Columbia Sportswear has done a great job of incorporating utility into their marketing on Pandora.

I love utility. My dad was very hands-on and could build or fix anything: a car, a plane, a house, whatever. Luckily, I got his knack for being able to fix things, and while I am no longer a “practicing” carpenter, I spent several years doing it, still take on my own home-improvement projects, have a shop full of tools and am a big sucker for hardware stores and Tool Crib catalogs.

I’m also a pragmatist and favor products and services that make my life better or easier, and that translates to marketing. There are all kinds of examples of utilitarian marketing strategies (though still far too many non-utilitarian marketing efforts), and with the interactivity of online marketing, these “utilities” are becoming more prevalent.

That’s why I was pleased to see what Columbia Sportswear has come up with in its marketing on Pandora. First of all, Pandora is a great example of radio letting us drive the bus, to a certain extent. We get to vote up or down songs within a particular strain of a genre, or “station,” in exchange for great free music of almost any type. A compromise for sure, but it is interactive radio at its best.

Now, because the reality of all this online content is that it actually costs money to produce (as much as we want to be in denial about that), Pandora has had to explore a few monetization schemes, and I give them kudos for introducing advertising in a way that isn’t too obtrusive.

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There’s no doubt that if you want to engage people in your cause you need to not only answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”, but you have to make sure what’s in it for people is something they’ll enjoy getting out of it. This video by Volkswagen’s ad agency in Sweden, DDB Stockholm, is apparently going viral because it demonstrates just that.

You want me to take the stairs instead of the escalator because it’s good for me and saves energy? No thanks. You want me to take the stairs instead of the escalator because it’s fun? Sure! These people aren’t saving energy and burning a few extra calories. They’re having fun! And never mind the fact that there’s no car in the video. You’ll enjoy it so much that you’ll hardly notice. But then that’s part of the point. This is one of a series of videos in a new initiative by Volkswagen to try to get people to change their old ways by making the new way fun.

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