Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting some great examples of co-creation that we’ve come across at FreshNetworks and some thoughts on what makes for good co-creation: Co-creation case studies.
The real prompt for this is that we’ve been talking a lot about ‘we’ at FreshNetworks over the last few weeks. Across the team we seem to be helping quite a few client with co-creation and innovation at the moment - getting their customers to input into or lead innovations in everything from the position and marketing of a B2B telecommunications product to improving and tailoring experiences for a leisure client.
The concept of ‘we’ is one that intrigues me. There is an undoubted power to ‘I’. People like hearing personal stories and experiences, and we see in our online communities that such stories can get better reactions and greater responses. However, the power of ‘we’ is greater - people collaborating on an idea or innovation, working with each other to further improve and advance the previous thought.
Iterating and refining an idea is one of the best ways of bring in different view-points and peer reviewing the concept as it develops. We find that getting brands involved in this process can be illuminating - for the consumer, the brand and the idea. Good innovation and co-creation comes from getting people with different skills, experiences and understanding of the product or brand together. They each add something to the process and can bring their expertise and experience to the subject.
One of the best introductions to the ‘we’ experience that I’ve seen comes from Marieke Schoenmaker. The slides below are a great introduction to the subject, and the case studies at the end of the deck (including Nike+ and Zopa) are world-leading examples of the power of we.
I read in today’s Financial Times how the New York Times has struck a deal with LinkedIn. This is just a further example of the New York Times becoming more social (see our previous post here), and for the FT this is a sign of a significant change in the traditional media industry:
The deal, between the New York Times and LinkedIn, the largest online social network for professionals, is one of most far-reaching attempts yet by a traditional media company to tap into the booming popularity of online networks to super-charge its own services.
The deal means that personal profile data entered into LinkedIn will be used to make the content and advertising an individual sees on the New York Times site targeted to their industry, country, interests of profession.
This is a really interesting example for two reasons:
It shows how traditional media and publishing firms are having to adapt to the challenges and opportunities presented by social media and social networks. They need to change the way that they offer their content and be prepared for people wanting to interact with it in different ways. The barriers between the social and the editorial are blurring.
It highlights a significant benefit of social networks - the depth and richness of data that is gathered and kept by these sites. That the New York Times has struck a deal to use LinkedIn profile data to target advertising shows just how detailed this data is. With people adding and contributing to their social networks on an increasingly regular basis, the quality of this data will only heighten.
I expect us to see similar arrangements and innovations that build on these two reasons in the future. Social networks will seek to monetise the depth and quality of data they have gathered and traditional media and publishing firms are looking for new ways to target their readers. It would seem that a pairing of the two is a good solution and maybe the New York Times and LinkedIn will show us how good it could be.
A few weeks ago, I posted about a social media initiative from Downing Street: Ask the PM. The idea is great - anybody can video themselves asking a question, post it on YouTube for others to comment on and vote for. And then the most popular questions are answered by Gordon Brown and posted online. I was interested to see how this initiative was going to work in practice. The terms and conditions suggested that party political and other questions might not be allowed and I hoped that the experience wouldn’t result in simple and non-meaningful questions being asked. The results of the first wave of questions suggests this is not the case at all.
A total of 229 questions were posted and eight were answered by Gordon Brown. These do appear to have been the most commented on and voted for questions and the range of topics covered is wide-ranging and detailed. From knife crime and the voting age, to the tax on petrol and 42 day detention, the questions that were asked really were a mirror of the big political and social issues that have been debated in Parliament and the country recently.
This is really heartening. I have always thought that reaching out to people via YouTube and responding to their questions could be an exciting innovation for the Prime Minister and the UK Government. Talking to real people about real issues. And it seems that this is exactly what’s happening.
Take a look at Rob’s question and Gordon Brown’s answer below on knife crime, something that has been discussed extensively in the last few weeks after a spate of serious knife crime and murders in London.
Rob’s question
Gordon Brown’s answer
This round of questions has been great and if this initiative continues a large and vibrant community could build, both asking questions, commenting on them and voting, or just watching the questions and responses.
This month, Gordon Brown is asking for questions again. And rather than every time asking for any questions and risking getting the same types of topics covered, there is a theme. This month it’s health. If you want to submit your question, you have until 21st July, and from the 14th you will be able to view and vote for your favourite questions. Submit your videos here.
