Here at Face we are always have various interns working in our office and this week we are honoured to have a Headbox member; the one and only Ashley Wilkinson! So we let him settle in for ten mintues and then we asked him to write a blog about his experience with us so far and we have to say he’s done a stirling job! So carry on reading to hear about Ashley’s time with Face and of course Headbox so far, we’re sure there’s more to come!
I joined Headbox just before I started university. That was about 3 years ago now and I have been lucky enough to work on lots of projects during my university experience. I think I found out about Headbox in a UCAS email and was tempted by the promise of rewards for my opinions. I am a pretty opinionated kind of guy and the prospect of being rewarded for big brands actually listening to my thoughts and ideas was really appealing.
I think it is a right of passage most students go through. You are about to start the next stage of your life and all of a sudden you realize that you actually have to start paying for things and so special offers, freebies, discounts and the like become a top priority. I signed up with lots of these research companies promising rewards for my opinions and answers in surveys but the vast majority have been the bane of my email account for 3 years. Every day I get at least 4 or 5 emails asking to take part in surveys but I have long since given up. I never received a single reward or had anything to show or any feeling that anything I was saying was really being used or actually felt to be useful by anyone.
However working with Headbox has been a totally different experience. I have worked on a variety of exciting projects with brands such as Doritos, Lynx and Dr Pepper. I am a particular fan of Doritos and a bit of a chilli fiend so Doritos and dip is a favourite of mine. A group of us got to try some new flavours and give some opinions on what new combinations of flavours we thought would work or would like to see in the shops. I got a real kick out of walking through Morrisons one day and actually seeing some of these new flavours on the shelves. Doritos then ran a competition for the public to come up with and film a new advert. Each week we voted for our favourite and then we picked a winner. Again, it was exciting to then see this advert on television and be able to say to my friends that I had been a part of the process of picking the winning advert.
I am now here at Headbox HQ interning for a few weeks to see how the company works and to get involved in as much as possible. This is the field that I want to get into once I graduate in the summer so I am hoping to make some contacts and see how this industry works. The office is very relaxed, everyone has been really friendly and it feels like a great place to work. So far I have helped with some social media projects, researched opinions online and helped record some information from an online community.
Mindbubble
Mindbubble had it’s first 5 minutes of fame this month also thanks to a great feature in Marketing Week. Mindbubble beat off all the competition to appear on page 5 of this reputable magazine and as has been creating some great buzz ever since. So we’ve put together some of the top links from the past few weeks so please take a look at what people have been saying about us and don’t forget to comment and let us know what you think!
New Media Age
Mad
Right Brain Left Brain
Free rein
and some coverage from slightly further afield:
Brand News (brandnews.ua)
Boots UK
popsop.ru
Andrew's Idea Rush
At the MRS Conference last month I was invited to take part in the Ideas Rush an exercise where you have 5 minutes to talk about one idea and you are only allowed one slide to help you communicate it. I decided that my idea was going to start with a balloon and end with a massive bang. I asked the 70-80 delegates in the room to stand up; muster up as much energy as possible and then blow up their balloons with it. After they had tied their balloon I then instructed them to write 1% on it with a black marker pen before then placing the balloon on their seat.
The name of my idea (you guessed it) was the 1%ers (or “Adfluentials” as we call them at Face). As brands’ leading edge consumers they place an increasingly important role in the co-creation process. To find them brands need to start looking at consumers in a fundamentally different way – not just as potential customers who want to buy something from them but as people who want to have a relationship with them.
The 1%ers are not passive respondents but active equals in your brand and they sit at the top of a brand relationship pyramid. They are:
1. Generally passionate about your category;
2. Passionate about your brand;
3. Have a set of skills that you could harness in co-creation
4. Have a large peer network
The key to getting the most out of your 1%ers is to worry less about how you are going to influence them in the hope that they will influence the rest of your potential customer base and worry more about how you are going to let them influence YOU.
If brands are prepared to let the 1%ers influence them, then the energy and the impact they can create for the brand could be as much if not more than the energy and the impact we created in the room by sitting on our balloons all at once. BANG!
A common mistake of those new to open innovation & research is to confuse the practice of co-creation with that of crowdsourcing. As a result I thought I would give a quick guide to both, hopefully clearing up any confusion people might have.
Co-creation
Co creation is the act of company stakeholders collaborating directly with selected (usually smaller) groups of consumers to work on a specific brief. This can take place on-line in communities or offline in workshops. The aim of co-creation is to develop ideas together with consumers that meet their needs and fulfill business requirements of the company.
Benefits
-Produces more robust products and ideas that consumers want to buy and companies can produce
-Faster way of generating new & disruptive ideas and solving problems
-Immerses companies in the lives, aspirations and needs of their consumers
-Builds strong and lasting relationships between companies and consumers
Examples of Co-creation in Practice
Axe
Philips
Lego
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of a company taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to a large community of people in the form of an open brief. This is primarily undertaken by individuals on-line who compete against each, with the winning idea being voted for by the community or by the company (more like a competition).
Benefits
-It is cost effective as companies pay by results
-The company can tap a wider range of talent than might be present in its own organization
-By listening to the crowd, companies gain consumer insight
-The community may feel a stronger relationship with the company which is the result of an earned sense of ownership through contribution & collaboration
Examples of Crowdsourcing in Practice
Doritos
My Starbucks idea
Dell Ideastorm
connect