Barely a day goes by without a website, campaign or competition cropping up, promising to harness the collective wisdom of crowds for the benefit of brands. Consumer generated inputs are playing a more and more prominent role into research, innovation and planning.
However, it is still not very clear what are the most suitable approaches, frameworks and methodologies available for for doing this.
This presentation, recently discussed at a number of conferences in the UK, Spain and Italy, looks in particular at crowd-sourcing and co-creation: when to use them, what are the advantages, the drawbacks and the workarounds, what are the deliverables and how could these grassroots practices fit into the existing marketing processes.
Using crowd-sourcing and co-creation as complementary frameworks is key to harness the wisdom of the crowds both at an individual and group-thinking level, bringing together bottom up and top down approaches, online and offline, to make sure the richness provided by mass collaboration is effectively shaped and leveraged by informed strategic thinking and expert insight.
12. always in beta
personalization and diversification also
mean that systems have to be flexible and
adaptive to incorporate the users input
13. around me:
pull NOT push
fragmentation also means the new and
only potential center is now “me”
14. real-time immediacy
getting
information that’s
relevant to who I
am, where I am
and what I’m up to
sharing
information with
the right people,
at the right time, in
the right way
32. social media is NOT
another channel
is the platform where all media converge
and the glue between brands and
consumers
+insights
+idea generation
+testing & validation
+distribution
+wom & advocacy
33. brand don’t own the space
anymore, consumers own it
strategy should be built around them
not around the brand
44. old vs new model
consumers people
observation immersion
respondents partners
messages relationships
campaigns story
one size niche tailored
channels experiences
silos collaboration
monolithic adaptive
45. From this…
in
s ig
ht
ra
d io
agencies in t
pr
brand agency
brand tv
insight
exp
on
lin
e
channels
consumers
46. To this…
ra
d io social media we
b
ide
as ts
igh
ins
tv brand agency
consumers print
communities
ide
as
s
ht
sig
in
p
ex
t
en
facilitate channels
bi
am
brands
48. but is it really
all about
bottom-up and
crowd engagement?
49.
50. some reactions...
“only works with a simple and well-defined brand”
“I don’t want 1000 ideas, I want one really good one”
“you won’t get a collaborative process”
“you need to have arguments”
“crowd-sourcing doesn’t lend itself to the big idea”
“no access to strategy or insight”
“all you get is a bunch of one-off ads”
53. what you get
+bottom-up richness
+global crowd
+diversified crowd
+wider range of talent
+cost-effective
+lots of ideas
+rich insight
+consumer-brand relationship
+peer-rating
+buzz
54. what’s missing
-it’s many-to-one
-not very targeted
-it’s bottom-up but still vertical
-access to insight and strategy (confidentiality)
-collaboration
-editing, building on, refining
-funneling process
-face-to-face
-strategic thinking
55. bottom up is not enough
“the bottom-up mind
will take us much further,
but will never take us to the end goal”
(kevin kelly)
Crowd-sourcing needs to be
part of a bigger process
57. co-creation
Is the act of company stakeholders
collaborating directly with selected (usually
smaller) groups of consumers to work on a
specific brief.
Is about leveraging consumers’ creativity
without preempting the results of the process
Can take place on-line in communities or/and
offline in workshops
58. 1. Download
Offline workshop to draw
out and share existing
knowledge, drive out gaps,
and co create the brief
2. Explore
the
5.Advance online community with
Offline workshops with client and stimulus to encourage
stakeholders to define pipeline, category exploration and
priorities and short and long term insight, team bonding, and
co-creation
work streams. creative stimulation.
process
3. Co create
4. Refine Consumers, clients and
wider stakeholders brought
Best ideas taken back online to further
together in an offline
distil, evaluate, combine and develop..
workshop using our co
Extra validation can be provided by
creation process to
adding fresh consumers to community
generate, define, explore,
to get an objective perspective
and validate ideas.
