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Archive for the ‘Co-Creation’ Category

Blog, Brand Insight, Strategy and Positioning, Co-Creation, Conferences, Emerging markets, Face Asia, Meet Us At, Planning, Research Methods

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Brands without Borders – Face at Esomar 2013

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ESOMAR’s Asia Pacific 2013 conference in Ho Chi Minh City has already kicked off (keep an eye out for my summary blog with all the highlights), but even if you can’t make it, I wanted to share a piece of work we’ll be presenting tomorrow.

Written by myself (Andrew Ho) and my American counterpart, the head of our New York offices Philip McNaughton, this presentation will be all about how co-creation can help build stronger cross-regional brands throughout Asia.

ESOMAR Asia Logo

We were working with the beverage brand, Mizone, which had already grown strongly in the APAC region – but with independent brand voices in different Asian markets. The key business challenge was to develop a consistent and differentiated brand voice and vision that worked across markets, supported the growth of the brand, and yet was still relevant and attuned to consumer mindsets and aspirations.

There were two key challenges to this project:

  1. How to effectively bring consumer voices directly into the development of a high-level brand vision?
  2. How to identify one common vision and higher-purpose for the brand that could support pan-regional growth, without losing the flexibility needed to cater to the individual nature of each specific market?

Bringing consumer voices into brand vision development through Co-Creation

At first glance it seems counter-intuitive to ask consumers what they want a brand’s point of view on the world to be. If we have to ask, aren’t we missing the point? Should we be asking consumers to intervene in the magic and craft of marketing? We know that this point of view should be rooted in an understanding of our audiences – we know that research and data must play a role – but can we go beyond this?

The answer lies in moving away from the research paradigm of question and answer, ‘them and us’, and into a framework that invites collaboration  to harness the skills and vision of marketers alongside the creativity, truth and passion of consumers.

This was a 4 phase process:

  1. We started out with a phase of more ‘traditional’ ethnographic research with consumers – spending time with them in their places and spaces both offline and online and talking to them about their passions, motivations and aspirations for the future. This involved blogging communities, consumer connects and researcher lead interviews to develop a rich insight base about the target audience in each market.
  2. We then use this research to develop a number of insight platforms, and from those we developed a number of brand vision statements.
  3. We then took these ideas into a co-creation workshop where we worked with leading edge consumers in each market – Indonesia and India – to explore the potential for and relevance of our insight platforms and brand vision statements.This was not about asking people what they thought or whether they ‘liked’ or didn’t like the insights. It was about allowing them to tell us through a mix of storytelling and creative game-play what the insight platforms and statements meant to them, what was most resonant, and how they related the vision and insights to their own lives. Through this process we learnt not only where the central heartland of each potential brand vision lay, but also we saw (rather than asked) which of the potential areas generated most warmth and connection.
  4. Following the consumer work, we then ran sessions with the local agency in each market to identify the strongest insights and how they played into the strongest brand vision statements. We used the raw material generated in the consumer workshops to hone and craft impactful language that expressed a brand vision articulated directly from a human and local perspective.

Identifying one common vision across markets

While the co-creation sessions allowed us to articulate rich and relevant visions and points of view for the brand in each market, the larger challenge of finding a consistent and coherent vision for the brand in the region required a further step.

This involved client and agency teams coming together from across the region in a workshop inspired by insights and vision statements generated in previous phases on the study. While this allowed each market to give its own point of view, the principle was to bring cross-cultural teams together to develop cross-cultural perspectives for the brand.

On a simple level this process was about trying to find consistencies between markets, but more important was identifying fundamental human truths that could power the brand emotionally and functionally, and allow it to stand for something differentiating and purposeful in consumers lives.

Crucial to the success of this was the fact that stimulus brought into that workshop combined real insight from the markets, but also incorporated consumer inspired language and points of view that related directly to the purpose of generating big thinking for the brand. The consumer outputs from the co-creation gave a compass, a direction for the most powerful routes the brand could take – even if they did not map out all the stages of that route.

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Like our thinking? View more of Andrew Ho’s blogs on research in Asian markets, or connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter to say hello.

