I’ve never been to prison.  But I’ve read articles, and it seems pretty bad.

And because it’s largely considered a broken system in America (expensive, overcrowded, high return rates), there are always new ideas designed to fix prisons.  From what I can gather, they typically involve having prisoners do something you wouldn’t expect of them.  These stories make great human interest stories, like when convicts become authors.  Personally, I prefer when the warden organizes sports, because they inspire the most timeless movies.

We’ve all seen the video of the prisoners in the Philippines doing a ridiculously good rendition of Thriller.  They’ve released several videos since (albeit to less acclaim or popularity).  Evidently, these guys rehearse upwards of five hours a day.  Prisoners are said to lose conjugal visits if they don’t cooperate.  As a result, this prison has gone from having loads of violence to almost none.  And the prisoners say they like it! (CNN swipe here).

[credit to PSFK for bringing it all to my attention]

I bring this up now because just a few weeks ago, the boys posted a new video that’s making the rounds.  I just wish they would’ve spent more time on Soulja Boy, and less on MC Hammer.

Sarcasm aside, there is something here that relates to our little world.  For starters, this tactic has created a whole lot of utility for the prison, prisoners, and the general public.  (If you read one link in the post, make it this one — it’s a great little deck on brand vs. utility done by our very own Noah Brier).  Anyway, in this case, the utility generated was:

1) Getting the prisoners to greatly increase the respect they have for themselves and for each other

2) Creating a safer environment within the prison

3) In some way, making criminals more prepared for the outside world, which will presumably lower re-incarceration rates

And they created all this utility by doing one thing that made them different.  And they did it a lot.  A simple lesson, but one we can probably apply to all of our brands.