So, how did we go about finding out about the lives of this demographic? We commissioned nine people, aged 16-24 to make films about what their lives are like in the year 2010. In addition, we also ran an online community with our Headboxers, and posed the question: “If you had to leave yourself a message for yourself in 10 years time, to remind you what it feels like to be your age in 2010, what would it be??”. From both, we discovered a wealth of information about this demographic, and it’s clear that, whilst many things about being young stay the same, a lot of other things are also changing.

It proved an incredibly enjoyable and thought provoking night, which gave many people a lot of food for thought. On a side note, this was Face’s first foray in using Prezi. However, it most definitely won’t be the last. Whilst still a work in progress, it is clear that a lot of potential lies in using Prezi as a presentation medium.

Check out the Prezi for the night without video clips below, if you would like to see the full presentation and check out all the media from the 9 Lives project please head over to out 9 Lives site – Click Here

It’s Face Forum time!

After the fun and heated discussion at our last forum (Do Brands Really Need Agencies?) we thought it was time to take a step back from the business world and get the people who really matter involved. The title for this forum is:

‘9 LIVES – how does it feel to be 16-24 in Britain today?’

Over the last month we have been working with members of Headbox (our online community of 16 -24 years olds) to discover what is it is like to be aged 16-24 in 2010.  What is important to them, what pressures do they face, how do they feel about the future and, most importantly to you, what does this mean for brands? All of this is brought to life through Headboxers videos, pictures and words.

The event promises to be incredibly rich with an opportunity to discuss the topic and findings. We are holding the event on Tuesday 22nd June at 6:30pm. There will be plenty of beer and wine flowing and we’ve checked to ensure the night doesn’t clash with any England games!

If you would like more information on The Face Forum and would like to come along please email lucy@facegroup.co.uk

Crowdsouring is a buzzword that has been knocking around for a while now. There is a lot of thought, theory and ongoing conversation about it, and we’re starting to see brands begin to use it in various different formats.

But how does it work in the research & innovation world?

‘Journey To The Centre Of The Crowd… And Back Again’ explores crowdsourcing from it’s definition and gives hints, tips and strategy advice on how you can implement crowsourcing for innovation.

]]> 1 http://www.facegroup.com/face-a-co-created-history-part-1.html http://www.facegroup.com/face-a-co-created-history-part-1.html#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:54:57 +0000 Matt http://www.facegroup.com/?p=3697 This story begins in 2004, a year when 120 million Americans voted George Bush Jnr into government for a second term, The Lord of The Rings: Return of the King won 11 Oscars, Ireland introduced the smoking ban and a small start-up called Face started to get going.

In 2004 participating in social media was not a widespread activity, early adopters and young people were the groups pushing the format forward and exploring its possibilities. In its early days we were helping brands stay close to young people and therefore close to the ensuing high paced changes in on-line behaviour they were leading.

Skip forward three years and in May 2007 we proudly launched the first ever co-creation community, Headbox.com. Headbox was the result of spending loads of time with young people, researching their habits and ultimately understanding the way they interact with each other and with brands.

At the time there were no on-line qualitative research platforms for any category, let alone youth, the driving force behind the internet. In 2007 social media was beginning to reach its massive potential and the world of research needed to react. By offering clients a way into the minds of young people it opened up a more collaborative and mutual relationship between consumers and brands.

Headbox in 2007!

This was an extremely exciting time for us; working in a more concerted and creative way was being adopted as a philosophy. It was the beginning of the co-creation driven approach that would define the company, although the term co-creation was not being used just yet!

It was whilst presenting our second annual TechTribe report at the 2007 MRS Youth Conference when the real turning point came. The Axe team had seen our presentation and were interested in the approach. Axe wanted to engage with their consumers more closely and involve them in every step of the marketing process.

It was here at the 2007 MRS Youth Conference that co-creation was first put forward to a client brave and willing enough to try something new.

