Last week some of the Face team drew the short straw of getting involved in a project that meant I’d have to travel to Sao Paulo for a co-creation, God we hate our jobs sometimes!! This project involves 3 global brands within Unilever and 5 different countries, all to be delivered in 5 weeks, so it’s quite hectic but we love a challenge at Face.

So last Monday Face headed to Heathrow, took a couple of Valium, and boarded a flight to Sao Paulo… 14 hours later Face arrived in the lovely sunshine and went straight to bed to prepare for 3 busy days of co-creation.  So Face woke up raring to go on Tuesday to find a huge thunder storm, power had cut out; streets were flooded, never seen rain like it. Never mind Face didn’t let this dampen our spirits (sorry!!)

This co-creation is one of many international projects that Face has completed but for Lucy (who was one member of the team representing Face in Brazil)  it was only her second. Face really enjoys these experiences as the consumers you get to meet are so different. The women that attended the co-creation in Sao Paulo were so passionate and enthusiastic, that even though we were running a bit late they were happy to stay to work on their final ideas. It was a great day with some brilliant outputs to take to the next stage.

The next stage has just begun and it involves uploading concepts onto online communities in Argentina, Philippines and Thailand looking further into local market insights. Anyway we are currently in full flow with this so we better get back to work!

Sean getting the co-creators warmed up during day 1

Lucy and Charlotte are currently out in France co-creating with some very chique Parisians, here is their account of what went down during day 1 of the project!

Mange tout, mange tout my fellow Brits.

So after a leisurely walk up a very steep hill via hundreds of steps, witnessing a domestic/sunglasses trading deal gone wrong en route and a very enjoyable, somewhat meaty dinner we are now into day one of co-creation in Paris.

Not wishing to give too much away we are working with 12, too cool and beautiful Parisian ladies and a Unilever brand to develop future NPD and comms ideas. This is all taking place in a very cool venue in Paris, with random shared toilets, sinister James Bond style shoot at your reflection corridors and a polar bear sat outside.

I have had the good fortune to take co-creation to NY & Spain previously and was looking forward to bringing the methodology to Paris and working with the consumers over here to see how they would react to this process. Thankfully I can now say, hand on heart…they are loving it! They are throwing Sean’s agenda into disarray somewhat as the creative ideas they are getting down on paper seem to be never ending.

I’m going to pass over to Lucy now, whose French is marginally better than Sean’s and considerably better than mine- which isn’t saying much.

Charlotte

Charlotte is too kind, I take my French tips from Hercule Poirot so unless I’m investigating a murder on the Nile, I’m pretty useless! Day 1 is over now, it has been great and like all good co-creations I’m learning something. As Face becomes more and more international we must always take into consideration cultural differences. I’ve learnt that French adfluentials create from a much more emotional level compared to British consumers that seem to create whilst being logical. Both aspects have bonuses and I can’t wait to see how the co-creators in Russia and Indonesia react to the Helix Process when Face head over there in the next couple of weeks.

At the end of day one we have a great bank of ideas from product variants to category changing ideas. Charlotte, Sean and I have a busy night ahead of us to pull together what we will be looking into tomorrow to build the best ideas into strong, detailed concepts. On that note I’ve got to get back to work. We’ll let you know how tomorrow goes in our next instalment of Co-creating in Paris!

Lucy

Charlotte and Lucy - lampost fans.