Archive for the ‘Co-Creation’ Category

Blog, Co-Creation, Communities, Crowdsourcing

6 Top Tips for Successful Co-creation

Date May 10 2012
Posted by Esther
Tagged with co-creation, focus groups, innovation, marketing insight, qualitative research, research communities

Co-creation. It’s a word you hear increasingly in the same context as focus groups, workshops or other qual methodologies as if it is simply an interchangeable term for any of those things. Here at Face, five years ago we started out as a co-creation agency, pioneering the approach of bringing consumers, clients and agencies together to solve problems for brands and categories. However, over those 5 years we have come to realise a fundamental truth about co-creation – that it is not a methodology, but an overarching philosophy that should guide everything you do as a company in order to generate compelling, game-changing insight, innovation and strategy.

For us, a co-creative approach permeates everything we do from project design, from recruitment to debrief, across every type of brief from qual insight to campaign tracking – it’s built into the heart of every methodology and tool we employ on a project. So I’m going to give you a little insight into our top tips for successfully co-creating, gleaned from our five years of experience.

Principle 1: Listen

Co-creation shouldn’t just be about creating, it should also be about listening – after all it is from great insight, foresight and inspiration that the best ideas will arise. We always begin every co-creation project by undertaking a stage of listening, whether that be:

listening to the conversations going on around categories, brands or topics through social media monitoring
deep-diving into the hubs and influencers of those conversations via netnography
or listening to the behavioural “conversations” that happen between the consumer and the context via ethnography.

Principle 2: Mix individual and group thinking

We believe that neither of these things are enough on their own and that each has its role both in the generation of ideas and the refinement and honing of them.

Crowdsourcing, whether done openly on the web or closed with a specific fan base, through the process of individual (yet open and iterative) thinking yields a huge wealth of individual data that allows the researcher to spot trends and clusters that can provide both platforms for ideation or positioning and hypotheses about interesting directions.

However, in our experience, the most value from crowdsourcing comes when this is supplemented with more targeted exploration and explosion of the opportunities with a smaller number of invested participants. We often use our online communities such as HeadBox and Mindbubble to ratify and validate the opportunity areas identified from crowdsourcing, and make sure that the group that will ultimately develop concepts from those opportunities are working on the most interesting, fertile and well-developed of those areas.

Individual and group thinking of course also has to come into play within your actual “co-creation” – whether that be a face-to-face workshop or online. It’s really important to ensure that your task design includes a mix of both individual thinking tasks and more group-based collaboration in order to create the right balance of fertility and validity, as well as to allow for differences in the ways people think, create and process information.

Principle 3: Build effective teams

Managers know that there is a whole science behind building an effective team, and there is no shortage of academic models and theories to aid this. Building teams in co-creation is no different. While obviously conducting a full Belbin or Myers Briggs analysis before each co-creation is unrealistic, it is possible to use principles from both when building teams for co-creation. We build in Myers Briggs and Belbin-style questions into our recruitment process, and qualitatively evaluate consumers further through our interactions with them both in our communities, and in the co-creation “auditions” we hold that put our potential participants through their paces before they earn their place at the co-creation. Oh, and of course we’re also always qualitatively analysing our clients and their stakeholders for the same reasons.

Principle 4: Play

Creativity strikes when analysis stops and so co-creation should always be fun (so should any qual research, but that’s another blog post entirely). This permeates everything from where you do it (somewhere disruptive and creative of course), to how you set up and brief in the whole day.

At Face we use gamification principles such as badging, earning status levels, and unlocking rewards for completion of specific tasks to make the process feel less like work and more like play, to aid team bonding, and to establish a sense of competition that ultimately increases investment and therefore quality of output.

However, we also have a philosophy around the ratio of true “work” activities (those that are geared to meeting the objectives of the co-creation) and those that are more “play” activities geared towards breaking down inhibitions, improving communication, encouraging people to think in different ways, and re-energising. We think the best ratio is 60:40 – ice breakers, energisers, physical games are all an incredibly important part of running a successful co-creation.

