Philip Granof talks about his experience at video game/entertainment expo PAX East, the combative language of marketing, and why we need to embrace customer co-creation:
Nilofer Merchant recently declared marketing dead. Following an unsentimental eulogy in her recent blog post, Merchant suggests replacing marketing with what she refers to as shared purpose. Through shared purpose, Merchant explains, “you have the basis on which to engage in a community. You no longer talk at people; you co-create with people.” Certainly, I was in the primordial soup of co-creation while at PAX, but was I witnessing the death of marketing?
In the world of co-creation, marketing needs a new metaphor — one that embodies the notion of shared purpose. What if we replaced the art of war with a finer endeavor? Let’s say: marketing is dance. In this paradigm, customers are not prizes, nor the spoils of war. Customers, and even competitors, are willing partners with whom a company moves according to a shared melody
Insight Research Group discusses their use of co-creation in healthcare and pharma, including their work with the NHS to fight the spread of HIV:
Case studies
Stimulated by a pressing need to address sexual health in the UK, and particularly in London, Insight Research Group worked with NHS London and the London Sexual Health Programme on a campaign to improve the sexual health of Londoners.The challenge they faced was how to engage with sexually active Londoners, address the stigma of HIV testing and encourage more Londoners to get tested. Using eVillage to engage with HCPs, a longer-term community space was built up to engage doctors online in the co-creation of strategies and campaigns designed to prevent HIV infection and tackle the issue of late diagnosis.
Crowdsourcing Week talks to David Bratvold about Daily Crowdsource, their upcoming conference Crowdopolis, and the meaning of crowdsourcing:
Many people have incorrectly defined crowdsourcing as a market. I know that you have taken up the fight to correct that misconception — by defining taxonomies and suggesting structure, why?
Because we’re here to help! We want & like to help businesses be better, so we don’t want to mislead them with the common misconception that crowdsourcing is the “next great thing.” We still think it’s a great thing once clearly understood, so we want to provide accurate information to our readers. From our very foundations, we’ve always provided accuracy.
Catalysts for Change was an initiative put out this past April by the Institute for the Future that used gamification techniques to solicit crowdsourced solutions to global poverty problems. After the game session, Core77 interviewed gamemaster Tessa Finlev:
From the numbers, it sounds like the game went very well.
I think it went really well. Catalysts for Change garnered over 18,000 cards in 48 hours—[double] the previous record for a Foresight Engine game (Magnetic South), in which just under 9,000 cards for a game played in Christchurch, New Zealand after their earthquake last year.
Crowdsourcing Week discusses the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development, and how co-creating a sustainability solution might succeed where previous attempts have failed:
Crowdsourcing sustainability — is that even possible?
Well that is what Jacob Scherr — Director of Global Strategy & Advocacy Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) — is hoping for. The UN is holding a conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this June, it’s called the — United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The Conference — also known as Rio+20 — is designed to address that various sustainability issues that affect our planet.
Cannes Lions will feature a workshop on co-creation and user generated innovation hosted by eYeka:
In this workshop, Francois Petavy, Rafe Ring and Joel Cere will show practically how marketers and their agencies can tap into creative consumers’ power for UGI that tackles their biggest marketing and communication challenges.
Through hands-on involvement, this workshop will reveal the secrets to creating a successful one-line creative brief for consumers, have participants experience the challenges of engaging ordinary people as opposed to professional creative teams and involve them in actual co-creation of innovative solutions. Participants will be able to compare their work with the actual results generated from tapping into a global community of creative consumers.
Dieline’s upcoming Package Design Conference is featuring a session on employing customer co-creation in the design process:
Breaking Down Walls: Co-Creation with Consumers
In recent years consumers are becoming more design savvy and continuously more in tune with what is very often the first touchpoint they see of a brand: the package. Brands must respond in turn to engage and inspire these demanding audiences in new ways.
DeeDee Gordon, President of Innovation at Sterling Brands, will explore packaging design through the eyes of the design-conscious consumer. She will take viewers through the process of co-creation, and how brands can harness the creative power and insights of consumers to develop designs and packaging that truly resonate with their audiences. Get ready for an interactive discussion packed with big consumer opinions about brands, packaging and design.
Mass Customization covers the winners of Idea Bird, a contest by Deutsche Telekom to create awareness for the positive effects mobile-to-mobile apps can have for life, work and society:
Participation was far beyond any prediction with several hundreds of submissions being sent in, despite the rather specific topic of this contest. Another great example that idea contests can reach and activate a really large audience, even if the questions asked would at first glance indicate a rather closed (small) community of experts.
Picking the very best out of the large number of really innovative, sometimes easy-yet-brilliant ideas was really no simple task. After long and intense consideration, confering and discussion we finally decided to award the three first prices (third was a split, just could not decide…) to the following ideas which we deem really really interesting…
The Journal of Innovation & Business Best Practice shares research from Rick L. Edgeman and Jacob Kjær Eskildsen of Aarhus University on co-creation, teamwork and innovation culture:
Quality in its contemporary incarnation is commonly referred to as organizational excellence, enterprise excellence, business excellence, or performance excellence. While technology may serve as a key enabler of enterprise excellence, enterprise excellence itself is in large enabled by the human dimension both in terms of ideation and effort. The human dimension manifests in many ways, with people-centered innovation representing a critical intersection of the market environment and the enterprise’s human capital or the individual inventor.
Innovation in all its faces and forms can be more effectively and strategically attained through collaboration that extends throughout the enterprise, to its supply chain, and ultimately to the marketplace itself, that is, cooperation between the enterprise and the culture(s) it serves via the process of co-creation.
One outcome of social business, which isn’t talked about much, is how it can enable better marketing — from creating content that matters and the creation of a cross- functional command center for real-time moitoring… to a collaborative analytics framework for consistent metrics. Another benefit: the creation of centers of excellence for management of communities and policies. Via Britopian
