Domino’s just started fixing potholes on roads, to help your pizza get delivered undisturbed. In response to news stories of kids getting fined by overzealous city officials for running lemonade stands without permits, Country Time Lemonade created a fund to pay their legal fees. Both are stunts from brands taking a short lived Brand Stand to try and become fixers of small problems. For brands, taking this role of a fixer could do wonders to inspire more loyalty. Sadly, in the cases of Domino’s and Country Time, these small stunts are unlikely to last.
One unexpected brand taking a longer term approach is the Encyclopædia Britannica, which launched a browser plugin that lets Google pull information from their authoritative archive instead of unreliable Wikipedia snippets. The new “Britannica Insights” plugin is a perfect way for the 250 year old brand to find new relevance and help fix the problem of incomplete or misleading information in Google searches. Unlike the other brands, Britannica is finding a way to fix a problem that aligns strategically with their brand and is not only a reaction to something happening in real time, but also a way to think about making your brand a fixer for a problem in a way that fits your business.