Principle 5: Keep the pace

Pressure helps spontaneous thinking, while craft requires time, so successful co-creation involves flexing the pace both to keep interest and to get better output – whether co-creating online or face-to-face. We have found that the most successful co-creations set more aggressive deadlines for tasks that are more generative, require non judgmental thinking, or in fact require choices to be made within a group (even if you then allow more time to explore that choice later on), while those tasks that require refinement, articulation, or building up of ideas require both more time and a more relaxed introduction/facilitation style. This sounds obvious, but it’s really about pushing those boundaries a bit in terms of how long you think each exercise needs, depending on what the task in hand is.

Principle 6: Get creative

Our final principle governs the sorts of activities we do in co-creation to yield great results. Co-creation for us isn’t simply an extension of the traditional stimulus/response model of traditional research, except with clients in the room asking the questions. For us building a co-creation is itself an exercise in creation. We use various techniques from theatre and the arts to create an immersive and engaging creative experience that yields insight and ideas almost indirectly – role plays, story telling, consequences, real time illustration, and physical modelling are all techniques that can deliver incredible insight and stimulate ideas beyond the direct objective for which you are using them.

Co-creation is here to stay, and we look forward to continuing to find new and inspiring ways to deliver best in class results for our clients!

Blog, Co-Creation, Face

Emerging Roles Profile: The Co-Creation Consultant

Date May 03 2012
Posted by admin
Tagged with co-creation, emerging research techniques, nextgen research, qualitative research, research, workshops

Here is the third installment of our series covering emerging roles in the market research industry. Job Muscroft, the Face MD in London, kicked it all off in his post about the various roles that are changing the face of market research. In this post, we’ve interviewed one of our co-creation consultants here at Face, Research Director Esther Garland, to learn a bit more about what it’s like to work in qualitative market research as a co-creation consultant.

How would you describe your role?

My role…. Part planner, part creator, part trainer, part performer, part researcher. To do co-creation successfully you need to be many things at any one time. It’s not the same as running a focus group – you still have the insight objectives but actually your role is to create an immersive, inspiring way of getting to those objectives. If I could make a rule in co-creation that you are not allowed to ask direct questions (as you do in more traditional methodologies) I would.

How did you become a marketing research co-creator? What’s your background?

I started in market research for a publishing company so I have an appreciation of product development, I then spent some time as a planner for a couple of above the line and digital agencies giving me an appreciation of the creative process, ideation and strategy. I came to agency side qual research to be closer to consumers again, and this is a great place to get an appreciation for managing clients and stakeholders, and deadlines (both of which are big parts of co-creation).

Any tips for how to stand out from the competition when you’re trying to get a job in co-creation?

Like any qual research, co-creation is about a balance of people skills (being able to engage people, being able to elicit information and shape conversations) and analytical skills (being able to judge information, get behind the words to the meaning, find the underlying assumptions and unstated beliefs). However it’s the creative and performance bits that are different from traditional research – anything that can demonstrate you think about problems differently and design creative solutions to those problems, and any skills you can demonstrate in performance will set you apart.

What are the top three rules you have to follow as a co-creator in market research?

Make it fun – create the right environment, gamify the session, set the right atmosphere
Make it creative – design exercises that use different parts of the brain, do things that feel challenging or strange, think laterally about how to get to your objectives
Make it physical – vary the pace, get people moving about, change the scenery

Where do you see your role going in the next five years? What’s the future for marketing research co-creation?

It’s worth noting that increasingly I think co-creation will be adopted as a core part of the qual armoury (if it isn’t already) so really this question doesn’t make sense – additionally I’m not just co-creator, I’m an Insight and Strategy specialist. Co-creativity is a philosophy rather than a tool – so in fact for us, I see principles of co-creativity (creating immersive environments, building long term mutual relationships between clients and consumers, sharing the responsibility for success) governing all the research activities we do.

Increasingly though I think it’s going to be about how you layer co-creation with other tools and data sources – whether that is social media insight, crowdsourcing or social media monitoring.

What’s the biggest mistake you most often see in co-creation? What’s so bad about it?

Just treating it like a souped-up focus group – albeit with clients in the room asking the questions as well. This is just lazy and not harnessing the full power of the approach – you won’t get better ideas or insight from just doing the same thing in a bigger room.

Learn more about our co-creation process here.

Blog, Co-Creation, Community Management, SMinR, The Future

Five Emerging Roles That Are Changing the Face of Market Research

Date January 23 2012
Posted by Job
Tagged with

Following on from my last post – 2012 Resolutions for the Market Research Agencies – I wanted to talk more about how we make these resolutions a reality by creating new agency roles with distinctive new skills sets.

