Yesterday we delivered part one of our four part series of posts directed at the brand advertising community: Branded Software Experiences – A Cost-Effective and Critical Component of your Brand Advertising Mix. Today we’re delivering part two.

Being creative is critical throughout all phases of this process, but perhaps nowhere is it more essential than in identifying the right piece of software to express your brand’s message. There are several strategies for identifying the right solution. Most important is to distinguish between expensive content creation and much more cost-effective software creation. Software can span the gamut (and some software is actually more content-oriented like videogames).

Identifying the right software to carry your brand on it is no different than choosing which television show to sponsor or which sporting event to support. You are looking for some type of direct or indirect linkage with some combination of your product and your brand. You can have a very specific relationship such as some sort of product placement, or you can have a more abstract relationship like sponsoring a cultural event that conveys the values you want your brand to be associated with in the public’s mind.

Let’s take some very obvious and simple examples to illustrate. Imagine a financial services company like Fidelity sponsoring Microsoft Excel. Imagine Windex sponsoring an anti-virus package for your PC – “It disinfects your Windows”. Ha ha, but you get the idea. But there are even more interesting examples. How about Amazon sponsoring Delicious Library? Not to put direct sales links in it, but to connect their brand to people who love their collections of media so much that they spend time cataloging them. These examples just scratch the surface though and don’t get into the aspirational aspect of the brands. They are just straight obvious connections.

Here are more abstract (but in my opinion) potentially stronger relationships between brands and software. Think of a car company with a minivan to promote sponsoring an application that gives parents resources to help their kids with their homework. The car company cares about the growth and success of your family no matter what you drive. Think of a beer company putting out its own fantasy football software. Think of Disney putting out family photo album software brought to you by Disneyland. As a user of that software you would know that Disney wants your family to create fond memories even when you’re not visiting one of their parks.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but in many ways relationships with brands are like relationships with people. The less obvious connections often show a better grasp of the subtle values of the brand and the underlying needs of the customer. Just like people brands can seem insecure. And just like people, brands that are confident in who they are, are attractive. In the midst of conceptualizing one of these brand/software relationships you may be tempted to jam your product into the software experience. And in some cases there may be a way to do it that makes sense. But in many more it won’t make sense. The product’s presence will be obvious and awkward and detract from any value you got from sponsoring the experience in the first place. Lincoln put car ads on their MyDream.TV site over and above their strong brand presence. Aside from the problems with the site’s design and focus, the car ads just detracted from the premise that Lincoln had built the site to help its potential customers achieve their dreams. Did the presence of the ad sell even a single additional car for Lincoln? I doubt it. Did it take away some of the genuineness that users might have attributed to Lincoln for putting the site there in the first place? I think so. There are places where product placement not only makes sense but actually enhances the experience. (The Price is Right being my favorite example.) But those are in the minority so tread carefully.

When creating a concept for a software vehicle for your brand, ask yourself these questions:

1. Who am I trying to reach?
2. What values are important to me?
3. How can we use technology to make that person’s life easier and reinforce that we share their values?
4. How are we making them more productive, effective, connected instead of just entertaining or informing them (not that those can’t be key components of a branded software experience)?
5. How will we get them to come back to the experience again and again? (To get the most bang for your buck, why not invest in an experience that becomes a recurring part of the lives of your target audience?)

These questions will lead you down the path of finding the right software that will ultimately accrue positive value to your brand.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss how to actually build the software vehicle for your brand message.