Eimear Colleran.
Eimear Colleran, Head of Marketing, Prophet.
Let’s be honest, most advertising is fancy wallpaper. It flashes across our screens, clogs our feeds, interrupts our podcasts and is forgotten before the next scroll. People are drowning in thousands of ads a day, and the truth is, they remember almost none of them.
The old playbook of “shout louder, buy more reach, repeat until broke” doesn’t work anymore. Attention is scarce. Trust is lower than a politician’s approval rating. And brands are spending billions for what amounts to a collective shrug.
The reality? People don’t wake up hoping to see more ads. They wake up hoping to get through the day with fewer headaches, less friction, and maybe one small win. Brands that can deliver those win, and however tiny, they will live rent-free in people’s lives.
So, if ads aren’t doing the heavy lifting, what is? Here’s the answer no media agency wants to hear - utility.
Brands that do, not brands that say
The brands breaking through aren’t the ones crafting the slickest 30-second spot. They’re the ones that actually do something useful. Utility earns attention in ways a billboard never could, because it embeds the brand into everyday life.
Take Mecca. Instead of just showing glossy models and telling you how fabulous you’ll look, they actually help you figure it out. Makeup applications, lessons, skincare consultations - real humans teaching real people how to contour without looking like they lost a paintball fight. That’s branding by action, not empty promise.
Or IKEA. Sure, they could scream “affordable design” in another TV campaign. Instead, they built AR tools so you can see if that sofa actually fits in your living room before you haul it home. Add in their YouTube hacks for small spaces and suddenly IKEA isn’t just selling you furniture, they’re helping you survive apartment living. That’s memorable.
And then there’s Domino’s. They could have kept telling us they’re “fast.” Instead, they made ordering so easy that you can do it via emoji or your smart speaker. They didn’t advertise fast. They engineered it. That’s branding in action and pizza at the door before your stomach starts growling.
Why this matters
Utility does three things advertising can’t:
- It sticks: Repetition builds habit, not CPMs.
- It proves value: No one needs to “trust” a claim when they can see it work.
- It spreads: Nobody shares your campaign tagline, but they will rave about a tool that makes their life easier.
Utility turns brands into verbs. You don’t “use a search engine,” you Google it. You don’t “order takeaway,” you Domino’s it. You don’t “buy makeup,” you head to Mecca. That’s not media spend at work. That’s utility cementing brand into behaviour.
The uncomfortable truth for marketers
If you’re a CMO still pouring your budget into the next “big campaign,” you’re missing the point. The next campaign won’t save your brand. The next tool might.
Because the future of brand building won’t be won in media buying rooms. It’ll be won in design sprints, product roadmaps, and customer experience labs. The marketers who get this will become indispensable partners in growth. The ones who don’t will be politely moved to “brand comms only” while someone else takes the strategic seat at the table.
So stop asking: “What’s our next ad?”
Start asking: “What’s our next utility?”