I think the use of YouTube in this way is truly innovative. Until now there was no way for people like Rob to ask a question directly to and get an answer directly from the Prime Minister. Now there is.
An article in the current edition of the McKinsey Quarterly looks at Open Innovation, the way that some companies conduct their innovation externally, rather than it being a proprietary and internal process.
The article highlights two trends in innovation across firms that mirror trends that we see with our clients:
A move to get suppliers and partners to do much of the innovation for a firm. Getting them to help cocreate products down the supply chain. This has the benefit that products are developed that a firm can easily produce and you bring your suppliers and partners into a closer and more permanent relationship.
A trend in customer-innovation. Getting customers to help cocreate products. Working with each other, or with a mix of experts and employees to develop new products, services, processes or marketing. This trend is being witnessed more and more, and not just in the FMCG firms where this kind of innovation has been common for some time.
The McKinsey article talks a lot about this second kind of innovation, highlighting how companies are using customers either as an addition to or an integral part of the firm’s business model (citing LEGO as an example of the former and Threadless of the latter)
Increasing numbers of organizations are now taking that approach: distributed cocreation, to use its technical name. LEGO, for instance, famously invited customers to suggest new models interactively and then financially rewarded the people whose ideas proved marketable. The shirt retailer Threadless sells merchandise online-and now in a physical store, in Chicago-that is designed interactively with the company’s customer base.
I see a much broader range of firms engaging in customer innovation, often trying things at a small level or in a certain area first. We’re working with a large telecommunications firm at the moment, for example, getting customers to help innovate in a particular product area. Seeking their input to product design and positioning and also helping them to differentiate their offering from those of their competitors.
These developments are possible mainly because of the growth of community behaviours online. The McKinsey report shows that around 25% of Europe’s internet users now post comments online. This is a significant proportion, and shows that people want to discuss and be involved online. Another strong indicator of this activity is that whilst traditional sites are seeing growth in number of visitors of 20%-30% each year, growth on sites with UGC are growing at more than 100% each year.
People are more willing to share their thoughts and opinions online. Companies can really take advantage of this by putting all of this activity to good use. Taking the growing number of people who contribute online and using their enthusiasm and ideas to help brands with their own innovation.
The greatest brains don’t work for your company. The are online though and may be willing to talk to you and talk about you. Putting this to use can be a force-multiplier for your innovation. And that’s where online communities can help.
At the E-consultancy Future of Digital Media conference last week the focus was on two magic words “relevance” and “engagement”. In Ian Jindal’s stimulating and lively talk he correctly pointed out that marketing hasn’t actually changed much, even though where we choose to communicate our messages may have. Consumers are at saturation point so the only thing left is for companies to get better at attracting customers from their competitors. The ‘How’ was the focus of the day. There were three themes:
engaging customers around content using publishing techniques
how to add a layer of social discovery around your brand
finding ways to manipulate data to do our marketing for us
Many Intermediaries, product manufacturers and retailers are developing strategies around multimedia content to engage customers. Thomas Cook showed a particularly impressive video of their new 360 degree marketing strategy, complete with store front touch screens, co-browsing between customer and agent and every conceivable video clip you could imagine to show you what your resort will be like when you get there (which somehow I felt took the discovery out of it). The issue for most companies with this approach is the sheer cost of it and the skill sets needed to become programmers and publishers, as well as focus on your core business. The other issue was that there was one viewpoint that appeared to be missing from the strategy – the customer’s! Thomas Cook is still in broadcast mode.
The jury was out when it comes to engaging customers effectively using social network sites like Facebook. Brands are just not managing to attract the levels of fans they would like and I believe that it’s because people are, well, hanging out with friends and simply not in buying mode. Companies that have developed non intrusive, useful and engaging tools like Mydeco’s Roomshare seem to be having more success. Considering 56% people go to a brands home page to check out information first, it might be better to find a way to encourage people to stay there. For sectors like Insurance, where aggregator sites like Confused.com and cashback sites like Quidco.com have contributed to a reduction of customer lifetime value from 3-5yrs to 1-2yrs, the focus has to be on finding better ways of retaining their customers once they are delivered to their door.