61. what you get
+few-to-few-to-one
+more targeted
+bottom-up and top-down
+collaboration, editing, building on
+refinement and funneling
+online & face-to-face
+access to insight and strategy (confidentiality)
+strategic thinking
+faster process
+immersive
+robust and tailored concepts
62. what’s missing
[compared to crowdsourcing]
-smaller crowd
-local
-less diversification
-fewer ideas
-more expensive than crowd-sourcing
63. the case for a hybrid model
bottom-up + top-down
crowds + individuals
group thinking + individual thinking
64. the hybrid model
consumer crowd-sourcing co-creation
immersion
listen plan engage measure
download
workshop
65. bottom-up
consumer crowd-sourcing co-creation
immersion
listen plan engage measure
download
workshop
top down
66. the hybrid model
consumer crowd-sourcing co-creation
immersion
listen plan engage measure
download
workshop No longer
a linear process
but a loop
67. the process
A.social media immersion
B.research community
C.crowd-sourcing
D.co-creation
final concepts
output
69. A.social media immersion/2
1. brand social media presence
2. quantitative & qualitative visibility
3. topics and perceptions
4. brand social network
5. brand influencers
• identify the issues
• identify the co-creators
70. idea generation process
B C D
Once the platforms for co-creation have been
identified we engage our creative communities
through a) exploration tasks, b) crowd-sourcing
tasks and c) co-creation tasks
71. B. exploration
Online community with stimulus to encourage
category exploration and insight, team
bonding, and creative stimulation.
360° view of users to see how the brand fits in
their everyday life.
Specific tasks are designed to investigate
further the themes emerged in the monitoring
stage.
72. C.crowd-sourcing
Emerging themes and issues are broken down
into smaller creative problem-solving tasks and
broadcasted to a targeted group of solvers in the
online community in the form of an open call for
solutions.
The users generate, define, explore and validate
ideas and also sort through them, finding the best
ones, voting on them, commenting on them to
improve and develop them further.
74. D.co-creation
The best ideas are selected and then taken to a
selected group of users who develop them
further with the help of the brand stakeholders,
the experts and Face planners and
researchers.
75. D.co-creation/2
strongest ideas
dev tasks
final concepts
insights + refined concepts
when i go and speak to marketing and brand managers, 70% of the times the conversation ends up with: “you know this is very new, the organization needs to adapt, it takes time...” well the problem is, this is not new and time’s up. the world is different and people are behaving differently so they expect you to do the same, not to come up with excuses for not changing... quick run through as it’s interesting to talk about a number of massive and evident changes/trends the industry is not responding to yet
an evolving consumer has generated the demand for a new type of media education not matched by jobs they can (education) and want to give more than being just passive respondents huge untapped creative potential
beyond consumption and consumerism vs being represented and governed 徹 v er the past fifteen years the rise of the World WideWeb has resulted in remarkable new possibilities and business models reshaping our economy. An entire new generation has come of age with this technology and is committed to using its creativity, collaboration and civic-mindedness to address the challenges facing our country and the world. With the proliferation of issues and not enough resources to address them all, many government leaders recognize the value in public-private partnerships, as well as the opportunities inherent in harnessing a highly motivated and diverse population to address the great challenges facing our nation.There is a new compact on the horizon: government maintains information on a variety of issues and that information should rightly be considered a national asset. Citizens are connected like never-before and have the skill sets and passion to solve problems affecting them locally as well as nationally. Government information and services can be provided to citizens where and when they need it. Citizens will be empowered to become leaders, with government, to spark the innovation that will result in an improved approach to governance. This has never before been possible, and we now have the chance to make this compact a reality. �
James Murdoch in his Marketing Society Annual Lecture said ‘Ubiquitous connectivity means fundamentally that the individual becomes the agent of everything...we’ve learnt through experience what difference the new empowered world means for our relationship with customers. This is not a question of scale. It is a different way of existing’. The Internet allows people to freely associate, form groups and publish on a scale never imagined before. Individuals and groups have the power to get their ideas across at a level once enjoyed only by large organizations, corporations and governments. The price of knowledge is falling to zero. Anything from powerful server computer software to how to become a six-sigma black belt can be found on the Internet. A child in India can monitor classes at MIT for free[x]. The quality of this information is getting better all the time. These three factors contribute to a new economy that some companies are starting to harness. Welcome to the post-consumer era where we all pitch in to build the products & services we use: 50% of all web sites are brought to you by open source software, built and maintained by volunteers[xi].Google, the world 痴 most popular search engine and an economy unto itself, relies primarily on the recommendations of web page authors to drive its search engine[xii].A 2006 Forrester Research study shows almost 40% of Gen Y consumers research products online before making an offline purchase[xiii]. Conversely, the influence of advertising is falling at a similar rate.IBM now makes twice as much money servicing its Linux open source software customers than it does selling intellectual property and patents ($2 billion in 2003)[xiv].BestBuy allows its employees to place bets on which products will sell and which ones won 稚 [ xv]. Among all BestBuy employees, the person who consistently outperforms all other employees in this most critical task is the CEO 痴 secretary. Why? (they studied this) Because she types all the meeting minutes for important meetings. No one else in the company has such wide exposure to what 痴 going on.