A few months later in the heat of Alicante, Spain, 16 young, creative Axe consumers from Headbox took part in Face’s first big co-creation project. Working alongside the Face and Axe team their task was to co-create an Axe Summer Variant.

Our first Co-Creation Project with Lynx was a great success

The co-creation workshop and co-creative approach was an instant success. By the end of 2007 we had co-created with Axe again on the infamous Dark Temptation ‘Chocolate Man’ variant as well as completing a co-creation project with Rexona, developing a new variant with their female consumers.

Next up… Part 2: 2008 and the birth of Mindbubble

(Note, this is in chronological order of how they were posted, not an actual ranking!)

1# Hot Chip
2009 was a quiet year for the London quintet, finishing their world tour in February before hitting the studio to record their 4th album One Life Stand. In December the band released the first single from the album and announced that they will be hitting the road on another world tour kicking off in February 2010…[READ MORE]

2# Inception
Christopher Nolan is the man who can do wrong. Making his big break in 2000 with backwards murder mystery Memento, Nolan has gone on to direct a string of blockbusters making him one of the most sought after men in Hollywood…[READ MORE]

3# The World Cup
Yes we know it’s obvious but, come on, there hasn’t been a UK representative in a big international football tournament since 2006! Luckily for all of us in England (sorry Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and… the robbed… Republic of Ireland!) The Three Lions cruised through the qualifiers and will be taking part in the big one… [READ MORE]

4# Politics
Politics? Why, why, why, would anyone ever look forward to politics?? Well… allow us to explain: In 2010 a General Election is inevitable, if you’re 18+ you will have the opportunity to get out there and vote for who you want to lead Great Britain for the next four years... [READ MORE]

5# Lego Universe
Lego in its original format was simple stuff, you bought it, you unpacked it, you stuck it together, you built stuff, you smashed it and you put it back in the box. Nowadays though, Lego is so much more than Pirate Ships and Petrol Stations. There are tonnes of Lego products including video games, Bionics, Architecture, Exoforce and even Lego Sponge Bob Square Pants… [READ MORE]

6# William Tempest
Fashion is an ever changing beast, it never sleeps, it never sits still, it is forward thinking and always built for the future, hence why its seasons are the wrong way round! The fashion world is driven by designers whose job it is to look to the future and identify what people will want to wear in it. So, to be seen as the next big thing in fashion is kind of a big deal... [READ MORE]

7# 3DTV
The phrase “3D is coming to your living room” was being bandied around freely by the likes of Panasonic, LG, Samsung and Sony at the International Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. 3DTV has been on the technology radar for years now but despite the hype it is set to be more of an extension to High Definition TV… [READ MORE]

8# Project Natal
Even though Nintendo’s brightly coloured, family friendly games did everything to hide it, the release of the Wii was a landmark in home video gaming. The Wii’s wireless, 3 dimensional hand held control system allows users to play a more active part in games, a first for any home gaming system. The Wii is really cool but essentially, it’s just a starting point for motion in video games…[READ MORE]

9# No More Recession
Throughout the latter part of 2008 and the whole of 2009 there was one thing that dominated headlines… the stupid, stupid, idiot face Recession. Now there is no point in going into all the negatives about the worst global economic crisis of our generation. Instead let’s use this time to take a positive approach and celebrate the fact that, technically, it’s over!…[READ MORE]

10# Co-Creation
Our very drawn out top 10 of 2010 comes to its conclusion with Co-Creation. Now Co-Creation is something that is very close to Headbox’s heart, it is the process that our community is built around and it is what makes us a little bit different from everybody else. Co-Creation is the act of involving people in the marketing process…[READ MORE]

Balance is something that is essential when looking after a community of any kind. You have to get it right, you have to know your members and not stray too far from their expectations. Always make sure that you aren’t visibly favouring one member over another, and remain neutral at all times, whatever the situation.