1. Technologist

The MRX Technologist is primarily responsible for keeping up to date with new digital trends and is able to help the agency develop and pilot new research methodologies. This may take the form of designing new platforms from scratch or being the lead decision maker when it comes to buying 3rd party software. Alongside innovation, the Technologist plays an increasingly important role on project teams where the research briefs are UX or Service Design Orientated.
Skills: User Experience, Digital Project Management, Data Analytics

2. Community Manager

Communities are social places and need to be nurtured by people who are experts in digital communication. With the rise of MROC’s the fastest growing role in MRX agencies is that of the community manager. In fact, most of the problems associated with bad MROC research is when the agency does not have this person on the team. The Community Manager is responsible for setting the rules of the community, setting the tone of voice, making a personal connection with members and ultimately ensuring good quality engagement with the project. The Community Manager is also increasingly leading the way when it comes to applying game mechanics to research and is growing in influence when it comes to shaping research projects.
Skills: Copywriting, Video production, Project Management

3. Social Media Researcher

Real time social media monitoring is now commonplace but many companies are still struggling to interpret the data and use it to make strategic decisions. This knowledge gap is being filled by The Social Media Researcher who is responsible for developing strategic KPI frameworks for social media tracking programmes and harnesses social media data to help answer adhoc brand, product and comms briefs. The Social Media Researcher is quickly becoming a very important role, as they are both an objective and strategic voice advising clients about the ROI of their growing digital spend.
Skills: Quantitative Research, Qualitative Research, Social Media strategy

4. Co-creation Consultants

Companies are opening up and embracing more collaborative ways of working with third parties – including their consumers. Co-creation Consultants are responsible for the successful interaction between all parties on a project. Many of the touch points for this type of co-creation occur in workshop environments of one kind or another that require very skilled facilitation to get the best out of a wide variety of participants. Co-creation Consultants cover a wide range of disciplines, most often those from innovation, brand strategy and planning backgrounds.
Skills: Facilitation & improvisation, Planning, Qualitative Research

5. Big Data Scientists

We are living in the age of data, enabling companies to be more forward looking. Big Data Scientists are hot property in the research world as they are responsible for developing predictive data models & algrorithms using a wide range of data sources including dynamic social media data. Big Data Scientists primarily come from computer science, hard sciences, engineering and business backgrounds.
Skills: Mathmatics, Statistics, Computer programming

Blog, Co-Creation, Communities, Insights, SMinR, Trends

2012 Resolutions for MR Agencies

Date January 12 2012
Posted by Job
Tagged with

1. Learn how to tell better stories

We all know a good and engaging story when we hear it and our clients are no different! 2012 should be the year in which we take the art of MR storytelling seriously. Let’s ban the 100 slide reportage debrief and develop the skills of our teams to communicate findings in more engaging ways. Spend 10% more time on thinking about how we tell the story using imagery; video, graphics and customer voices will make a huge difference to the reputation of the MRX industry.

2. Ask less questions and listen more

As researchers we like asking questions. If we are totally honest, most of us think we know the answers before we run our surveys and are simply testing our hypotheses. Today, we live in the age of social media data – consumers globally are talking about every aspect of their lives 24/7. We no longer need to second guess and ask as many questions about what consumers think and feel with so much data available. We just need to develop the skills of our teams to listen and interpret more.

3. Stop using the word respondent

We have all done this. But is it not time to stop using this word to describe people who we work with in research projects. In 2012 we must encourage our teams to develop collaborative skills so that we can see consumers as people who we can co-create value with rather than as lab rats to carry out tests on.

4. Have more fun

The MRX industry has a pretty dull image and we need to ask ourselves why. A large part is because we need to try harder to be creative and have fun with our clients. We should be encouraging our teams to spend time experimenting, by piloting new ideas with clients. In a world where things are changing so fast, this is not only essential but fun.

5. Don’t just embrace change – drive change

Above all in 2012 I think there should be an acceptance amongst researchers that the pace of change we are seeing in technology is just going to speed up and that the old certainties of Quant and Qual research are over. It is only then that we can help shape the skills of our teams to adapt to the challenges of a world where so much data is available and where consumers expect to collaborate with brands.