Augmented Research, Blog, Co-Creation, Communities, Mobile, Planning, Research Methods

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4 Tips to Liven Up Live Event Research

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Here at FACE, we live for the moment – and we especially like to do it in the name of research. Researching live experiences used to be a matter of showing up, doing interviews at various points, and taking down notes throughout, maybe a survey here or there. But that’s not our style and things have changed (we love change!). Now, people can experience everything the world has to offer in real time while simultaneously contributing and sharing experiences with others through mobile and social media. It’s been great news for us, because we get even more opportunities to delve into understanding what is happening and why.

We’ve been doing more and more research in this area and are fascinated by it. So in the spirit of experiencing and sharing, here are some tips that have helped make our live research live up to the definition on Urban Dictionary: “jumping, full of people, exciting!”

World Cup Stadium
Image by Flickr user Shine 2010 – 2010 World Cup good news

1. Focus

When going into any kind of live event (whether physical or digital, or both) having a clear objective and a plan are incredibly important. Whether we are looking at engagement with a message, understanding behavior in context, or identifying opportunities for improvement, having a focal question helps to narrow in on exactly what kind of information the research should prioritize over all of the other (distracting!) aspects that make live events so fascinating.

2. Technology

Even a few years ago, asking people to do things while they were doing something else was fraught with difficulty (think paper diaries, and intercept interviews). But now, online behaviors have really shifted in our favor in regards to collecting data during live events. Liveblogging, livestreaming, updating, checking in, – all of these methods act as shortcuts that help participants get their thoughts directly to us without getting in the way of the experience itself.

And the best part is that people are already engaging in these behaviors in their personal lives. We’re just extending an already existing behavior into a research situation. Just be sure to choose your technology medium carefully. Make sure that it fits within the situation you’re looking at. For instance, check-ins are useful if you’re studying gym-workout behavior. But they’re not really that useful if you’re looking at the experience of a live concert.

3. Real-time integration

This should go without saying, but I am going to say it anyway. In order to capture what happens ‘live’, the research simply has to be happening at the same time. The information you get from people experiencing something in the moment (even if it doesn’t seem relevant at the time) is extremely powerful and should not be left out of the picture. When people look back on experiences in retrospect, it is often lacking a lot of the rich contextual information that is key to understanding what is really going on in the moment.

4. Thinking about dimensions

Live experiences are akin to animated objects – constantly changing in look, feeling, and experience. There isn’t always a clear beginning, middle, or end, and things can take dramatic turns. There is a lot of reading between the lines.

Where traditional research might normally have limited perspectives across a few points in time, a live research approach gives us the opportunity to explore multiple vantage points over the entire duration of an experience. The added dimension of change over time means that we can better understand the subtleties of live experiences in ways that people might not be aware of in the moment or even after the fact.

Ultimately studying live experiences can be a whale of a proposition but it is always worth it. We are looking forward to the next opportunity to lose ourselves in the moment.

Flashing lights

Blog, Co-Creation, Crowdsourcing, Innovation

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Makers, Monkeys and Co-Creation

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Makers: The New Industrial RevolutionThis week saw the release of ‘Makers: The New Industrial Revolution’, a book by Chris Anderson which – like his previous effort ‘The Long Tail’ – takes a small but established trend to the attention of a much wider audience. The book makes the case for a new industrial revolution where distributed small scale production becomes the norm and where the lines between producers and consumers becomes more blurred.

As an agency that helps product and service businesses co-create with their stakeholders and consumers, this feels like very fertile territory, but also potentially very disruptive. So what should we make of it all?

The rise of the Makers…

People making things themselves or working in cottage industries isn’t itself new, but the fact that this is once again becoming fashionable is. There are a lot of sceptical voices out there casting doubt over the limitations of current technology and the viability of using small scale ‘manufacturing’ for producing objects other than like kooky picture frames. However for us, the fact that tech like 3D printing now exists and that there are communities of people experimenting, learning and ‘making’ at some scale is very intriguing.

At FACE we involve many people in the process of co-creating new products, brand communications or service ideas for our clients – sector experts, technical experts, illustrators, various design disciplines and of course the end consumers. The fact that ‘making’ is on the rise should provide great opportunities to bring in new skills and talents into the innovation process, talents that don’t exist in-house.