It’s a discipline that you perfect over time, a way of dealing with things that provides you with the power to diffuse any situation and restore the balance within the community.

The Spark

Research and insight communities are based around one thing, opinions. Now opinions are brilliant, they are what Headbox and Mindbubble are built on. It is amazing comparing how peoples thought processes work and reading how people interpret information. The only problem with opinions is that they have the ability to cause serious confrontation.

All it takes is a small comment or an adverse remark and the whole community can blow up into a mini war. Sometimes users take sides and there is a full on battle, and other times it can be the whole community vs. one user, either way the community manager has to spring into action.

Identify & React

The first thing you have to do is understand exactly what the situation is… usually, if the issue is only just developing you can leave it a while, let it unfold and hope the problems resolve themselves organically. However, if you feel the situation has the potential to erupt you must be active. Unless something really serious has happened, do not automatically shut the conversation down, this can make incidents seem worse than they are and it affects everyone, rather than just those involved. Contact the participants away from the epicentre to understand what has caused the incident and find out what their intentions were – sometimes innocent actions can be misconstrued.

The majority of the time with a little force of hand and behind the scenes movement the situation can be resolved and the community moves on without any bitter taste.

Protect Opinions

This is not always the case though and opinions can cause much more serious problems in a community. It is usually very easy to see why someone or something has caused conflict; an abusive, offensive or different opinion has been said and rightly or wrongly users have reacted. It is these situations that are the most difficult to manage. Whether you agree or disagree with what has been said, as a community manager, you have to remain neutral and try and get things back on track. Obviously some comments and opinions are not tolerated and users are ejected from the community, but it is important to not just eject your way back to clarity, it affects the balance.

Variety of opinion is integral to communities and it is crucial to understand how different people decipher information. Just because someone has said something that lots of people disagree with, even including you, does not mean that they are not entitled to that opinion, no matter how ridiculous it may be. That one opinion could reflect the thoughts and feelings of a large proportion of the population and it is an opinion that should be relayed back to the client.

After the comment/opinion has been said the main task is to try and build the offender back into the community as quickly as possible. First it is crucial to gain control of the situation. Warn the users who are just there to stir the drama (they will always be there) and explain to everyone the purpose of the community, it is all about opinions. It is not about everybody just agreeing with everyone else, there will be disagreements and it is important that this event does not stain the rest of the project.

Restoring the Balance

It can sometimes be useful to invite the main players of the situation into a chat group or message thread to let them resolve it away from the rest of the community. The most important thing you can do here is reinforce the fact that the situation is over. Any extension of the event will not be tolerated and it is essential that there is no fallout further down the line. Then close the case, continue to monitor the users and if they repeat their actions, work out whether you think it is important for the rest of the community to eject them.

A community manager is not a community dictator; you cannot decide what does and what doesn’t happen in the community. You are there to motivate, watch, prompt, help, react and feedback. So, when a situation does erupt do not say who is right and who is wrong, it is not your place, take both opinions into consideration and diffuse it. Do not give participants more fire by openly stating your views, save that for when you feedback to your team or clients. In the community you are a peacemaker, a negotiator and, ultimately, a diplomat.

Read more: Research Breakthrough Award New Consumer Insights Special Contribution to Conference

This presentation, recently discussed at a number of conferences in the UK, Spain and Italy, looks in particular at crowd-sourcing and co-creation: why to use them, when to use them, what are the advantages, the drawbacks and the workarounds, what are the deliverables and how could these grassroots practices fit into the existing marketing process.

Using crowd-sourcing and co-creation as complementary frameworks is key to harness the wisdom of the crowds both at an individual and group-thinking level, bringing together bottom up and top down approaches, online and offline, to make sure the richness provided by mass collaboration is effectively shaped and leveraged by informed strategic thinking and expert insight.

