Co-creation

Co-created Ice Cream

In most cases co-creation has definitely been hailed as an online phenomena but it doesn’t just happen in a digital space, it happens whenever a platform for engagement is created. This can be as simple as allowing people to customise something and attach part of themselves to it.

Consider two different ice-cream shops, one that allows you to mix the flavours of ice cream, add whatever treats you want and one that sells you stock standard ice cream.

“Custom Made” VS “Stock Standard”

How much prouder are you of how good that ice cream tastes?

How much more did you enjoy the interactive of experience buying ice cream?

How much more likely are you to tell a friend about the mixture you created?

The interesting thing about this is that the ‘platform’ for the co-created ice cream, wasn’t a website that allows you to upload photo’s or even a forum that you could project your unique opinions on to, instead it started with the simplest of questions….

“What would you like?”

The only thing that changed with the co-created ice-cream is that the person on the other end of the counter now actually listens and has put in place a system where they can give you exactly what you want! Imagine how powerful this could be if all businesses could sincerely asked those four magic words.

iSnack2.0 & Co-creation = Fail!

So what did they do & what should they have done?

Some time ago I wrote a post about Threadless.com and the way they use co-creation to create an amazing self promoting community.

Clearly co-created T-shirt designs are not the same as a competition to name a spread. The “Name Me” promotion was never going to be a cyclical decision process.

But if we contrast start of the process for what KRAFT have done with Threadless.com do we can see that there the two red circles (community voting & popular designs are made) are the key differences.

The clear difference is that the decision behind naming KRAFT’s new spread was made by exec whereas with Threadless.com the community is involved in the final decision on which T’s are made.

To KRAFT’s credit they listened to the community backlash for iSnack2.0 and did involve the community in a vote for a new name. The options were between these six: Cheesybite, Creamymate, Smooth, Snackmate, Vegemate and Vegemild.

The result from the vote was “Cheesybite”. This article explains the whole story quite well.

So is “Cheesybite” any better?

While it’s an remarkable improvement on iSnack2.0, I can’t help but think that by limiting the options to the six above KRAFT have still inhibited the true power of community interaction. While I understand there is an element of risk mitigation in only offering six names to vote on, I feel that they may have let the fear of “loosing control” get in the way of the true power of co-creation. What do you think?

Locking In The Eyeballs With Co-creative Platforms

In a world where there are over 700million blogs and new web services are launched every day no one would deny that gaining a critical mass of users/viewers is vital to online success. But once you’ve got people tuned in how do you keep them involved? Google does it through the integration of a wide number of free services, while Facebook and Twitter lock you in through social value. There are great lessons to be to be learnt from both of these methods of eyeball imprisonment.

Locking You In With Free Services

All to aware that it operates in the attention economy, Google has built a suite of over fifty services that are seamlessly integrated around Google search. But these services themselves are not what keeps me tied to Google, it’s the value of the documents, links, emails and other forms of information that I’ve created by using those services.

Am I always going to be a Google prisoner?

Even if a more impressive search engine was to come along, the build up of products that a Google fan-boy like myself uses means it’d be incredibly tough for me to switch. With all it’s wonderful gadgets and links I’d struggle to get rid of my igoogle home page, while the shear hassle of migrating my data out of Gmail would be enough to keep at least part of my searches with Google.

So unless someone else offers me a better deal on all 18 Google services that I use I may just be a Google prisoner for life.

I’m Locked Into My Social Screens Too

Facebook and Twitter would be worthless without us, and they know it. What Facebook and Twitter have done is provided co-creative platforms for you and I to connect and share. It’s the ever-growing value our connections and the information being shared that keep me (and no doubt many of you) Facebook slaves.

It’s a self perpetuating cycle of captivity. The more I connect with people the more alluring those connections become and less likely I am to leave these networks. To cancel my Facebook account would be to commit social suicide. Likewise to terminate my Twitter account would be to cut myself off from my most valuable source of social news and provocative business insight, not to mention all the great tweeps.

Happily Enslaved

The beauty of providing these co-creative platforms is that I’m actually happy to be a captive. I love the synergy between the different Google products, and the value of the the information that is housed under the one password is immeasurable.

As for Twitter and Facebook, even though I’m obsessed with trying new things I’ve only got so much time and mental energy. Because the built-up value of my online personality and profile is greatest within Twitter and Facebook I’m reluctant to leave all my hard fought social reputation behind and start building friends connections and reputation all over again.

What’s to be learnt from this?

Getting me to create social value, connections and reputation is a time intensive process and it is therefore unlikely that I’ll want to replicate it. If you can create a platform which I am able to project myself onto, you’re more likely to captivate my attention.

Likewise, by making it easier for me to create content and information using your tools, your service becomes more valuable to me and I’ll be likely to stick around longer. I might just stick with you forever if you provide me with multiple platforms upon which I can use that information.

On the flip side, if you’re trying to break into someone else’s captive audience then giving them a reason to switch and making the transfer of their built up value to your service as smooth and painless as possible is a must (e.g. allow me to import my FB or Twitter contacts, photo’s and links).

