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What’s Widget?

December 10, 2008 A cursory glance around my home office turns up no end of specialty-printed promotional items. That is, little tchotchkes I have acquired over the years that still provide some basic utility to me, and thus have not been consigned to the basement or the trash bin. Just a quick a survey of those items in sight:

• my pen caddy features a remarkable collection of pens bearing the logos of just about every hotel I have stayed at—and every conference I have been to—in the past few years; Westin, Hilton, Hampton Inn, Nexpo, Toastmasters District 53 Fall 2008 Conference, etc., not to mention some sponsors of those conferences;
• my pen caddy itself is a coffee mug that says PhotoSpin.com, a royalty-free imagery provider;
• speaking of coffee mugs, the one I am drinking out of now has the UPS logo, a gift from my local UPS Store where I have my business mailbox;
• I have a pica ruler from the B&W Press in Georgetown, MA;
• I have calculator emblazoned with the logo of Vermillion, which is a printing company;
• and I am playing my iTunes through an iCube which has the RBI Interactive logo on it.

This is just a small sample of the handy promotional items I have in my home office. If I were to leave this room and wander throughout the house, I would probably turn up an endless list. These kinds of items are Marketing 101: always keep the brand in front of the customer, especially if that brand is associated with something useful. Do I always think of UPS as I am chugging down my coffee? Probably not. Do I choose to stay at certain hotels because I like the way their pens write? I doubt it. But the unconscious mind makes all sorts of connections that I am not even aware of and perhaps affects the choices I make as a consumer. Then again, when it’s dinner time, the pizza place that gave me a refrigerator magnet will likely get my call—after all, their phone number is right there in front of me. No digging through drawers looking for menus or finding out where the phone book’s got to.

It should surprise no one that there has emerged a digital equivalent of the specialty-printed tchotchke. It’s called a “widget,” and it is basically a branded applet (small software application) that serves some type of useful purpose for a prospective customer. Some examples of popular widgets are:

• Southwest Airlines has a widget you can download and keep on your desktop, and it will chime in and notify you when there is a discounted Southwest fare available;
• UPS has a widget that lets frequent shippers track packages from their desktops;
• Johnny Walker had a widget that lets frequent travelers/drinkers find the nearest bar in whatever city they happen to be in;
• Nike has a variety of widgets that help people coordinate various team and individuals sports and activities.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to widgets—which, if you think about it, are not all that far removed from the advantages and disadvantages of physical items.

The advantages:

• low cost; it can be very inexpensive to produce a widget, and there are software companies that specialize in them
• associates the brand with a useful or helpful tool
• keeps the brand front and center—on the computer desktop, on a cellphone screen, on a Facebook page, etc.

The disadvantages:

• real estate—there is room on a computer, cellphone, Facebook page for so many widgets
• cost—it can cost varying amounts to embed a widget on a social media page
• number of platforms—Windows, Mac, Facebook, the iPhone, and other mobile OSes and media sites are all different; which do marketers develop for? All? some? But which?

As with any other kind of marketing, three (if not fewer) is a crowd. That is, would I want 20 different pizza place refrigerator magnets? No, because my fridge is only so big and the point of putting one on there in the first place is to make it easy and convenient for me to call for a pizza. If there are 20 different options, that only complicates matters. Same with pens. I only have room for so many pens, and does it do any single hotel chain any good if I have pens from every other hotel chain, as well? (Of course, any given chain could hope that the others die or explode first.)

The purpose served by the widget should also be relevant to the company’s business. UPS’s widget can help you track packages. Nike’s involves sports and fitness. My pica ruler lets me measure type and other printing specs. My Giaccone’s Pizza magnet is on the refrigerator, which I associate with food (in theory, if not always in practice). But, naturally, that isn’t always possible—or even desirable. What kind of relevant widget could, say, Immodium develop? A directory to the nearest rest room? (Well, actually...).

Widgets, like tangible promotional items, work best when they are useful and solve a problem for people. This is yet another aspect of the term “engagement” which is the holy grail of today’s marketing initiatives.  What problem(s) could a widget solve for your prospective customers?

Posted by Richard Romano on December 10, 2008 | Comments (0)