empowered consumers ingest and remix everything, appropriation and reshaping in own terms fosters collaboration, creativity, innovation and circulation vs closeness, control, Mark Earls author of Herd, says that it is no longer about what your brand does to the consumer but what consumers are doing to and with your brand.
top-down messages are seen as unreliable by default vs advertising as provides of role models and advice less effective mad men image: where advertising lies or 60’ad campaign image Consumers have replaced trust in advertising with trust in individuals: in particular, friends, family, and colleagues. Turning to communities and away from mass media, consumers are increasingly making traditional advertising more irrelevant. They have learned to block the ads they don 稚 want, and gate-keeping is becoming more sophisticated and widespread: according to Forrester Research DVR ownership in North America, which features ad-skipping, will grow from 19% of households in 2006 to 55% in 2011. More than half of UK consumers using the Internet at home utilize spam and popup blockers to filter unwanted messages from their online experiences, and countries like the Netherlands, France, and Germany are not far behind.
the ad system built on scarcity of channels. now not only trust in ad has fallen but also its structural capacity of generating influence (reach) Different ways of existing means there is more fragmentation: which in turn is driving more complexity. The number of media channels available to marketers, agencies, and consumers has exploded. Proliferation of choice offers marketers new opportunities, such as social networks, mobile, and branded entertainment. Social media, in which consumers become publishers and media outlets drives media buyers crazy; there are more than 59 million videos in YouTube today, and they can 稚 cut deals with every blogger.
vs one size fits all personalization and diversification led to fragmentation and niche culture, niche culture requires tailored approach niche communities map image
personalization, diversification means also that system have to be flexible and adaptive to incorporate the users input, that’s why they stay in beta vs monolitic brands that’s why tv series had a great success on the web, the series mechanics is closer to the web than the film mechanics. lost is closer to twitter than ‘pride and prejudice’ is No one knows what the world will look like in 10 years all we can be certain about is that it will be very different from today. We are only just beginning to understand the impact that social media will have on our industry. For this reason successful companies will need to adopt a culture of innovation that will enable them to quickly develop and trial products and new business models and see what works. You should identify those members of your team that are future looking and create work streams and give them clear KPIs that focus on innovation for the agency.
but fragmentation also mean that new and only possible center point is now “me” The world is built around me and i’m in control of it. I want to be able to pull and not to be pushed, unless i decide what should be pushed at me almost all consumers own a PC and mobile phone, and they spend almost half of their media time with interactive channels. Use of RSS and podcasts has increased to 10% and 14%, respectively, from virtually nothing in 2003.
vs asynchronous distance getting information that relevant to who I am, where I am and what I’m up to sharing information with the right people, at the right time, in the right way
extended networks and immediacy generate the need for an ambient model this ambient model is reshaping not only the way we relate to our friends and connections but to the media, the brands and the content we interact with online vs campaigning, on/off relationships based on the tv programming paradigm Consumers want to be more involved with the brands and products they consume: this applies also to the way they are communicated to them through advertising. Doritos is the most famous example in the UK whereby consumers were invited via a competition to create the next TV campaign http://ow.ly/lntB. More recently Unilever 痴 Peperami have dropped Lowe to Crowdsource their next ad campaign with consumers at http://ow.ly/lmRh . Noam Buchalter marketing manager at Peperami says: 展 e believe Peperami is a brand that deserves radical creative solutions and are confident taking our brief out to thousands rather than a small team of 田 r eatives � will provide us with the best possible idea and take our advertising to the next level. �
pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life
creatives know better than consumers
the main challenge we face in the industry is letting consumers voice their opinion and having this opinion taken into account in the creative process
responds to evolved consumer consumers respond to ideas generated by someone else. brought in only after most of the process has been completed img: focus group
on/off relationships point in response to continuous relationships
integrated or 360 is still an excuse to sell campaigns ideas as brand ideas so that they can produce a TV commercial and shoe horn other channels in afterwards.
panopticon image Mark Earls author of Herd, says that it is no longer about what your brand does to the consumer but what consumers are doing to and with your brand.
is social media: research planning brand innovation customer care...
