Customer Love

I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a marketing executive at an outdoor products company last week. It seems, he had some extra time on his hands so stopped by a retailer to watch his customers in action. He watched as a few people drove up in their BMWs and dropped $500 buying some of his gear. As he observed his customers, he felt a little uncomfortable.

He said it wasn’t until a kid, who looked like a river guide, walked in with a bunch of clothing to return that he began to feel comfortable. It seemed that many of the things he was trying to exchange would not fit him. In fact, my friend thought that it was even possible the river guide had stolen some of the clothing.

My friend told me that after the experience he felt horrible because he could relate to the river guide spending absolutely no money better than he could to the customers dropping $500 on his equipment.

Do you love your customers or who you want your customers to be?

Co-creation discussion

I was approached by a writer at The Irish Times who's writing an article on content co-creation. So I gave my two cents and, like any good co-creation proponent, I suggested that I post the interview on my blog so that he could get additional input through readers' comments and trackbacks. Deadline is tomorrow, so please join the conversation that's happening in the comments sections. It's broken into four parts: Revolution, Motivations, Control and Balance.

Co-created Content

Reveries has an interesting article about a French newspaper written for kids... and edited by kids.

Most other national daily newspapers in France are losing readers "in droves," but Mon Quotidien, a newspaper for kids, is "growing steadily," reports Emilie Boyer King in The Christian Science Monitor (3/1/05). "To make sure the newspaper reflects children's interests, kids from schools around the country take part in editorial meetings twice a week." They "apply for the jobs by calling a phone number printed in each issue," and are "chosen on a "first-come, firsted served basis."

"We always go with what the children want," says Olivier Gasselin, deputy editor-in-chief. "There are no vetoes." Sometimes the results are a little bit hard for the adult editors to accept... And that's exactly the way Francois, a 10-year-old editor likes it: "If it was [adults] who chose, it wouldn't be the same," he says. But for the most part "Mon Quotidien doesn't shy away from hard news," such as the proposed European ban on the display of Nazi symbols, and prisoner abuse in Iraq. The kids didn't like the pictures, but "all agreed that the news was important and should be mentioned."

...An American version is now being tested by the Miami Herald, and the Associated Press is also planning "to syndicate the newspaper's formula."

An important aspect of co-created brands is recruiting your customers to do some of the heavy lifting. Co-creation also means not assuming that you know what your target audience wants. It's all about relinquishing some control, which is a bit scary.... but does pay off.

Co-creating radio

We've been chatting about co-creation in previous posts (here, here , here and here). In my mind, good co-creation is about facilitating self-expression. I wrote in this comment:

Today's recipe for success appears to be: To serve as a facilitator for people to do, say or experience what they want. Because the underlying dissatisfaction in society today is having too much shoved down our throats. Witness the revolution of the masses. We want control.

So I really enjoyed reading today's Cool News in Reveries. The lead story's all about customers co-creating their radio-listening experience.

At Mercora.com, for instance, consumers "can create playlists of their favorite music, and with a few clicks of the mouse, 'broadcast' them over the internet to fellow users."...

The appeal to listeners is pretty clear: "When you've got only 30 slots on a radio dial, you're going to be programming to a lower common denominator," says Raghav Gupta, coo of Live365.com, another P2P radio station. "This opens the world to much more variety and diversity." P2P radio fans also "like the sense of community that comes with listening to playlists compiled by other listeners. Some say it reminds them of rifling through a friend's CD collection." At Mercora, consumers even have the option of joining a chat among fellow listeners as they enjoy the "broadcast."

Tom Mara of KEXP, a Seattle radio station, thinks traditional radio should pay attention here: "It's no longer a case of a person in a booth broadcasting to people anonymously ... Now we need to figure out new modes of interaction -- not only between the listener and the station, but between listeners."

What a beatiful example of co-creation and customer communities.

Citizen Marketers

I just noticed a nice post on Customer Evangelistsby Jackie Huba today about citizen marketers, those people who decide to share their passion about a brand. This is a another good example of co-creation. However, when the people gain the power to market your product, they choose how to spin it both postively and negatively.

