Noticed this article in Marketing magazine, Asda explains its bold attempt to involve customers in decision-making.
For a moment I thought the high street had got the co-creation bug but in fact it’s just focus groups (in disguise), the good old suggestion box (ideas in isolation) and a brand going public by (and hoping to get some credit for) finally accepting that the consumer is in control.
All a bit 90’s -and not a whiff of Co-creation here.
The current co-creation landscape is broad and varied. The diagrams below outline several different models of collaborative creation that have been employed to help develop products and services. Below each diagram you will find a link to an organisation that represents an example of co-creation.
1. Large corporations who engage with a community of advocates to co-create on an ongoing basis. (Lego Mindstorms)
Coming from a design background and with an insight into the pitfalls of designing by committee I believe that to successfully create unique, experimental and thoroughly innovative ideas collaboratively means adopting the right approach. Co-creation relies on adopting this approach by asking the right set of questions to reveal more exciting and surprising results.
Threadless, the infamous Chicago based online crowdsourcing tshirt store, bases its whole business model on enabling artists and illustrators to create their own tshirt designs whilst relying on the online community to vote on what they think is the best design. Each month the winning design then gets manufactured
Yet in an article published in Techcast earlier this year, Jake Nickell, the founder of Threadless discussed how they ensure variety by ‘tweaking the consensus’ and ‘pushing their community’ when it comes to deciding on what tshirt designs are manufactured.
By asking such a large community to vote on the best tshirt design submission of the month, Threadless have found that those ideas that get the most votes are the most average and not the most commercially viable. To ensure they manufacture tshirts that capture the zeitgeist and are on tip of the mainstream they look at the ideas that have had the most or the least amount of votes and have caused controversy in some way.
To me this highlights the need for an approach that asks the right questions to elicit more surprising and unforeseen outcomes. Sometimes the best ideas come from the fringes and perhaps the best approach would be a way to tap into these, and purposely look for what ideas exist outside of mainstream thinking.
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.
A comment on the recent Research article ‘Is co-creation over-hyped’ ended with the following statement:
The mantra is simple: stop asking questions and start listening to conversations. Job Muscroft, Face
Please go and read everything else he said as I would not want to take his comment out of context but I do have to disagree with that particular statement.
Fundamentally, questions are the at the heart of keeping any conversation going. Whether on a small scale between two people at a party or a big scale… “why are we here? The best type of questions provoke new and better questions that provide momentum and context to keep conversations going. Additionally, just listening in to other peoples conversations can often seem somewhat rude.
I can see what he is getting at though in terms of ‘listening’ and with this in mind I can whole heatedly agree the sentiment that if you know what question to ask then you probably have a good idea of the answer. From my perspective asking the right questions means preparing to strike the balance between listening and speaking. By listening I mean learning and reacting. By speaking I mean any provocative act with the aim of eliciting a ‘response’. This is much broader than research questionnaires or party conversations. Athletes, scientists or designers all ask questions, all create and do things that provoke a response, a conversation.
There is much more to a co-creative approach and research than just listening.
So my mantra is less simple, but more interesting: stop just asking questions, start provoking conversations, that embrace many perspectives and that you can be a part of.
I recently debated this topic with Sheila Keegan on the Research Magazine website. Have a read here…
http://www.research-live.com/features/is-co-creation-over-hyped?/4000848.article
From our point of view, co-creation is fostered by a straightforward approach that, when implemented iteratively throughout a project, yields successful outcomes for all stakeholders. For us co-creation is all about:
asking the right questions …of the right people… in the right way.
While the above statement may seem simple and could be used to describe ‘research’, within it the nuances for co-creation are many – in the paper we explain each section, first understanding how to identify and ask ‘the right questions’, then moving on to understand who ‘the right people’ are and finally exploring what exactly ‘the right way’ means in real terms.
We hope to demonstrate the real value of co-creation to business, proving that this buzzword signifies an emergent practice with real commercial advantage. In our eyes, this value lies not solely in idea generation, but rather the step before: identifying the questions or ‘opportunity areas’ as we like to call them, that will resonate best with a business’ culture and prospective customers.
Enter the query to search and hit enter.
RT @wimrampen: @GrahamHill @Brioneja here's 22 links in my delicious with the #value #co-creation tags.. http://bit.ly/aq6Jls
Consumer-Influenced Labels Are New Trend> http://bit.ly/bIJEZi #marketing #trends #consumer #brands #co-creation
@GrahamHill @Brioneja here's 22 links in my delicious with the #value #co-creation tags.. http://bit.ly/aq6Jls
Creativity paid off! @meetseisei @leyp @luckydubz collabo idea 4 redesign of the new PRO stores is a fact. We got the job! #co-creation
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