Mindbubble has been a hive of activity in recent months, not only have the usual bundle of co-creation, crowdsourcing and research projects been going on but also the Mindbubble blog has been brimming with new and exciting content.

We have assembled a crack team of Mindbubble members to blog for the community and keep us up to date with what is going on in their lives. Check out the links below to see some of the most recent posts and get to know our Mindbubble blogging team!

• Bullying on X-Factor: Has Online Bullying Become the new Gossip?
• Jam: The Art of Preservation
• 5 Reasons why we shouldn’t be talking about Karen Owen
• Results of question time #4: Super Heroines
• Are you Being Served?
• Rise of the Female Entrepreneur
• Introducing the New Mindbubble Blogging Team

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/how-researchers-and-planners-should-harness-the-crowd.html http://www.facegroup.com/how-researchers-and-planners-should-harness-the-crowd.html#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:05:17 +0000 Job http://www.facegroup.com/?p=3877

Listen to the crowd, but do not lose control!

Let’s be clear I don’t believe the crowd (without being very selective 
about your crowd) alone can give you fully formed insights, npd ideas 
and creative executions. I do believe however that the crowd and the 
web should play an instrumental role in research, planning and 
innovation. So here are 3 ways that the crowd should be used to help 
you crack these types of briefs:

Listen to the crowd

The web hosts conversations on pretty much every subject a researcher 
or planner could ever want to know about. In fact it is the biggest 
research resource we have access to so start using it. There are a 
number of tools including our own pulsar social media monitoring and 
analysis platform that allow us to listen to the crowd. When you start 
listening you will quickly find consumer problems that need solving, 
what brands are hot and not and lots of opportunities to engage with 
Pro-am consumers. Listening in real time to what consumers are 
discussing is addictive and very powerful if it feeds into an adaptive 
planning process.

Ask the crowd

Crowdsourcing is best used in the early stages of a project. Again 
there are lots of platforms you can use – we have developed our own 
platform that we are currently using for www.cocreatelondon.com. The 
process starts by giving consumers a clear question or challenge to 
respond to. What you will get back is a diverse mass of topline ideas, 
thoughts and some fully rounded responses. The role of the planner/
researcher with the help of clever filtering software is to look at 
the patterns from this data. What lays behind the ideas – in short what 
are the insights. Insights that can be used by planners to build 
platforms for innovation or communication.

Crowd wisdom

By opening up ideas in a crowdsourcing community for comment and 
rating you can see clearly user-generated clusters. This engagement 
amongst the community can highlight the strong ideas or themes; but 
just as importantly it can start the process of collaboration and 
co-creation to make ideas better and more appealing.

Mindbubble was launched in 2008

At the beginning of 2008 Face’s online qualitative research communities began to gather pace. First, net giant Google teamed up with us to create a three-month immersive research community with teenagers. The community focused on the future & relevance of internet search and produced some amazing insights that are still thought highly of within Google. Following on from this Doritos commissioned us to create a community steering group with the intention of helping the brand open up their communication and develop a clear social media strategy for their ‘You Make It, We Play It’ crowd-sourcing campaign.

In the Summer of 2008 we worked alongside Tango in a combined online and face-to-face co-creation project. The aim was to define the planning and positioning of Tango for their 2009 re-launch. The project was successful and led to the release of ‘Tango With Added Tango’ in May 2009 and provided the backbone for the overall Save Tango campaign.

Tango With Added Tango - A Co-Created Product

By this time social media had spread across many demographics, and it was quickly learnt that co-creation could be applied to any audience, anywhere, at any time.

With this revelation firmly at the front of our mind we started to explore the relationship between women, technology and the internet. This exciting new space was already being asked about by clients who were interested in how they could use Face’s approach to get closer to women, the gatekeepers of family life. The result of our interrogation into this subject was the original Women & the Web 2.0 Report.

The results of this were astounding, much like youth in previous years, women were creating a niche for themselves, finding their own space on the web. The knock-on effect of the report saw Face engage a group of women both online and face-to-face to build the first co-creation community for women, Mindbubble!

It was an instant hit. Boots were the first brand to work alongside the Mindbubble ladies, co-creating new products for their make-up lines. Following in the footsteps of Boots came Surf, Knorr, Dove, Comfort and Air Wick, all wanting to harness the power of the opinionated and creative Mindbubble ladies.