Co-creation, Part 4

Jennifer, great definition of co-creation! I really like the way the meaning of co-creation is being refined. It is really evolving through the participation of so many great minds in this co-creation process. I wanted add to the dialogue providing some context for the struggle I have had over the past 18 months or so, trying to get my own arms around the subject. Last year, when I was writing Beyond the Brand, I struggled with developing a meaning for co-creation. Originally, the purpose of the book was to de-bunk the $1.2 billion focus group business and offer an alternative. While writing, I realized that there was something much bigger going on at the fringes of the way companies and customers were interacting. In this search, I took a great deal of inspiration from the alternative sports market that includes skateboarding and snowboarding. Here, everyone actively participates in a chaotic dance of co-creation between manufacturers, consumers, pro-athletes and retailers. After this exploration, I got so turned on by the concept that I wanted the title of the book to be, “How to Co-Create from the Bottom-Up.” Alas, my publisher didn’t get it and won’t go for it. So, in an effort to add to the dialogue, I wanted to share with you some of the thoughts I wrote last year. Here are some quotes from Chapter 4 of Beyond the Brand:

“Many companies focus their strategic thinking around current market needs by getting into a conference room and divining the future (or attempting to). It’s a very inside-out or top-down approach. In a reversal of this traditional process, exceptional companies use an outside-in approach, or bottom-up strategy, to focus their thinking on engaging in a dialogue with the other members of their community, allowing them to co-create innovations with their customers. This holistic, organic strategy allows companies to continually recontextualize and reframe their brand, making necessary adjustments as the community and customers evolve.”

“A bottom-up strategy of co-creation takes the open source philosophy a step further. First, it’s about loosening the control over the strategic process and focusing on guiding it instead of owning it. It’s about inviting the right customers, suppliers, and employees to participate in an open, informed process based on solid guiding principles. To do this well, companies must focus their strategic energies on building consensus and communities. The strategy has to be human. The focus has to be on the quality of the input into the strategy and the communications of those ideas to the community. Companies must focus on being evolutionary.”

“Disruptive innovation fueled by bottom-up (co-creative) learning means companies must participate in an open way within their community. This requires true corporate transparency, in everything from marketing to manufacturing, and a more long-term, sustainable outlook of the community in which they participate.
Companies that are able to make the transition to providing honest, original, culturally relevant materials and products will win. People will carefully weed out and broadcast to their peers those companies and brands that they do not trust. Many companies have discovered that being deeply connected to their community is good for their brands. In this new era, brands will have to become good, creative citizens of the community in order to survive.”

I hope this helps the dialogue evolve further. I think we are on to some thing big here. The more great minds we can get involved in this evolutionary process, the more fun it will be!

Lastly, did anybody see the February 14th cover of Forbes with the title of “Why Companies Need Your Ideas?” While I think the article, “Have It Your Way,” is an example of “shallow” co-creation, the ideas we are riffing is bubbling up in places like the cover of Forbes, nonetheless.

Co-creation, Part 3

Thanks to everyone's contributions on defining the concept of co-creation (here and here), I think we're arriving at a pretty good place. Here's where my head's at now:

"An open, ongoing collaboration between employees and customers to define and create products, services, experiences, ideas and information."

Open brings in the idea of transparency, so that non-participants can easily see the collaborative process. This, in my mind, eliminates traditional customer research from the definition.

Ongoing implies that it's not a one-time shot at obtaining customer input and then taking the rest of it in-house. Anyone can participate at any time.

Collaboration brings in the spirit of teamwork. Employees and customers are peers in the process. In many cases, the company simply serves as a facilitator of the process.

Products are probably the most clear-cut application for co-creation: open-source software, Lego Factory, Google's API

Information is probably the next obvious application: epinions.com, Amazon.com, marketingprofs.com forum

Experiences: This gets a bit more fuzzy. A good example is probably Apple iTunes/iPod customized playlists... the company provided the tools to allow customers to create their own music experience. We could get really fuzzy here and say that because a brand is an idea in the minds of customers, then all brands are co-created. But I won't say it, because I think it's confusing the issue. Any more tangible examples of co-created experiences?

