Co-Creation, Homepage•
on March 30th, 2010•
In her paper about the World of Warcraft and Co-Creation Myriam Davidovici-Nora explains that Blizzard’s success lays in the combination of never-ending game-play, a high level of competition and the hyper-personalisation accessed through online add-ons.
However, Blizzard’s unique model is hardly suitable for other businesses– Can you imagine EA distributing “zombie kits” for Left 4 Dead?
This conundrum leaves us with a burning question: what is the best practice to handle / entice a group’s creativity in the online environment?
The Tool is the Tip of the Iceberg
Liz Sanders, a pioneer in the use of participatory research methods for the design of products, systems, services and spaces, addressed this topic when speaking at the Copenhagen Co’Creation 2010 Summit and Seminar. She explained that tools are the tip of the iceberg: they only become effective if applied with the right mindset and the right methods/methodologies. read more
Uncategorized•
on March 30th, 2010•
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Press•
on March 26th, 2010•
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Homepage•
on March 26th, 2010•
Mark Earls, author of ‘Herd, How to Change Mass Behaviour by harnessing our true nature’, attended the launch of the London Co-creation Hub on 18th March. Co-creation at it’s core is about people co-operating, working together to create something. Mark’s book supports this assertion by claiming that we are a ‘we’ species, not an ‘I’ species, and that we don’t do anything in isolation, everything has a social element.
We had an interesting chat at the event about the fact that the advertising model does not reflect this fundamental insight into human nature, and that it is in effect broken and has to change. What surprises me most is that it has taken this long for the communications industry to wake up to this somewhat uncomfortable truth; that we have been developing communications in the wrong way, for a long time. And maybe that has been the barrier, that because the belief that doing things ‘at’ people has been the guiding principle for so long mean that it’s too big a deal to challenge it.
The combination of the recession and the emergence of social media has now forced the industry to do some soul searching. Some agencies have bought digital agencies and placed them at the same table as account and planning people, others have created ’social media divisions’ to bolt on to their existing range of services and meet the request from clients to ‘do some social media’. What’s staggering is that they are completely missing the point, that social media is not a cheap channel, to be approached in a broadcast manner. Social media represents ‘herd’ behaviour on a mass scale, something that has been the domain of the ‘events’ industry until now. So why are we still applying the old models? There are literally thousands of ways in which people can now connect with the things they love and the people they care about, and the opportunity for brands is to a) understand what people care about, why they care about them, and how they engage with these things, and b) identify the opportunity for the brand to legitimately become a part of those conversations. Following this approach shifts the conversation from being about ‘convincing’ people that they should buy the brand, to inviting them to share in its vision and beliefs. This requires brands to get closer to their audiences and to work with them throughout the process, effectively drawing up a new contract between brands and their audiences: read more
Uncategorized•
on March 26th, 2010•
From Paul Cox – Joint Managing Director at Opticomm
“ The launch of the Co-creation Hub at the Design Council prompted some great feedback from our clients. For all of them, this was their first exposure to the power of co-creation and it’s possibilities. The Axe case history is very powerful and Ed Vaizey’s talk about the application of co-creation to government was thought provoking.”
From Job Muscroft – MD at Face
” It was great to see so many of our friends and clients who have been on the
co-creation journey with us turn up for the launch of the London Cocreation hub. As always the best part of the night was in the bar. I spent a good two hours chatting and at some points hotly debating where co-creation can take the marketing industry and after a few more drinks geo politics. One of the main reasons I love what we do at Face is because we work with such bright and passionate people. Some of the most passionate can be found at Unilever and a couple of our clients were keen for me to emphasize in this blog that the power of co-creation is in the “CO” – so this definition of co-creation is for you Pippa and Cheryl:
what co-creation is
“The direct and active involvement of consumers collaborating WITH experts from both inside and outside an organisation in real time, to define and create products, services, communications and experiences. This can be conducted on-line or off-line, or by mixing the two together in a seamless process.”
what co-creation is not
“Co-creation is not crowdsourcing or simply outsourcing things to the crowd. The crowd has a role to play in the Co-creation process but on its own is not enough.” ”
For more information on co-creation and the role of the crowd take a look at these blogs:
> The Future Planning
> How Researchers and Planners Should Harness the Crowd
> Co-creation will create a new breed of agency
> Axe Twist, an entirely co-created product
> An Hybrid model for open-innovation
> Do Brand really need agencies
London is one of the biggest cities in the world; it is a massive player in the world’s finance, fashion, business, party, retail and social media industries. It’s a place where dreams can be made and literally anything can happen! But even though London has an unlistable amount of good points and amazing opportunities, it’s not perfect.
