Like Nike+, Progressive is simply putting its brand behind a utility that people can find handy, every day, in a way that ties into the reason you'd need Progressive in the first place: because you drive, in traffic.
Utility like this has driven more than 23,000 downloads since its debut in December. Of the 40 or so comments users have posted on the download page, you're likely to see raves like, "I do truly [thank] Progressive for their efforts and attempts to make my commute much easier, again, thank you."
Twenty-three thousand downloads may sound small, but Progressive has just locked-down at least 30,000 daily exposures from commuters looking for quick traffic information before they get in the car.
The real question is, can Progressive compete with Sarah Tuohy?
If you're wondering who Sarah Tuohy is, she's the author of another traffic.com Yahoo widget.
A valuable lesson for the Progressive widget team would have been to look at the traffic.com widgets already in existence and build from those successes and user comments. Even though Sarah's widget only worked for six months, it garnered more than 75,000 downloads. One user comment actually thanks the almighty for providing a widget of such usefulness.
To me, the big difference is that the map is the main view instead of the list, making it immediately obvious and useful without a single click.
The valuable lesson for all marketers here is that you don't have to even think of the content mountain to give your audience something of tremendous value in the widget space. Just make it simple and useful.
Dwarfing both of those widgets, however, are two of the most simple offerings available: the weather widget and the picture frame -- a widget that provides a desktop slideshow of the pictures on your computer. Together, they've been downloaded 4,233,641 times, as I wonder aloud" "Who will step up to offer a branded combination weather-and-slideshow widget?" It must be worth at least 500,000 downloads to save someone the desktop space while retaining the convenience.