Blog, Co-Creation, Communities, Insights, Social Media

2012 through the lens of client needs

Date January 11 2012
Posted by Andrew
Tagged with

Technology is changing faster than consumers. Consumers are changing faster than organizations. Therefore, organizations need to change faster if they are to keep up. Many are finding this difficult to achieve.

A recent IBM Global CEO Study that covers 1,130 CEOs across 45 countries and 32 industries showed that organizations not only felt bombarded by change but many are struggling to deal with it. 8 out of 10 CEOs saw significant change ahead and yet the gap between the expected level of change and the ability to manage it had almost tripled since the previous study in 2006.

There are many different manifestations of this change (too many to cover here) from faster product life cycles and globalization (the shift of budgets to emerging markets), to changing demographics and the challenge of ageing populations on Western economies. But one of the biggest is the impact of the social web on everything we do. EMarketer predicts that the tipping point will happen in 2012 when 60% of all marketing budgets will become social. Linked to this is the arrival of Big Data. In 2010 the human race created 800 exabytes of information. To put this into context between the dawn of civilisation and 2003 we only created 5 exabytes; now we’re creating that amount every two days. By 2020 that figure is predicted to sit at 53 zettabytes (53 trillion gigabytes) – an increase of 50 times. As Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist said “We used to be data poor, now the problem is data obesity”.

This presents us with a number of new challenges that I have set out below as hardening client needs. I have concentrated on just a few with some suggestions on what research companies need to do to make sure they’re in a position to meet them.

1. Moving from Big Data to Big Insight

Making sense of all the data out there and simplifying it so that we can derive valuable meaning and insight will be one of 2012′s client mantras. Social listening will give way to social media insight. Having researchers in your team that are also technologists e.g. digital anthropologists that can help to analyse real time social data will become a required skill. Being able to augment different data sets from the virtual and real worlds so that we can help to create one closer view of our customer will depend on our ability to mix different on-line and offline methodologies in a coherent and credible way.

2. Quality without speed is not enough

One of the greatest demands from clients is how to deliver fresh, robust and relevant insight more quickly and cost effectively than we have ever done (or needed to do) before. Qualitative research companies need to lead in the use of technology so that we can become quicker, faster and more responsive in the ways in which we gather insight about our clients’ consumers. We also need to develop research and planning tools that are less generic and more focused on the CMI client needs of today and tomorrow. This does not mean replacing human analysis – to the contrary the role of the researcher has become even more important than before because of the need to find real quality from the huge quantities of data that is out there. It must also mean we can do better than relying on tools such as the TGI Index.

3. Logic needs to give way to more magic

We are going to see more emphasis on qualitative research as a robust exploratory tool to understand better consumers’ emotional drivers as well as to help improve the quality and shaping of social ideas and social content before things go too far and way before the quantitative testing stage. Too much blind reliance on testing things to death has seen some of the “magic” and “creativity” in marketing lose out to the “logic”. Creating magic today means creating social brand stories that are contagious and can be propagated effortlessly by key consumer cohorts. Co-creating with these consumers, involving them much earlier in the marketing process, leveraging their content and creativity as part of the marketing process will have an increasingly important role to play here. If what goes in is rubbish then testing what comes out will be rubbish. The Coca-Cola Company is leading the way and I am sure other FMCG clients will follow.

4. Creating content excellence

There is a new marketing ecosystem where content is more important than channel, where audience passions/interests are becoming more important than demographics and where the media model has changed – placing more emphasis on created and earned media as opposed to bought and owned. Understanding which “big ideas” have enough social currency (it’s not what consumers are doing with your brand but what they are doing with each other that counts) and can work effectively across all platforms will attract much more focus. Understanding the different consumer cohorts within a brand audience and their influence will also be key to understanding what content areas will have the most impact when it comes to propagating ideas. Researchers need to come up with a new model here: one based on rational, emotional and social metrics that is continuous and adaptive.

5. New measurement models

With the increasing socialisation of brands and the importance “connected” brands are placing on new metrics such as social brand value and influence (see below), helping clients to understand, validate and measure what ideas work best in the earned and created media space as well as why it works will be increasingly important. Finding ways of proving that the more customers of a brand are interconnected the more they are willing to pay for the product and the more loyal they will be is vital. Working out a more real time model for measuring which big ideas have the best potential for success; are the most likely to be propagated and can work across all media is another area that needs close attention.

Understanding influence in social media

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