April 24th, 2005 We at SMLXL HQ like the web. In fact we love it. Especially for me, as I spent years travelling the world to Austria, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the United States. In fact for over 4 years I spent 150 days a year on an areoplane.
Its some relief that I don’t have to do that anymore. The world comes pretty much to me.
So last week in my inbox arrives a fantastic piece of research from Trendwatching. Don’t subscribe? I suggest you do. These guys deliver great value. This blog is about the expansion of our thinking of the book ‘Communities Dominate Brands‘. And Trendwatching delivered some valuable insights into our work.
This is what they have to say
Marketing has finally become a conversation. Not, in most cases, as was intended, BETWEEN corporations and consumers (that would make too much sense), but rather a global conversation involving millions of consumers ABOUT corporations. On sites like Planetfeedback.com , thecomplaintstation.com , Epinions , About.com , on hundreds of thousands of blogs, community sites, forums, viral emails, bulletin boards, and what have you, consumers relentlessly exchange views, complaints, opinions and comments about products and services, about brands, about companies, about YOUR company.
Why now? Because they finally can. For decades, consumers have been saving up their insights and rants about the stuff they consume, simply because there were no adequate means to interact with companies, or with other consumers for that matter. No longer. These fickle, wired, empowered, informed, opinionated and experienced holders of a MC (Master in Consumerism) are getting used to ‘having it their way’, in ANY way imaginable, which includes wanting to have a direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them.
Then if you are talking co-creation of advertising communications then have a look at Coors light , Mercedes , Mazda and Conde Nast
These companies are clearly aware that tapping into the collective intellectual capital of their customers yields great creative and ‘real’ content. However, let’s not make the mistake to think that in the end these conversations will all be about communications and branding: how about extending this cooperation with consumers to virtually everything a corporation does, by making the customer an integral part of ALL creative and creational processes?
The there is LEGO which is allowing programmers to interact with its toy robot and develop it as a community at Mindstorm or get over to the TiVo community Where
65,000 members of the self-organized TiVo Community forum have traded ideas on ‘how to convince friends and family to buy a TiVo’
On to gaming where communities modify games and are
entire new games upon themselves. They can include new items, weapons, characters, enemies, models, modes, textures, levels, and story lines. They also usually take place in unique locations
Try out Desert Combat
Trend watching suggest
So, to get started, what’s stopping you from setting up your own ipodlounge.com, hiltonlobby.com, virgincabin.com, ingcounter.com, saabbackseat.com, safewaysaisles.com or vodafoneconnection.com, and inviting your customers to engage in CUSTOMER-MADE goods, services and experiences? Are you ready to open up (even as an experiment) one strategy meeting, one design process, one brainstorming session to the millions of consumers who may have an expert opinion, suggestion, new business idea and so on, simply because they’re your avid users, and, in the best case, true fans?
As we would argue the only number you need to grow is customer advocacy.
Now the flood gates are open
These fickle, wired, empowered, informed, opinionated and experienced holders of a MC (Master of Consumerism) are getting used to ‘having it their way’, in ANY way imaginable, which includes wanting to have direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them.
You could always hang out at the Coverse gallery where the public make 24 second films about their sneakers.
we argue in the book that co-creation is very much part of the future, its more organic, more real, more contextual as trendwatching argue that this means
co-created goods, co-created services, co-created experiences! So, waking up to the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of experts, innovators, inventors and so on outside company walls, research labs and innovation units at large corporations are increasingly NOT going it alone.
Now talking car companies there is Peugeot with its concours design project and BMW with its Customer innovation Lab
Jam to together some brands and services to get a better service this is what Paul Rademacher did by marrying data from CraigsList and Google to match house prices to specific geographic areas.
But lets cultural
Tate Britain is running a programme where people can submit the titles of works of Art hung in the galleries. You win, your title goes up next to that work of art. Its called Write your own label
The website says
Would you like to see your ideas about art on the walls of Tate Britain? We’re asking visitors to write about any work of art on display at Tate Britain which especially interests them.
We’d particularly like to hear from visitors who have a special interest in the subject matter of some of Tate’s paintings. Are you interested in music, fashion, botany, theology or engineering? Have you visited, or do you live near, a place shown in one of the landscapes? Have you experienced an event shown in one of the paintings?
We have all heard of Oh My News in Korea, an online citizen newspaper, well now there is a magazine JPG with a similar format
And travel, IgoUgo
And to prove that user generated content is fast trumping any kind of traditional guide, listing, or other limited overview, look no further than IgoUgo. The online travel community’s 350,000 members offer what traditional guidebooks can’t: hundreds of thousands of opinions on more than 4,000 destinations across the globe, plus suggestions and photos for everything from cheap eats and luxury accommodations, to must-see attractions and worthwhile day trips.
So you see, this is not theory. Its happening all around you. Our book is a small toe in the ocean of evidence out there.
Thanks to Trendwatching for doing such a great job.
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