Previously on the Hybrid approach:

The bottom is not enough – Kevin Kelly
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/02/the_bottom_is_n.php

Hybrids: Architectures For The Ecology of Co-Creation
http://www.joelamantia.com/social-media/hybrids-architectures-for-the-ecology-of-co-creation

In the first of our P2P research sessions Headboxer Rushda Khan (23) takes a look at the internet and how it effects her and her friends social world. Keeping a close eye on Facebook, Rushda investigates how, if at all, social networks benefit us:

Like many young people, my Facebook friend count has hit three figures. But I am not a popular person: I have exchanged only a few sentences with most of my Facebook friends and I have never spoken to a third of them at all. Yet pick one and I am likely to be able to tell you their interests, where they went last night and how they are feeling. I may even be able to tell you who they are in a relationship with and how well that relationship is going.

Most young people are only too familiar with the absurd situation where we see one such ‘friend’ on the street and think she got drunk at a party last night, and then pass them by without batting an eyelid. This person may know just as much about us and yet for all intents and purposes we are strangers, only on each other’s lists because of the most trivial recognition.

This ‘Facebook friend’ syndrome is a remarkable indication of the way young people now use the Internet. In earlier Internet days, we would log on specifically to email someone or chat to them on MSN. But now we use the Internet to connect to people in a way that could only be described as passive. We browse their photos and read their statuses without necessarily letting them know about it, rather like reading someone’s diary. We end up forming opinions about them without ever having communicated with them at all. Mirroring this is our intense desire to personalise our own space on the Internet – we do not just want to know about others, we want others to know about us.

But knowing about someone is not the same as knowing them. The latter requires an level of interaction which seems to have disappeared in our online habits. According to Virgil (22, Cambridge), social networking sites may not only do nothing to create or boost friendships, they may harm them as well. “I feel like I’ve spent time with someone even when I haven’t.” The irony therefore seems to be that social networking may not really be very social at all.

The passive way in which we ‘socialise’ online is only a symptom of a greater move towards using the Internet passively in general. Because of the number of things we can do at the same time, young people no longer need an aim when they are online and often do not choose to spend their time focussed on a conversation with one person. In the same way as we may connect to someone via social networking for no other reason than that we can connect to them, we are often connected to the Internet ‘for connection’s sake’ and don’t have to do anything in particular. While this lack of specific demands is enjoyable for many, some young people are overwhelmed by it. Sebastian (21, Bath) says he doesn’t even know what to do online much of the time.

Despite the social side leaving a lot to be desired, I still think however there is a certain beauty to the interconnected nature of the Internet. While a book or CD may be enjoyed in its own right, it will not link to other books and CDs in the way the Internet makes them link. While young people think that Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias are not sufficient for school work, crucially most still love the unique way we can explore topics in endless interconnected chains and find out about the world without having to go searching for specific things.

Similarly I think that the way in which young people can have an online experience rather than simply an online activity is exciting as we are constantly learning more and getting more than if we did just one task at a time. Taking music as an example, we have reached the point where we can now access new and diverse music at the click of a button, have it play via iTunes, see song lyrics, and see recommendations via sites such as Lastfm. All this can happen in the background and, like many other online applications, can be absorbed without even realising it.

There is no doubt that passive learning isn’t always the best way to learn something and passive socialising isn’t the best way to have friends. However, there are benefits to both and it is especially refreshing to have a balance between the real world and online world. This isn’t a new revelation: young people have always recognised this. While the Internet can no longer be considered as “geeky” by our peers due to the new trendiness of social networking, using the Internet too much is still considered anti‐social and has always been considered as such. Any young person I have spoken to passionately defends the superiority of face to face contact to online contact, even though they may spend many hours of their day online. It is indeed about the balance: there are some things in real life which cannot be replicated online and vice-versa. We can certainly do more online now and our habits have dramatically changed but that doesn’t mean what we do is replacing anything we value offline.