…And monkeys

More people making means more people inventing and producing stuff, just like the proverbial monkeys with typewriters eventually producing the works of Shakespeare. Some of that stuff will be awesome but most of it will be anything but.

This is perhaps less relevant than the simple point that, as has happened in the world of apps, a lot more product ideas will be making it out into the world in a usable form. Browsing Kickstarter will give you an idea of the volumes. Having that many ideas succeed and fail in public is an incredible amount of trial and error, which can produce detailed information about where consumer appetite lies.

This may mean that in many areas the bottom is going to fall out of the ‘having ideas’ market – and move into the ‘find the right ideas and making them useful’ market. P&G started to think this way many years ago via their Connect + Develop model. However, it’s amazing how many companies start their innovation process by sitting in a room and brainstorming when they should be looking to the outside world.

Co-Creation

The part that we’re getting most excited about is that it’s getting much easier for things to get real much earlier. The time and cost to take product or service to a point where it looks, feels, and behaves like the finished article is getting shorter.

This gives companies new models for collaborating with stakeholders and users. Just as software companies release operating systems and applications in beta to a limited number of users, product and service companies can now start to experiment with creating usable prototypes of ideas much earlier on.

3D-prototyping isn’t just a trend to bring into co-creation workshops at the start of the new product development process. In fact, the philosophy of collaboration isn’t something to be kept to set stage of the product development process. Instead, we believe pervasive collaboration, easy prototyping and the ‘maker’ approach suggest a way for brands to work in a much more fluid way with external collaborators, be they experts, makers or end consumers. Enough ‘brainstorms’ – build.

It will spur better thinking. In ‘The Craftsman’, eminent sociologist Richard Sennett describes the kind of embodied, practical knowledge of things that can only be gained through a physical, hands-on approach. He quotes Kant: “The hand is the window to the mind.” Through physically playing with objects, we can literally feel what works and what doesn’t – it’s no longer an abstract problem. A lot of what agencies do can sometimes tend towards wordsmithing, removed from the tangibility of the products we’re ultimately working on. A ‘maker’ approach – Sennett’s ethics of the workshop – suggests a productive new way forward.

Blog, Co-Creation, Conferences

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Invert the Research and Innovation Process

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Just a couple of weeks ago, Philip McNaughton, President of our New York office, was in Cincinnati talking about how Co-Creation offers a new paradigm for inverting the research and innovation process at the Market Research in the Mobile World conference (MRMW). Here are some of the highlights of his presentation.

Why is inverting the research and innovation process necessary? Because organizations demand quality insights faster than ever, and traditional research approaches can either take too long or lose quality and freshness. We live in a world with greater velocity of information and the need for brands to change and adapt to new ecosystems, and this creates new needs for insight and innovation that cannot always be answered by traditional research approaches.

This is where co-creation comes in. Co-creation is typically associated with workshops and innovation, bringing in product and service ideas from outside the organization, but there is actually a much more ambitious agenda. It’s about providing better insights faster as brands navigate a more dynamic future.

Co-creation brings together the certainty of big data with the fluidity of big ideas; underpinned by the idea of working with people in more natural, organic spaces – social media, communities, dynamic workshops or real time content evaluation.

Co-creation is much more than new product development, its about navigating the future more effectively, with a current of insight flowing forward and throughout – whether it be developing equity, activation, or understanding emergent audiences. It’s creative, ambitious, and above all it allows research to surprise you again!

Blog, Co-Creation, Research Methods

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7 Tips to Running a Successful Co-creation Workshop

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David Moon is something of a co-creation specialist. He’s helped run over 30 workshops and even found his way to Face by being a co-creator (aka a workshop participant). With his years of work at Face, we figured he’d be a great person to provide some quick tips on how to run a successful co-creation workshop. We asked for five, but he’s never been one to just do the bare minimum: here are seven!

people playing a game

1. Play games

Games are a very important way of getting to know people, and unlocking people’s imagination. They help break down people’s inhibitions and encourage them to be playful right from the start of a workshop, helping set a comfortable and non-intimidating tone for the day.

We tend to run a couple of games at the start of the day and a couple after lunch to provide a kick-start for the session’s work. If the moderator feels energy is flagging at any point, a quick and easy game can pick people up very effectively.