Understanding data is essential to running any business and more importantly what action you take from looking at it. The new kid on the block is APML or attention profiling markup language. It is a common standard to describe your interests, likes and dislikes and how much each means to you (weighting). The idea is that your attention profile is owned by you and is portable so you can decide which websites you want to share it with for more relevant surfing. Currently Amazon is the only company doing a good job of recommending to us what we’re interested in but they own your profile and the process isn’t transparent. In theory it’s a great way to reduce information overload but it feels like a very long way off, if at all feasible. When I think about how I tag my del.icio.us bookmarks with words like ‘cop’ (which to me means community of practice, not policeman) and when I think about how often I change my likes and dislikes, it feels like someone is going to have to do a lot of work to maintain this profile (either me or a very clever programmer). I would love to hear your thoughts on this whole area!
Don’t get me wrong, as data fragments into smaller, accessible pieces, there are many innovative ways to play it back to your customers in really useful ways. Some good examples that add a valuable social layer for customers include the new AMEX Members Know community where members can see the most popular hotels and restaurants based on anonymous purchase data and Flickr’s use of the Exif data hidden in your digital photos about which camera was used to take a photograph which is the served up as a league table of the best digital cameras. We’re going to see a lot more of this.
I tend to agree with Simon Waldman of the Guardian who commented that sometimes qualitative measures like “Why are you on our site and did you get what you came for?” are equally important. Having conversations with your customers might just reveal what they actually want from you!
From today, some of our posts are being republished by Futurelab as part of their Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog. They bring together a small collection of bloggers who, in their words are
…the world’s sharpest minds in marketing and strategy innovation. People who spark exceptional insights in their field of expertise and inspire their readers to action.
It’s a great collection of people on the site and fantastic to be part of the team. You can read our posts and those from others on the Futurelab team over on the blog (and you can see my profile here).
Honda believes that ‘Difficult is Worth Doing’. And with a bit of cajoling from Channel Four, they also seem to believe that innovation is worth a try.
Last week in the UK saw a live advert in prime time on a national broadcaster. Not only was the advert live, it was also quite adventurous, and rather good. At 8.10pm during a commercial break on Channel Four, a team of skydivers jumped out of a plane over Spain and spelt out the word HONDA for all of us to watch. A good concept, well realised. But for me what’s interesting is what this says about advertising and broadcasting more broadly.
Times could be challenging for traditional TV advertising in the future. Two trends are meaning that the existing models may no longer apply:
A shift to multi-channel and on-demand TV means that people have much more choice. It was only a few years ago that most people in the UK had, at most, five channels to choose from. By 2012 all of the UK should be on digital television with tens, if not hundreds, of options to choose from. In this environment, attracting advertising spend will be more challenging - more channels competing for the same viewers and the same advertising spend. Add to this the rise in use of hard disk recorders and on-demand TV which can let you fast-forward through commercial breaks. You need to find a way to make people want to watch your adverts. You need to be more innovative.
Marketing is shifting from a traditional interventionist approach - above the line advertising which is on the brand or advertiser’s terms - to an approach where marketing is more integrated into consumer’s lives, where it’s more of a conversation. You need to find new ways to engage people.
Honda’s live ad last week will be just the first of a series of different innovations in TV advertising in the near future as people experiment with new formats, and new ways of engaging the audience and making them watch.
And if you weren’t one of the 2.2 million people who saw the live Honda ad last week, here it is (look out for the special message from the cameraman).
I never wrote about Gordon Brown’s brief appearance at NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference yesterday. Possibly because his speech, whilst impressively appearing unscripted and containing a few jokes, was more of a rallying cry than anything of much substance. If you’re interested you can listen to his speech here.
This week saw Gordon Brown with an innovation of his own. I wrote a few weeks back about the Prime Minister’s Office using Twitter as an engagement tool, now they’re using YouTube with their own channel being used for Ask the PM. The concept is simple. Every week fellow Members of Parliament can ask the Prime Minister any questions they want. Now anybody can ask him questions. All you need to do is record your question, make it non-party political and then upload it to YouTube.
Currently questions are being taken until the end of June at which point the Prime Minister will post responses. This direct engagement with the public is an exciting development and a real way of using new technologies to do old things in new ways. Rather than having town hall meetings or others around the country where people can ask questions, take it online. By doing this you open up the opportunity for more people to ask you questions, not just those who are able to and have the inclination to go to a certain place at a certain time.