Moving into 2009 and we did not rest on our laurels, the natural restlessness within the company lead to the development and launch of Face Wired. Designed to develop the potential of co-creation in the planning sphere, Wired immediately teamed up with The Carphone Warehouse to help develop their social media strategy. The Carphone project included the use of Pulsar, Face’s brand new real time research tool.

Pulsar is Face's Social Media Immersion Platform and Methodology

Pulsar enabled Carphone to get even closer to their consumers and listen to what people were saying online. The speed and accuracy of Pulsar meant that the results could immediately be plugged into innovation and planning movements.

By this time, the floodgates were open; the size of the team had quadrupled and Midford Place, Face’s headquarters, had become the epicentre of everything co-creation. Community, Social Media and Co-Creation projects were coming in thick and fast and as our ambitious goals were beginning to be reached, another organic step was taken, adapting the co-creation process for advertising.

Next up… Part 3: Say Hello to The Hub

• Why have we never talked about girl gamers before?

In the USA, 40% of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (34%) than boys age 17 or younger (18%).

The reason why women didn’t get into gaming sooner, is probably down to the repelling image of female characters in video games. Very often in a secondary role, female characters have mainly been sexualised and stereotyped, which represents a real obstacle to any identification process and therefore interest in the game.

According to Helen W. Kennedy “The console games market has traditionally been very explicit in their exclusive address to a male audience. In the late 80s and early 90s both Nintendo and Sega made it very clear that to attempt to market games for girls would threaten their real market – boys and young men. Sony’s Playstation, by addressing youth culture in general, broke with this tradition”

Fortunately, this trend has changed, moving towards a set of powerful, fit, fast and precise female characters.

The Female Blood Elf - Probably Controlled by a Real Girl!!!!

• Is there a video game type for women?

Women don’t have as much time to dedicate towards video gaming as men do. Their lifestyle, children, and household care take up a lot of time on the top of their work! They are more likely to hook up with a game where they can, jumping in and out without being blocked in long-term objectives or achievements to reach.

The importance of the pace occurs with any genre of game. For example Grand Thief Auto, even though rated as one of the most violent and offensive games, does procure instant fun and entertainment, and therefore, generally, women enjoy it.

Something that EA understood very well with The Sims, is that women like to personalize their characters and create something they can identify with. The desire to escape reality in cyberspace tends to be a common element across genders; however, women do place greater importance on the customization of characters and gaming environments.

• So what’s the secret recipe for the perfect video game for girl?

Women who are into gaming, whether for work or pleasure, gather in associations to lobby for the access of video gaming careers to women, by subsidizing loans or giving career advices to young girls. Women want to see “more women making games, and thus, to make more games that women want to play.”

In reality, the number of women working in the industry is already rising: for example 60% of the developers behind The Sims are women. However, this may not be the miracle that women are waiting for. Sherry Floyd , a game designer at SOE’s Seattle studios, comments “I honestly don’t think it’s a gender issue,” she continues. “I think it’s a marketing issue.”

In the popular subconscious, women playing video games are abnormal: games are for guys. Unless they are accompanying their male partner, females are not seen as legitimate in video gaming temples (cyber cafes, game shops etc..). For example, women are more likely to under-report the number of hours the play then men, as if being a video gamer does not fit with being a women.

In statistics, female players are shown as two major clusters: casual gamers brought in by a partner or sibling, and hardcore gamers. But in reality, girl gamers are much more immersed in gaming than the stats like to show, and it’s this ability to adapt their gaming time that the industry should focus on to attract the female segment.

Playstation saw sense and avoided the 'Shrink It & Pink It' approach

• The girl gamers are crying out loud: give us a real segmentation!

As the figures show, women are now a real sub-group of the market: why not consider them as such?

Fortunately, women can salute the corporate effort to integrate female developers, as it helped the gaming industry to avoid the catastrophe of a full “shrink it and pink it” strategy. However, there is still a gap between the current offer (both products and marketing strategy) and the real landscape of female consumers.

Sources:
Entertainment Software Association
http://gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/#top
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/02/28/women.gamers/index.html

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.

Mindbubble, Face’s online co-creation community for women, was included in a very interesting article on the NMA website today. Using Mindbubble as an example the article explores the benefits brands can reap when using the internet to connect and collaborate with their consumers.