2. Use creative venues

Always try to run workshops in interesting and inspiring spaces. An expansive studio with natural daylight and views of a city will inspire creativity much more than a conference room in a hotel. You want a venue that will let you stick plenty of things up on the walls, has breakout spaces that you can go off into with a group, and ideally has some outside space for fresh air and breaks.

3. Take breaks

Co-creation workshops should never give the impression of being all work and no play. Co-creators won’t necessarily be used to being on their feet all day interrogating ideas for long periods of time uninterrupted, so regular breaks are an essential way of keeping everyone happy and motivated. We usually try and have one mid-morning break, an hour for lunch, and a couple of shorter afternoon breaks to stave off the mid-afternoon crash.

A tip on lunch: we find a lighter lunch packed full of ‘brain food’ like salads, vegetables, and fish can really help keep concentration and energy up all the way to the end of a workshop. Eating a large bowl of pasta or burgers and chips and then spending the afternoon talking about energy drinks will have quite the opposite effect!

4. Keep to timings

At the start of the workshop it’s important to stress to co-creators that in order to finish on time, they need to ensure they keep to the timings you give them, we call this The Pledge. If we say ten minutes for a break they need to be back ready to work in ten minutes time. If breaks drag on and timings slip it means less time for lunch and puts pressure on the moderator to speed up later exercises, which may not be helpful. Equally, as a moderator if you give people an hour for an exercise you need to ensure you keep them to that hour, no matter how long their discussions may be taking, so that you can stick to your agenda and get everything you have planned done.

5. Use good illustrators

The impact of good illustrators on a workshop cannot be underestimated; in fact they can be responsible for some of the biggest creative breakthroughs in a co-creation. Illustrators are briefed to capture visually any ideas that come up, which can be as simple as making sketches of the things people are talking about at the beginning of the day. However these little sketches can trigger other, bigger thoughts and ideas around the subject and help a concept take shape quickly.

by Beci Ward Illustration

As the day goes on and ideas are worked up in more and more detail, so the illustrations become more detailed and elaborate until by the end of the day you have fully illustrated examples of packaging designs and even potential press adverts. These illustrations are so important in bringing the co-creators’ ideas to life. The experience of witnessing an idea start in someone’s head, then be articulated in an illustration, to finally being blown up in bright colours on A1 at the end of the day, accompanied by potential slogans and variants, is one of the most inspiring parts of a co-creation workshop.

One watch-out about illustrations though… Often the illustrations can be so attractive and visually pleasing that an idea gets judged on the strength of the illustration that accompanies it, rather than the insight behind it. When it comes to voting on the co-creators’ favourite ideas, it is the moderator’s job to really communicate the thoughts behind the illustration and the USP of the concept. This way you’ll ensure people don’t just vote for the prettiest picture!

6. Capture EVERYTHING!

There can be so many ideas, suggestions and little gems of insight that fly around a co-creation workshop that it would be easy to lose something, which is why it’s so important to capture everything. Not only does this make clients feel confident that all ideas generated are being documented, but it will also help when it comes to examining and working on the outputs afterwards. It’s easy to forget where exactly an idea came from or what the thought behind it was, so going back to the notes made in workshops is a very useful way of documenting the journey. Take notes when people are speaking, take photographs of any outputs and video record all playbacks to make sure that nothing goes to waste. If you’re providing support at a co-creation workshop the camera should never leave your hand!

7. Finally, listen

It sounds obvious, but the whole point of co-creations is to put brands and consumers in the same room so that they can listen and respond to each other’s experiences and ideas for the brand face-to-face. The consumer’s opinion, while not being gospel, will at least be honest and based on personal experience of a brand or a product, so listen to it. The more a consumer feels they’re being listened to and valued, the more they will contribute. It’s very important to create this sense of openness in a workshop as it really does lead to the best results.

Listening to the consumers in this way has another long-term effect, which is that it actually enhances their respect for, and loyalty to that brand in a way that remains long after they leave a co-creation workshop. I should know, I was once a co-creator myself.

Another successful workshop… done!

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For more tips on how to run a great idea generation session, check out our presentation on the 3 Step Idea Generation Process:

Insight Generation Process
View more presentations from Face, the Co-Creation Agency

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