A decade ago, I was sitting in a classroom at Miami Ad School learning about a new-ish idea called Branded Utility—the brainchild of ad vet Christopher Vimini. Hi Chris 👋. The premise was simple: instead of just selling, solve something. Use that problem solving as marketing. Brands would create tools, apps, or services that made life a little better for their customers or transform the media placement they already had to help people. A great example of Branded Utility? Pizza Hut literally fixing potholes to improve pizza delivery in 2018. It was smart, sticky, and so simple.

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Fast forward to this week at NY Tech Week, and that idea has evolved from a stunt to a survival mechanism.

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In a world flooded with AI-generated everything and SEO-choked search results, the only content that cuts through is the kind that hits a nerve. It’s no longer enough to be clever, or even helpful. You need to feel the pain—and fix it.

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Learnings at NY Tech Week 2025:

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• The startups getting the most traction weren’t just selling solutions. They were reframing problems. Felipe Restrepo of Odaptos is using his proprietary AI to turn customer’s pain points and his solutions into content. He can do that for your brand too.

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• The panels that sparked real conversation were the ones digging into the mess—not glossing over it with jargon or hype. Mike Lazerow, co-author of Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur’s Messy Path to Success, noted “The more we lean into stuff that’s painful for us the better things have worked out”.

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• AI is scraping for answers on Q&A social media. Kate Vasylenko of 42DM says pay close attention to platforms like Reddit and Quora - show up there and you show up in search.

Content that converted? It started with a shared frustration and ended with a new way forward.

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It made me realize: Branded Utility is evolving from a value add to your marketing strategy into the gateway. If you’re not solving something real—something emotional, annoying, broken—you’re just making noise.

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So here’s the brief:
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Start with the problem. Own the pain. Build from there. Turn online answers into IRL solutions.

Brands that make content from real issues—not imaginary lifestyle aspirations—are the ones we remember. And more importantly, the ones we trust.

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