Services: This is another tough one. Typically a service company exists to do something that a customer doesn't want to do. Again, would love some ideas on how service companies could work with customers to co-create.

Ideas: What we're doing now. I love co-creating the idea of co-creation!

More on co-creation...

We've been having a great dialogue about co-creation. What I love about blogging is that your feedback helps me hone my own thinking. I'd like to propose a tighter definition of co-creation:

"Products, services or content that's created by non-employees."

I think this definition helps distinguish it from customer research. Research simply identifies the problem that needs to be solved. Co-creation allows customers (or non-customers) to own a part of the solution. It's a form of outsourcing that involves letting go of preconceived ideas about our products, services, customers or industries. It also means loosening our white-knuckled grip on our brands.

Examples of co-created products are listed in my earlier post: open-source software, Google's API and Lego Factory.

Another example: media companies could use the co-creation idea by providing a forum where anyone can submit articles for publication... and instead of someone at the company selecting the best articles, they allow readers to vote on the best ones.

I'd enjoy brainstorming with you on co-creation ideas for different types of companies. How could a professional services firm apply the concept of co-creation? What about someone in the hospitality industry? Or a retailer?

What is co-creation?

Alright! We're already getting into some juicy conversation in John Winsor's recent post. There's a comment that I'd like to bring to the forefront because it's an oft-misunderstood idea: co-creation.

"...good products are good products, they don't need transparency or co-creation. Co-creation is what people on the outside want when they want to associate themselves with cool products. You don't let the slimy masses in to medocritate the product, you keep them striving to be a part of the clique."

There are different levels of co-creation; how far you take it depends on your product and industry. Here are a few terrific examples of deep co-creation:

1. Open-source software. No explanation needed.

2. Google's new API for online ads. An article in eWeek reports:

"There are a lot of things Google hasn't thought of that people could do with their ad campaigns," said Nelson Minar, a Google software engineer. "One of goals is to enable advertisers and third parties to create tools for their own purposes."

3. Lego's Lego Factory, where kids design new Lego models using a Digital Designer and submit them to competitions. This is a primary source of ideas for new Lego products.

In each of these cases, no one made assumptions about what customers wanted. Customers were brought directly into the process. In shallower levels of co-creation, customers aren't directly involved in designing products... but companies still seek to understand customers' mindsets, desires and unmet needs.

Apple is one of those anomalies where one man had an aesthetic vision, created a company and products in his own image, and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. If you think you can replicate Apple's success in this fashion, go for it; but I'd suggest that some form of co-creation is infinitely easier. BTW, I do believe that Apple's brand is a form of co-creation: the "in-crowd" that formed around the Apple brand was created by customers, not by Apple.

Companies who view customers as "slimy masses" can never be successful in the long run; it is those customers who make corporate existence possible. Customers smell arrogance like a dog smells fear. Microsoft is a great example of a company who became incredibly successful based on following their own vision... which ultimately resulted in customer resentment. Now with over 1200 Microsoft employees participating in the blogosphere, the company has actively, publicly entered into dialogues with customers. Robert Scoble gets a ton of suggestions from customers and passes them on to the right folks internally. Microsoft is beginning to co-create.

Does this mean we should always do what customers say? Of course not. But we should always be listening to them to ensure that our products and services maintain relevance in today's rapidly changing environment. We design products and services that people will buy... and we find out what people will buy by listening, observing and participating in dialogues. There's a terrific example of this in the book "Hardball" that discusses how Whirlpool co-created their new line of appliances by deeply understanding the life of a woman named Gail.

If anyone has other examples of co-created products and services, I'd love to hear about them. This is a tidal-wave trend; customers want to be heard, and they will buy from those companies who demonstrate a willingness to listen. Sure, we could say that co-creation is just pig lipstick for customer research... at the shallower end, perhaps. But the concept of co-creation goes much deeper and farther than the traditional idea of research. In co-creation, customers truly feel like they are a part of the company (family, ecosystem, etc.) and that their voice is heard.