And from the looks of things, the Ask the PM scheme will also be making the most of social media and social networking tools. From the end of May (about halfway through the current question submission period), anybody will be allowed to vote for questions. This ‘comment and vote’ approach is one that we’ve seen a lot recently, from Dell’s Ideastorm to MyStarbucksIdea. It can be an effective way of engaging with many people at once. Not everybody is going to want to post a question, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a question to ask. By allowing them to vote for the questions and ideas they agree with you let their voice be heard. You can find the most popular questions from the ones people ask and then respond to them, knowing that these are the ones that matter most to people.
I’m excited by people experimenting with social media. Too many people don’t. If Ask the PM doesn’t work then no doubt it will be quietly shelved. But I suspect it will work - the concept is simple and using the best of old techniques (the question and answer session) with the best of new media.
For the final session of the day I attended a seminar on whether our educational institutions living up to the innovation demands of the 21st century. The end of the day is always a tricky session and a bizarrely-shaped room didn’t help matters, but I couldn’t help but feel we never got to the meat of an exciting and radical topic.
I have worked with a lot of education clients in my previous roles and have always been struck by how traditional the structure is. Just taking schools as an example, the pattern of a day is still pretty much the same as it was 100 years ago - pupils arrive, listen to a teacher or read a book, make notes and answer questions and leave. They all go to the same building, and I bet school days typically start and end at the same time the always did, with a bell marking the same number of breaks.
Now compare this with the experiences of a modern workplace. Companies and the environments they create have changed radically in the last 100 years. The same is not true of our education establishments, many of which pride themselves on offering the same level and type of education that they have done for tens or hundreds of years. I went to a university that was proud of just that!
It’s not that this doesn’t work, or that things should change for the sake of it. Rather that the education system is not making the most of the creativity tools and social media that we see in the business world and social enterprise.
In work that I have done in the past we have developed innovative structures for education. We know that a real barrier to education for those with low skill levels or on low incomes is having to travel to a school or college - they either can’t afford the time or money to get there or feel intimidated by being in an ‘institution’. Why not, then, take education to them? Build small and localised learning studios that people can attend. Link them together through the internet and social media to create small studios that truly feel part of a larger (if virtual) organisation. There are pockets of innovation like this but nothing substantial and sustained.
Instead we’re Building Schools for the Future. As one colleague in the education sector once said to me “We risk knocking down old Victorian buildings to just build a cleaner, shinier modern replica in their place.”
I think the education system isn’t making the most of tools to support innovation and it’s a pity the discussion didn’t get here today. Perhaps it was the end of day blues and the bizarre room. I know at least one of the panellists, Andy Powell the Chief Executive of the Edge Foundation is passionate about change in education and making it more appropriate to the needs of learners. Sadly an open and detailed debate on these issues too often never emerges.
The afternoon sees a series of large seminars (we must have had close to 800+ people in the first one). The discussion was about whether social networks were the new cities and much of the debate centered on how these two crucibles of humankind compare and how they each deal with similar issues. The panel included the Richard Leese (Leader of Manchester City Council), Michael Birch (founder of Bebo.com) and Jon Gisby (Director of New Media and Technology at Channel Four). With Charles Leadbeater in the chair it looked set to be an interesting and informed debate.
For Leese there was no doubt that virtual worlds were not a replacement for real ones - you need cities and need to encourage and facilitate innovation and creativity by creating physical spaces that support this. If you do this and encourage people to the city then it will flourish. Whilst this point wasn’t made directly during the session, I think this also describes perfectly how you create a successful social network.
Birch explained how the early stages of Bebo.com were tough work. Creating an environment that people wanted to come to online and then getting the first few members who joined the site to take part and return. There are thousands of social networks out there, but only some reach the stage of maturity where they are vibrant and successful. The process of creating inviting spaces and then nurturing the first people to join you seem similar across cities and social networks.
Perhaps this returns to a theme that we saw earlier in the day. Whether you are building a city like Manchester or a social network like Bebo.com, you are dealing with the same commodity - human beings. We are social creatures and in both cases you want to create a network of these creatures, limited either geographically (in the case of the city) or by their online activity (in the case of a social network).
In both cases the route to success is simple:
Build an environment that is appealing to the people you are trying to attract
Make an extra special effort to attract your first members
Work with them and nurture them to ensure that they stay and attract their own networks
Allow the space to grow and develop as you get more people, and allow people to contribute to building an environment that’s right for them
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting some great examples of co-creation that we’ve come across at FreshNetworks and some thoughts on what makes for good co-creation: Co-creation case studies.
I read in today’s 