Making Content New

I saw an interesting piece in MediaPost on the Virtual Zippo Lighter branded app for the iPhone. It’s been the most successful branded app in the App Store for quite some time, and yet it’s so simple: you open the app, choose your “lighter”, and then slide your finger across the “wheel” to light a flame on the screen. It allows concert-goers to simulate the concert tradition of holding your cigarette lighter above your head with the flame going during ballads.

The article talks about Jon Vlassopulos, CEO of Moderati, and his thoughts on a roadmap for further development of the app. He describes it becoming a means of branded entertainment – “You pull out the Zippo and maybe it tells you what is good [playing] in the neighborhood.” As a response, I found this paragraph from the author, Steve Smith, particularly interesting:

“A cute little throwaway like the Coke Spin the Bottle app is a good-enough quick branding hit, as is the Zippo. On the other end of the spectrum, the truly useful Kraft iFood app or Absolut Drinkspiration apps have real depth and content. They not only need to be built but maintained. Anything in between these two ends of the difficulty curve is too easily bested by a more serious app from a dedicated content publisher.”

Well said. As brands seek to dive deeper into the utility side of the app pool, the need to keep the content underlying that utility fresh is an often-overlooked consideration.

One possibility is for brands to start serving as content curators, filtering the best material out there that’s relevant to the brand. The “what’s good in the neighborhood” idea for Zippo is an example – Zippo could implement this by licensing content from a location-based city guide to pull live music venues and then filtering the venues using a tool like SocialGreat to give users a sense of what’s popular at that moment. This would keep the app fresh and relevant for the user.

Any other thoughts on how brands continue to evolve their apps? How can they create relevant utility without jumping headlong into the content business? And if they try to partner with content providers, what value do they need to give these partners to make a partnership worthwhile?

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• Most Popular Branded iPhone App of All Time, Moderati’s Virtual Zippo Lighter, Notches 5 Million Downloads, Flicks Open New Features, Extends European Tour (prweb.com)
• Tweets. From a bottle of Absolut (yesbutnobutyes.com)

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