Young people today – the ‘Facebook generation’ – have set a precedent in way we use the internet. Having been an early user of the Internet, in the days when young people thought the “big thing”was to swarm internet chat rooms, it is astonishing to see the direction in which we have taken our online behaviour a decade on. It is therefore extremely difficult to predict what will happen in future. I only need to think about my little niece Sara to understand the changes that are occurring. She plays children’s games online and uses video chat adeptly, even though she is only four years old.

Who knows how she will be using the Internet when she is a teenager?

Part 2 coming soon, what do Rushda’s friends think of the current state of the internet?

Yesterday, The Independent published an article predicting the end of ‘the place for friends’, MySpace. We asked Headbox Think Tank member Ashley Wilkinson investigates the slow demise of the social networking heavyweight and looks back on the good times that were had.

I remember when I first started using MySpace. I was chatting to a friend from Australia, we were both bored and he said I should check out this thing called MySpace. I set up a profile and filled in some simple information. After browsing through a selection of other profiles I soon learnt that with some basic html you could personalise your profile in any way you wanted. I spent days playing around with my profile and adding new friends.

MySpace was big when I was at school, everyone had a profile. Most people checked their profiles several times a day and eventually the school blocked MySpace access (along with anything else of interest.) Fast forward a few years and MySpace is only ever mentioned with disdain and Facebook is the only social networking site that any of my friends use.

When Facebook first arrived on the scene, no one was interested. It was all very clinical and bland, it lacked any personality. Your MySpace profile was a reflection on your personality and made a big statement about who you were. Facebook on the other hand had the one size fits all approach and wasn’t the creative outlet that we demanded.

As time went on however MySpace slowed down. It was full of spam, pages took far too long to load due to excessive images, videos and flash plug-ins. Communicating with friends was slow and difficult and this allowed the once bland Facebook to launch its attack. Facebook became the easiest way to find your friends, send messages and post comments in a very effective manner. Communication was now the key, with no easy way to find particular friends in your friend list it just didn’t give the fast results you wanted.

When I started university, the only reason we used MySpace was to listen to music on band profiles. It was a legal way to check out a bands music before you saw them at a gig or bought the album. It was also a great place to discover new bands. Facebook use increased because it was an easy and informal way to chat with people you had just met in halls or at social events. MySpace was about individuality and personal expression whereas Facebook focussed on communication.

I think MySpace appealed to a younger audience who cannot go out whenever they want, it allowed them to create a persona, much like with role playing games such as World of Warcraft, and talk to people that they may not ever know in the real world. Older users, who are more independent and actually know most of the people on their friends list, just need a method of communication and something to help them procrastinate, avoiding work at all costs.

Today I check my MySpace profile every couple of weeks if I am bored just to see if I have any messages or comments but cannot remember the last time I actually had any. There is an amusing article on Platform Magazines website where the writers look back at their profiles. It is like visiting a former self because as they discuss, no one has changed their profiles since 2006 and it is a chance to take a nostalgic visit down memory lane.

With founder Tom Anderson now shafted, Rupert Murdoch has set out a new direction for MySpace. It is weird that just a the day before The Independent published it’s article, The Telegraph recieved some information on the new direction that MySpace will be going in. The new vision is that of a creative outlet for all young people’s talents, not just the focus on music. Only time will tell if they can restore themselves to their former glory. MySpace will also be playing catch up in the free ad based music streaming services. With its launch being delayed once again, services such as the hugely popular Spotify and Last.fm have even longer to attract new customers and with MySpace’s somewhat tarnished reputation, I find it hard to see how they will be able to regain the lost ground.

It’s strange to think that something that was so important just a few years ago is probably now going to slowly disappear in to the ether without anyone really caring, I guess it’s a reflection of the ridiculously fast and continuously evolving world we live in. I am not really sad to see MySpace go; the only question that its disappearance leaves unanswered is, who will be next?

P.S. Perhaps in a few years all that will be left of MySpace will be this wonderful spoof clip, MySpace the Movie.