Let it simmer
What do agencies do all day? They pore over the results of Agency Awards announcements, of course.
This week I was skimming through Research Magazine’s Awards shortlist (because we got a nomination for best Agency of The Year 2009) where I noticed Face were nominated for Research Breakthrough of the Year. A little Googling and I got to the work they have recently done with Jaroslav Cir* at Rexona for Unilever. Good visuals and a familiar narrative until slide 16…
16 creative Axe consumers attended a workshop in Spain….
Consumers develop ideas for 3 weeks after workshop (with mentoring from Face)
Three weeks???
At Sense we don’t do this. Our collaborators participate for weeks either side of a workshop, preparing to generate ideas, and then latterly helping us refine them. We do it our way because we believe this is the most efficient way to draw on collaborators perspectives and talents, but Face’s work reasonably challenges this assumption and asks: how long do we have to collaborate for in order to genuinely co-create?
This is not a claims-issue: there is no ‘fair-trade’ certification which can (or should) be slapped on an idea generation process. Creative Commons have gone down that route, and the wisdom/effectiveness of approach is a whole different question…
The real issue is, of course, how long you have to work with consumers before you can benefit from the diversity of their perspectives, and really challenge the assumptions which can draw ideas gravitationally towards ‘more of the same’.
Market researchers – at least those who openly call themselves such – might claim that the process of drawing on the mindsets of consumers, and being inspired by their needs, is unfeasible to prolong in commercial contexts, and should therefore at least be very carefully controlled using group, depth or survey techniques. Academic social scientists might say we’re all in too much of a hurry to really discover anything meaningful at all!
At Sense, we believe that by talking to the right people, about the right things, in the right way, we can pressure-filter perspectives and ideas through the co-creation process, without losing their honesty or quality.
Now, I know, or at least hope, you can hear the jet-engine roaring from behind the barista, as you read this. There is a violence to such urgency, which it is possibly a pity. We all like to let it simmer. But until the [corporate] patrons of co-creative processes adapt their stage-gates, or we as collaborative consumers adapt our dependence upon them… then that’s just the way it’s got to be.