if it doesn’t come from us we are never going to use it and quote the source. we’d rather not use it at all or reinvent it exactly the opposite of the web culture, all built around the idea of sharing and efficiency: no need to recreate if it’s there - creative commons Not Invented Here ( NIH ) is a term used to describe persistent social , corporate or institutional culture that avoids using or buying already existing products, research or knowledge because of its different origins. It is normally used in a pejorative sense.As a social phenomenon, "Not Invented Here" syndrome is manifested as an unwillingness to adopt an idea or product because it originates from another culture, a form of nationalism . which also means reinventing the wheel
IMG Thai Pic
-social media makes this arrangement not possible any longer because has made consumers visible img: matchless suite
-agencies as gatekeepers between brands and consumers -agencies are keeping brands hostage and brands are happy to be hostages as they both enjoy the comfort zone and this unity helps them keeping consumers at a distance. -social media makes this arrangement not possible any longer because has made the consumers visible and it’s not a question of scale, but a different way of existing
cartel of publishers, producers, media (tv and radio) youths and rock and rock n roll are about to come
- social media as the platform where all media converge and the glue between brand and consumers: 1) bring insights out, 2) takes brand experiences in, 3) test brand experiences before sending them out to the other channels, 4) is the place where all conversation happen around the messages in all the other channels a place for INSIGHTS, IDEA GENERATION, TESTING & VALIDATION, DISTRIBUTION, WORD OF MOUTH & ADVOCACY, PROMOTION
img first slide intro to qualitative research
getting and staying close to consumers rather than observing them adding anthropology, pop culture, consumerism, sociology, localization and influence dynamics. ethnographic approach
it’s about tapping into the richest insight field we ever had social media immersion, insights and ideas come from everywhere, 24/7: turning quantity into quality, pattern recognition The arrival of research 3.0: new social media tools and web 2.0 are helping brands to research consumers in more exciting and different ways through mass collaboration and intimate co-creation. Combined with new ways of accumulating robust qualitative data which we can make sense of from the web, then research has an exciting future ahead of it. It will herald a new era � Research 3.0.
Consumers will be treated in a fundamentally different way : They will be given more responsibility and will be more involved throughout the brand marketing process. Co-creating with consumers as direct and active equals to deliver a range of marketing outputs will be part of its core philosophy.
it’s about using the web as the largest creative department creative agencies without creatives
a progressive story not quarterly campaigns New social media tools will help brands to be on 24/7: this is part of what we call at Face 鍍 h e socialisation of brands � where campaign and channel marketing gives way to 田 o ntinuous brand engagement marketing � . The environment the brand lives and breathes in is always on and is always changing so brands need to be listening to and observing their consumers not just in communities but also on the web as well as involving them on a continuous basis in everything they do.
this is what happens to brands trying to push their messages into the communities without being part of those communities Consumer communities will reign: The focus on the 30 second TV spot will give way to the content and conversations that are being generated by consumers and between consumers around the brand. This will in turn produce different segmentation models where brands see consumers not just as potential customers who want to buy something from them but as people who want to have a relationship with them.
brand story, not message placement Centered on the web, yet branching out over mobile, mail, flash mobs, scavenger hunts, casual games, user generated content, collaborative narratives, streaming video and moreOver 10M unique participants in 75 countries made 展 h y So Serious? � a new benchmark for integrated campaigns. The Dark Knight was the most successful movie of 2008 and 2nd highest grossing film of all time.
STOP PUTTING THE EXACT SAME STORY EVERYWHERE. PEOPLE LIKE STORIES WITH DEPTH AND COMPLEXITY. so you need 1000 heads to generate a 1000 messages: crowdsourcing, co-creation, word of mouth
brands, like participative web apps, should be made of building block in order to be able to respond quickly, preserve integrity and coherence but being tailored vs monolithic branding. agility flexibility, iteration ▪ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools ▪ Working software over comprehensive documentation ▪ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation ▪ Responding to change over following a plan ▪ Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software ▪ Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months) ▪ Working software is the principal measure of progress ▪ Even late changes in requirements are welcomed (this does not mean code & run. Instead removing an existing feature or moving a deadline forward to accommodate late/unplanned feature requests [ not in citation given ] ) ▪ Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers ▪ Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (Co-location) ▪ Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted ▪ Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design ▪ Simplicity ▪ Self-organizing teams ▪ Regular adaptation to changing circumstances the software industry was the first one to react to these changes. they responded creating a new process for designing software called agile development.At the end of the day softwares are brands, and the principles behind agile development are perfectly right for what brand need to stay afloat in a conversational media environment: agile branding.agile developementno specs movement
all this means going from this model, to this...
reversing the traditional model - consumers are at the core, not brands - social media, not agencies, is the gatekeeper between consumers and brands - agencies become communities of consumers
Fast Company has even predicted "Ad agency executive" to be among six jobs that won't exist in 2016
good example: famous brand dumping its advertising agency to go pure crowd-sourcing
some of these statements is true, some isn’t but the main point is that bottom up is not enough
Crowdsourcing is the act of a company taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to a large community of people in the form of an open brief. This is primarily undertaken by individuals on-line who compete against each, with the winning idea being voted for by the community or by the company (more like a competition).