Are you a happy captive?

Threadless & Co-creation

Threadless.com is an amazing example of what a Co-creative platform can achieve in business. They describe themselves as a community-based tee company with an ongoing, open call for design submissions.

How it works.

The diagram below really says it all. Designs can be submitted by anyone with a great idea for a Tee. These designs are then voted for by anyone on the site, any design with enough favourable votes gets made. Designers whose Tee’s are made receive $2000 initially, and then $500 if the design sells out and is reprinted. The Threadless community is incentivised to promote Threadless. They receive $1.50 credit for sending in photos of themselves and their Tee’s. Link sharing is encouraged through the StreetTeam, where sales that come from linking to Threadless are rewarded with Threadless credit. Everyone is rewarded, everyone is happy, and Threadless sells loads of great Tee’s.

On top of this Threadless runs monthly “Besttee” competitions, design challenges, hosts community blogs and forums, posts interviews with designers and runs Tee-V – a Vlog about what’s going on at Threadless.

So What Are The Advantages?

A loyal loving community that designs, critiques and perfects the product.
Social Media and Community link sharing instead of advertising – amazing ROI.
Brilliant inventory management – community forecasts demand before Tee’s are even made – no gambles.
Low overheads - no professional models, designers, photographers, trend scouts, or physical stores (although they’ve opened one now).
Consistently trendy products – due to voting.
Serving the long tail of demand.

If you want to remix your business to gain some of the Threadless benefits try…

Requesting feedback
Relinquishing control
Re-investing in relationships
Rewarding those who help
Responding to what people want
Re-examining your pricing strategy
Revealing everything – transparency breeds trust
Re-focusing on giving back – you live in a gift economy
Realising that your customers have always owned your brand
Remixing your service to provide a platform where consumers can help themselves and each other

Would love to hear about your experiences with Co-creation, Threadless or both.

Xpress Co-creation

In a business case competition we were involved in recently, our team was asked to solve a “hypothetical” problem which the almighty Starbucks faced. The problem centred on customer service and the inability of the company to produce a wide range of customised products in a timely manner. The solution we proposed revolves around co-creation of value.

Our Starbucks Xpress solution enabled customers to create their own unique coffee suited perfectly to their individual taste, in a fraction of the time. The customer orders a base coffee (i.e. a cappuccino) which can be produced quickly by trained staff, then moves on to the self service customisation station to add their favourite extras such as syrup, cream, cinnamon, chocolate etc.

The customer gets their coffee quickly, they can make it exactly to suit their taste, and time spent waiting in lines is cut considerably. The customer wins, Starbucks win; and subsequently value is (co) created. Brilliant!

If this sounds somewhat familiar, then like me you may have noticed Starbucks have actually started implementing co-creation stations to some extent…

On a recent stopover at Hong Kong airport when grabbing a jet-lag busting caffeine injection I was surprised to see something that replicated our service bottleneck solution. It wasn’t quite what we had envisaged during the case competition but it was a step in the right direction. The beauty of this set-up is the potential it had to alleviate the obvious time pressures and language barriers faced in an international airport.

Simple co-creation solutions like Starbucks Xpress can be dreamt up in no time and create value without being overly complicated. For the record the judges liked the idea so much we went on to win the case competition. Go us!

We would love to hear any other good (or bad) examples of co-creation in action.

It’s empowering consumers to participate in the creation, production and in many cases even the delivery of a product or service.

Passive consumption is a thing of the past – your customers are now informed, connected, networked, and empowered on a scale that has never before been seen.

So what does this mean for your company?

moz screenshot Co creation

If your company believes that the best decisions and innovations are made in the board room then you’re in for a mind-blowing paradigm shift…surprise surprise business involves two parties – companies and customers.

So why it that consumers are left out of the decision making process? It’s because never before has such a dynamic platform for customer-company interaction existed.

The diagram below is a simply model of how customers and companies can interact to produce mutual gain.

Within this interaction there are four elements which are integral parts of a co-creative platform:

Dialogue – feedback forums provide a rich and open dialogue between customer and company.

Access – providing customers with access to tools, information and connecting them with one another.

Risk/Return – co-creation relies on reducing risk and increasing return to both parties.

Transparency – honesty and openness is a critical part of co-creation as it lubricates the information exchange.

Integrating a DART platform for co- creation into your business model in many cases means giving your costumers the choice to be a designer, builder, contributor, remixer, commenter, and recommender

Believe it or not many of your customers are already participating in co-creation in their day to day internet usage. Commenting, rating, reviewing and recommending are all integral steps in the on-line world of co-creation. In this world of customer interaction it has never been more important to have the right employees.

What are the benefits?

A sample of the many benefits of a establishing a platform for co-creation are:

More valuable experience delivered to customers
More accurate targeting of products/services
Educated and energized customers
Increased word-of-mouth
Increased customer retention
More accurate inventory management

There are a few incredible companies which have incorporated this DART model into their business structure – Amazon.com, Threadless.com – over the next few weeks we will explore these business models and see exactly what benefits these companies are reaping and look at how you can do the same.