuable audience members.
Nike+
The most forward-thinking and strategically perfect example of providing service through widgets may just be the Nike+ system for runners.
It starts with a simple premise: What can we do to help runners?
Utilizing the web, desktop widgets and, of course, iTunes and the iPod, Nike+ captures information during the run and then shows your progress in a series of well-designed interfaces. Runners can use this information to join a group on the website in challenges, see how their performance changes when their favorite song plays and much more.
The Nike+ system is working so well that it was recently featured in a New York Times article spotlighting the shift in dollars from traditional advertising to this type of service-based emerging media.