The article named simply ‘FMCG Brands’ runs through examples of how brands are successfully using communitites and social networks to close the gap between themselves and their target market. Citing the advantages of online communitites specifically the article said of Mindbubble:

Other FMCG brands are experimenting with tapping into third-party communities. Mindbubble, an online community aimed at women aged 25 to 50, was launched in May 2009 by co-creation agency Face, allowing collaboration with brands on product development and marketing.

Aquafresh, Boots, Comfort and Surf have been involved in piloting the concept. “It provides a platform for exploring ideas more dynamically, building on consumer feedback iteratively with input from various people internally as well,” says Joel Dawson, head of digital marketing at Boots UK. “This approach has proved to be a useful tool for product innovation and has provided us with a number of ideas which are currently being brought to market.”

To read the full article click here!

The controversial and immensely successful release of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is particularly timely given that we are in the midst of the festive season. Modern Warfare 2, which was released in November of this year, smashed entertainment industry records to become the biggest entertainment release of all time. Within 5 days of it’s release Modern Warfare 2 generated $550 million, over $150 million more than the biggest ever 5 day gross at the box office (Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, $394 million in opening 5 days).

Banned in Russia, because of a controversial scene in which the player can choose to mow down civilians in a terrorist attack on an airport, the storyline of the game focuses on the large-scale outbreak of war in the modern world, further pushing its timely quality with the recent ramping up of the war in Afghanistan. The controversial subject matter and particularly realistic setting has set the game up one of the most talked about Christmas presents for mother’s to give their children this year. On her blog, one Mother sarcastically asked and answered: “How do we really feel about war, anyhow? After 40,000 years the evidence is in. We like it. Here’s the top toy we will give this year to our children to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.”

Upon hearing the discussions about whether Mums would buy Modern Warfare 2 for their young children, I thought about my Mum’s impact upon my early life as a gamer. Unable to conceive of getting into video games without her financial backing as a child, and baring in mind that the world of gaming had changed significantly since I was a child in the early 1990s, I decided to ask her a few questions about her interactions with games via my obsession with them as a child.

“I think I started buying you games around 8 or 9 years old. You didn’t get them immediately. You had to ask for a long time, even though your friends had them for a while, but I guess it was a point of reference for you. To have something in common with others was I think the main reason we bought you a console.

“Particularly being an only child I didn’t want you to feel left out, I suppose all mothers have that urge though. I thought it might have a positive impact on your hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, so when I first started buying them I would more or less choose the games that you got, apart from the ones your uncle bought for you! I remember I bought you Ecco the Dolphin and Art Alive because I thought the covers looked nice and I thought there might be some education value to them!”

I don’t really have any memories of my Mum getting me those game I didn’t really want, although there are lots of stories floating around the internet about Mum’s getting the wrong game for their child, especially with Modern Warfare 2 having a similar release for the Wii that is more an updated version of an older game.

I had totally forgotten about these placid and notoriously difficult games, but it was probably more its difficulty, especially of Ecco the Dolphin, rather than the fact that my Mum had chosen it. It was interesting that she choose the game purely based on the cover though, rather than play-testing it herself, as the internet didn’t exist in our world circa 1992.

I asked her what her concerns were with me playing video games as a child in general.

“Yeah I had concerns generally. I had heard stories of addiction on the radio, alongside those more extreme stories of children getting violent through not being able to differentiate between fantasy and reality and re-enacting the games that you had, but ultimately I didn’t censor you beyond the extremely violent and gore-filled games as I had faith both in my parenting ability by correlation your own ability to distinguish fantasy and reality.

“I was vehemently against buying GTA for you, all I had heard about was the violence in it, even though I knew your friends had it and you had the money to buy it yourself when you were 12 I didn’t let you buy it.”

I remember that my friends had Grand Theft Auto, one of the most controversial games that has since become a best selling series, allowing the player total freedom in a city but encouraging them through storyline to become a career criminal. I suppose the early censorship my Mum had instilled had worked as I don’t really remember having a large desire to get GTA, and it was only when the 3D version came out when I was older at around 15, that I had a desire to buy it, and my education in games in conjunction with my Mum’s early censoring had firmly distinguished gaming from reality.

This ability to distinguish even formed part of my argument when asking my Mum to buy me a game she wasn’t prepared to.

“Well your Uncle Herman would pass you down lots of games he would have, but I asked him to censor them, which he did most of the time! I’d buy you gaming magazines quite regularly; I still think to do that sometimes! And you’d usually get the same games as your friends. When it came to me actually buying games for you, you’d try and charm me!