So on 24 February 2010, to compliment the launch of The Hub, we also unveiled a new initiative called ‘Co-Create London’. This is aimed at addressing the Capital’s main issues and annoyances by listening to the people who know the City best – the general public. Whether they’ve lived In London their whole life or just passed through, Co-Create London is asking people to answer a very simple question – ‘What Would You Do To make London A Better Place?’.
In just 3 weeks we’ve had loads of buzz worldwide; people have approached us from other countries asking about rolling it out in their cities and we have been covered across all the London blogs.
read more
Homepage•
on March 22nd, 2010•
Last week we had a fantastic night at the launch of the London Co-creation Hub at the Design Council. Over 120 people turned up to hear more about what we are doing and why we are doing it; Ed Vaizey’s speech on “How co-creation will change the face of democracy” and the first exclusive results of our social initiative “Co-create London”. read more
Co-Creation•
on March 9th, 2010•
Farm was co-creating advertising 10 years ago without even knowing it. We’re not suggesting we were trailblazing by design – we’d never heard of the term ‘Co-creation’ and this was way before Web 2.0 or the concept of Social Media had arrived.
All we set out to do was solve our clients’ problems in the most effective way. And when we look back to 1999 when we helped launch smile.co.uk – the UK’s first internet bank we seemed to stumble across the seeds of the co-creation philosophy.
Let’s rewind 12 years. We had been involved in the naming of the new internet bank from the Co-operative Bank. And we felt that a bank named smile.co.uk needed a new kind of ‘brand voice’.
Smile.co.uk represented the Co-operative Movement for the internet generation and we felt it was important to stay true to the values of the Caring, Sharing Co-op so we created ‘The Smile Generation’ – a community of people who shared nuggets of wisdom for the good of the collective. Sounds deep. But in reality, it was a whole load of fun.
read more
In the spirit of co-creation and the core value of openness that comes with it I welcome wholeheartedly Lucian Camp’s thoughts regarding The Co-creation Hub. However I would like to counter some of them as well as try to enlighten him on the benefits co-creation brings to creativity and to the marketing process as a whole so that he will bring his experience and talent to bear on what we are trying to achieve.
He is right to highlight some of the very real concerns many people in the creative community have regarding co-creation. Indeed it is easy to look upon it as a process that makes creative people redundant and worse, fails to recognise the high esteem with which clients hold creativity and creative departments. But this is to misunderstand the nature of co-creativity. It’s not about dinosaurs versus trailblazers, it’s about a new way to find truly innovative and compelling creative solutions to clients’ problems and by the very nature of creative people we should all be open to new processes and approaches.
The good news is that as a Hub we have been engaging in this debate for a while and generally speaking we have been able to carry both people internally and externally with us on our journey. And there are three important reasons for this. read more
Uncategorized•
on March 2nd, 2010•
“The ad industry establishment can no longer simply tweak its offering around the edges if it is to cope. 2010 must be the year to begin a head on overhaul of the way the (advertising) business is organized” Claire Beale Editor of Campaign Magazine, January 2010
The global marketing landscape has changed more in the last 5 years than in the last 50 but that the leading agencies in terms of the way they are organized, structured and the service they offer, haven’t.
The main driver for this change has been the rise of empowered consumers. They have exposed the traditional advertising agency model as one that is out of date and struggling to help clients deal with the current consumer landscape.
“The fact is: consumers now control brands. They play with them, reshape them and even imbue them with new meaning. In the next decade, we will see a shift away from the traditional branding model of agencies and clients” Owen Lee, Creative Chairman Farm
The big question on everyone’s lips is how should the advertising and planning industry respond? What is the new model of marketing that will ensure as an industry we can help brands to navigate their way through the new consumer landscape? These questions apply as much to the brands as to the agencies that serve them. If we wanted to be sensationalist we would say that “brands and agencies must adapt or die” or putting it in a more positive way that the brand and agency leaders of the future will need to be fleet-of-foot and structure their businesses to function in a highly fluid way. read more