-It is cost effective as companies pay by results -The company can tap a wider range of talent than might be present in its own organization -By listening to the crowd, companies gain consumer insight -The community may feel a stronger relationship with the company which is the result of an earned sense of ownership through contribution & collaboration
what works is an hybrid model that includes individual thinking and group brainstorming
So we add design and top down control to get where we want to go. The systems we keep will be hybrid creations. They will have a strong rootstock of peer-to-peer generation, grafted below highly refined strains of controlling functions. Sturdy, robust foundations of user-made content and crowd-sourced innovation will feed very small slivers of leadership agility. Pure plays of 100% smart mobs or 100% smart elites will be rare.
This can take place on-line in communities or offline in workshops. The aim of co-creation is to develop ideas together with consumers that meet their needs and fulfill business requirements of the company.
Identify your 1% 痴 & stakeholder team Once the brief for co-creation is agreed you should start by identifying the top 1% of consumers (we call them adfluentials ) that have the brand affinity, mindset and skills to co-create with you and your brand. Also look at your stakeholder team and invite a select number of people who represent key functions within the business and most importantly have good collaboration and coaching skills. Experience Design and Brand Engagement To enable your brand to get the most out of this direct interaction with your consumers, you will need to design an experience that engages consumers, brand experts and stakeholders alike . So firstly it is crucial to find the right facilitator who has the energy, charisma and skills to galvanise and motivate the team. Secondly think about the setting for the project this needs to be an environment that will inspire creativity so make it fun and comfortable. Exercises to Stimulate & Trigger insights Once you begin to co-create, you need to ensure that consumers are treated as active equals in the project so this starts by giving them ownership over the brief - it is crucial that they explore and understand the brief for themselves avoid long ppt briefs from the client at all costs. Exercises should then be designed that enable consumers to play with the brand and product and show you how they think, feel and experience it in order to discover trends and trigger valuable consumer insights. Team playing and Idea Generation Once you have started to identify and group key insight consumers, stakeholders and experts then come together in smaller teams to generate ideas . Stakeholders and experts play a crucial role here in mentoring the teams to develop ideas that are both disruptive and robust . Again it is important to enable consumers to express ideas in a variety of ways including improvisational plays, illustrations and presentations . Selection and Refinement A fundamental element of co-creation is that consumers along with stakeholders are given an opportunity to feedback during the creative process and are asked to make decisions at key stages of the project about which ideas are selected and refined . This feedback is invaluable as it gives a very quick and usually accurate sense of which ideas have legs and which ones don 稚 . Pitch and Final Cut Following rounds of idea generation, selection and refinement you will have developed a number of very robust ideas. At this point consumers should be given the opportunity to pitch the fully developed ideas back to the final decision making stakeholder team who will ultimately take the commercial decision on what and how to take forward the ideas.
not just voting on things, but clustering ideas, arguing, refining, pitching, voting
-Produces more robust products and ideas that consumers want to buy and companies can produce -Faster way of generating new & disruptive ideas and solving problems -Immerses companies in the lives, aspirations and needs of their consumers -Builds strong and lasting relationships between companies and consumers
you need to bring top-down thinking as well, but still keeping consumers at the core of what you do. and this is what co-creation is about top down thinking, research, consumer at the center, engage the crowds
a mix of old and new model, with social media at its core now explain how to use co-creation and crowdsourcing, when, with what results
to understand who you should crowd-source an co-create with to understand what you should crowdsource about Crowdsourcing is built on the scientific premise that the most consistently accurate answers come from a crowd diverse enough to go at a question from different angles without the inherent bias of like-thinking people. This smart crowd outcome is referred to as 田 o llective intelligence. � To achieve it, the crowd needs to be qualified. To solve a pharmaceutical problem, for example, you don 稚 necessarily need working scientists, but people with at least hobbyist knowledge in biochemistry. The basic rule of thumb is the crowd members should at least be somewhat knowledgeable about the topic of the call. What is the minimum membership for a crowd to deliver true intelligence? The jury is still out. Crowdsourcing guru Jeff Howe suggests 5000 people. Some say it could be fewer.
understand where Carphone Warehouse fits in the daily lives of their target audience an online community of the target audience to simulate idea generation about action that the brand could take in the social media space bring together selected consumers, brand stakeholders and Face planners/researchers to select the most relevant ideas, refine them and shape the brief for Carphone Warehouse in the social media space