Utility

I am a Director at Mount Sinai Hospital. Our new digital venture was funded by the Bezos Family Foundation. We had big plans to develop a robust e-learning software portal that brought to life all of our learnings, teachings, and engagement with families. We are made up of physicians, Ph.D.s, and other practitioners, most of which do not know much about digital at all. We knew what we wanted to achieve, but we needed a partner to help bring to life all of our plans in an online and mobile way. Utility completed a massive e-learning platform buildout that has more than 75+ minutes of animated educational video instruction for new doctors, as well as the entire tech platform needed to facilitate these learning cycles within the course. Utility was not the cheapest option at all (although not the most expensive either), but they struck us as the most capable of handling the wide range of digital/mobile work we were going to need over time. We have definitely hired other vendors, but Utility stands out as more professional, capable, and forward-thinking than any of the others we’ve dealt with.

I am the CEO of Dearduck, an app that takes the guesswork out of gifting by working with consumer preferences. We had done a lot of testing and research in the market. It's a huge untapped market. We understood that lack of information was the root cause of the problem we were trying to solve, but we didn't know what we wanted to build exactly or how. We needed a partner that could help us build our product. Utility helped us take an MVP approach and figure out what we needed to know so that we could solve our problem without overbuilding. Utility took us from concept to wireframes and the development of our MVP. There are different complex backend layers to our app for gathering preferences and learning about a user's relationship with each of their connections, extending from friends and family to co-workers. We focus on hyper-personalization and integrate with different technologies for passing on repayments for retailers. We haven't gone over budget in any of our projects. If anything, we came under the projected amounts. My success with Utility has been measured by their ability to reach and fix any issues.

I was working at the time for an agency that was managing the music artist Usher. We had a couple of digital products that needed to be made, so we contacted Utility. Their main objective was to develop the core application for the upcoming music tour. We had a partnership with Target where we were hosting 4D content and experiences, and we also sold merchandise where users could get exclusive content while Usher was in town. There are special messages and notifications for fans, and he also sold certain exclusive and limited merchandise. At the time, he was releasing videos and music, so we could also host all of this content on the app as well. We needed mobile apps and a backend built, which is where Utility came in. The development cycle was pretty seamless. The app got about 3 million worldwide downloads over the course of the 8 months he was on tour. I’ve worked with a lot of dev shops, but Utility is my favorite because they’re able to dissect requirements and put them into actual tasks to make a great product in a timely manner. Their adaptability left a huge impression. It seemed like the entire team was behind me. I’ve worked with 10 different dev shops during my experience, and Utility remains on top.

We’re a big experiential marketing company based in NYC. We needed a digital provider for a large project we were working on for a global Telecom brand of ours, so Utility was selected to handle all things digital design and tech. There was a global event coming up, so we needed an entire online experience and platform (mobile and web) for the large-scale conference which brought users together in one place. Utility was instrumental in helping us work through all of the challenges. Utility built the online meeting schedule tool for our clients to use for meetings, cancellations, additions to the calendar, and other functionalities. They created a seamless on-site process. The robust registration portal they built also had a reporting site, so it was important for us to see who was registered for what. It was a robust product due to its flexibility and ability to allow us to make changes, launch communications, and have an easily-viewable and manipulatable check-in sheet for the on-site process. The portals were also optimized for mobile. The entire project was a collaborative effort, but Utility provided tons of insight and creative thinking. They balanced the project with a budget and what they thought was reasonable. It exceeded some of the work we’ve received in the past. They performed well and were always on top of things.

We hired Utility to rebuild our digital products and create a digital platform where people could invest in securities. We were out of our element with the work, so we knew we had to partner with an external agency. We had our own view of what we wanted it all to look like, and we worked with Utility so that they could capture the appropriate vision for it. I would say that they nailed it. That project required a huge amount of time and attention because it involved lots of different legal jurisdictions, tax implications, and regulatory considerations, all of which had to be constructed, in my view, with the appropriate connectivity, aesthetics, functionality and so forth. Our digital platform has gotten kudos as one of the top two or three on Wall Street. Utility is the greatest.

UrLife Media takes user-generated content, gives is a custom narrative, and packages it in the style of a movie trailer, with custom stories, professional voiceovers, graphics, and visual effects. We do this by using actual, human editors, and not an algorithm. We needed a mobile technology platform which could help facilitate growth in this segment. The product we needed to create was unique in that it would move large amounts of video data across the web. It needed to be as user-friendly, intuitive and efficient as possible. We talked to a few companies early on and found that we weren't getting what we needed. Utility came from a few good references. We're based in LA, while Utility is New-York-based. Utility wanted to understand what our end result needed to be, and they helped shape it along the way. Utility built everything on both our site and our apps. With the first two companies we talked to, we had no framework for our project. Utility imagined everything from scratch. They did a ton of heavy lifting in order to get us to where we are. Utility has been instrumental in translating what we were asking for into an actual product, but also providing some education to us as far as how things are built and what the timelines are. From a responsiveness point of view, Utility was always there for us.

We’re an entertainment marketing agency, and we had a big mobile app/AR project for a global brand that was going to be at the Super Bowl. We knew Utility was knowledgeable in the space. We worked with Utility to create a unique, gamified mobile AR [augmented reality] solution. The app was for iOS and Android, and development was a 2–3-month process. Users could download the app, but since the AR mechanism was in our physical space at the event, we also had it set up as activation on iPads so they could do the field goal challenge through AR. Utility was able to organically tie the client into the football field. We might have reached out to other companies, but because of our cost and turnaround, Utility made the most sense. We have a good relationship with them. The end-client was thrilled. A couple of notable celebrities played the game too, and they also thought it was really cool. Utility delivered on a tight timeline and budget. Everyone was happy.

We needed to have live-streaming, tons of content, blogs, and other news and information circulating through our site in a dynamic way. We also needed a team on top of it in real time every day and every week since it was an ongoing live show. Utility designed and built out a totally new, custom web/mobile portal, which ran weekly before getting sold to FOX, which was a huge success. Ultimately, Utility was in charge of all things digital. They were the lead design and development team for the entire mobile/web portal, including backend, frontend, UI, UX, the live video streaming service architecture, and the CMS to control all the content on the web portal. Utility had such a good reputation, but they also made a point to come into our offices multiple times early on to strategize and discuss the assignment and how it might take shape. They produced really quality work, but their strongest quality is being responsive and communicative and responding to issues quickly when they arise. They were really helpful in educating us about digital and technology along the way, and I think that’s probably unique. They were patient with us, but also very aggressive with making sure we hit timelines. We felt like we had someone on our side, versus having an “outsourced agency.”