Our trusted Intern Nathan

As you know here at Face we are always having interns working in our office and for the past few weeks we have had a great guy called Nathan. Nathan has been getting involved with lots of projects at Face but last week he asked to attend a co creation workshop we were running with some of our Mindbubble women. Nathan very kindly wrote a blog about his experience of co-creation and we thought it’s only fair to share it with you. So carry on reading to find out about Nathan’s first co-creation experience…..

As an intern looking to start a full-time market research career I was excited to experience exactly what co-creation involved. As such I asked if I could sit-in on a live co-creation workshop as part of my work experience at Face. As well as increasing my understanding of research as an industry I wanted to understand what separated co-creation groups from the stiff cliché of focus groups. I also wanted to to get more of a feel for what Face as an agency is really about.

My major revelation as to how different co-creation is to focus groups, was the answer to my question “so who leads the group?” My new colleague answered “the co-creators: they do” pointing towards the group of mothers I had merely assumed to be respondents. My exposure from that point on was an educational experience in how to attain actionable results rapidly. These co-creators had been recruited using Face’s rigorous recruitment process which begins with its online community for women, Mindbubble. This plays a key role in achieving productive and applicable results quickly and effectively. The co-creators are chosen because they are consumers who are passionate about the category and the brand but also happen to be creative and articulate – the 1%ers or “Adfluentials” as Face calls them.

Instead of the usual one dimensional Q&A of focus groups, co-creation workshops have a multi-faceted structure to them. A large group of creative, tuned-in women became smaller groups. They are joined by experts and stakeholders from the brand, insight and R&D teams and are tasked with instructions and idea generation.

These smaller groups act as condensed, more salient focus groups that share and build on each others’ ideas, producing much more direct and actionable results than a standard focus group could hope to provide in the same time. Viable social media and communication strategies, new product and sponsorship ideas had already developed and it was only the end of the first day! This experience enriched my own understanding no end in the direction that productive research should be heading in