I remember one time when we had been at the theatre seeing Richard II and you said to me ‘Can we have a look in the games shop?’ phrasing it in such an innocent way that you just wanted to have a look at what was there, but we both knew full well that you knew exactly what game you wanted!”

I too remember never once thinking ‘ah I’ll just have a look’ and always attempting to get my Mum into the games shop so that I’d have a shot at getting the specific game I had in mind.

“Once we got inside you’d keep the charm going but on this particular occasion after the theatre, with a large bout of pestering too! On the whole though you knew which games I would get you and which I wouldn’t, and once I had told you that it wasn’t suitable for you, you’d try with another game you had in mind.”

I do remember my journeys to the game shop as mostly being successful with my Mum, but I don’t think she ever bought me a game that was way out there and unsuitable.

“I would largely look at the cover then decide whether it was suitable for you, because you’d be with me most of the time I didn’t really have the opportunity to test it at home for myself, but we did end up playing one of the more controversial ones together and I got really into it.”

This brought me to one of my clearest memories as a young gamer. My Mum sat down and actively took part in scrolling beat-em up games with me. None of my other friends Mum’s did that! So it was really fun that she actively took part in them and we able to complete or get to the final round of, the two games we played the most together; Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe 2.

“I think your Uncle Herman gave you Golden Axe, which I really really enjoyed but although we got to the final round we never completed it! And Streets of Rage, I was iffy about the violence on the cover but I let you convince me slightly and I wanted to experience it myself to see whether it was bad or not, and in the end I ended up really enjoying it! The girl character became a fantasy me! I really loved that we got to go on a quest together, especially with the fantasy setting of Golden Axe, I trusted your ability to differentiate between the game and reality. I liked the stories too and felt a thrill at accomplishing them!

I think I ended up playing it through wanting to experience how violent it was for myself and also you asking me to play with you when you didn’t have friends round. Unless you experience it for yourself, you don’t really know what it’s about and it also gave me validity if I needed to censor it while we were playing. I guess the lack of blood and gore, despite the violence was a key factor in letting those two particular games slide, they really weren’t as bad as some of the others, and especially Golden Axe which was set in a more fantastical realm”

At this point I begin to contrast my Mum’s attitude with 16-bit graphical violence with the graphics of the modern day behemoth of gaming, and in particular the controversial level in which the player takes the role of a soldier who goes undercover as a terrorist and is encouraged to gun-down innocent civilians in an airport. The fact that this level can be skipped is in many ways an emotional plot device to get the player to dislike the bad guys of the game. Even if the player does decide to take on the level they do not have to largely partake in the shooting of civilians.

After the brief story monologue, and the in-action graphics of the game appeared, my Mum looked at me shocked at how realistically the graphics had progressed since we were playing together more than 10 years ago.

“I’m shocked at the realness of it! I’m not sure I would’ve bought you the beat-em up games if they’d been this real!”

When the shooting of civilians started happening she looked visibly disgusted.

“I don’t like how the gun was coming from my perspective, that makes it too real. It didn’t used to be like that point of view. There’s a crossover with reality here also.”

She stopped the video ¾ of the way in though, as she was unsure if she could continue. “

I’ll finish it but it’s caused me a degree of anxiety definitely, but then again I suppose I am able to suspend my disbelief as the characters walk through the bodies in a cartoony way rather than stepping over them in a more realistic way, but the wanton destruction of this game disgusts me. It made me shudder and dragged my emotions into it despite it being a game. If you were younger, I wouldn’t be buying that for you if you!”

I ask about the upcoming proposal for the Digital Economy Bill, which will make it illegal for the first time to sell 12+ rated games to children under the age of 12 and she answers with full confidence in the passing of that law.

“Yep very sensible, the media has a part to play in this because you only hear about the games that cause controversy, or I do anyway because you were my link to that world, but I suppose if you were younger now I’d use the internet more to check up on what games you wanted and maybe look for more realistic takes on reviews or multiple ones anyway.

“Games have definitely got more realistically violent since I was buying them for you, but I suppose the world has seemingly got more violent too in the reporting of violence. There’s more a saturation of violence it seems, but having said that I’m intrigued by the Wii, which my friend has a Pilates game for so I’d consider checking that our, and I get the impression that it spans generations rather than hardcore teenage gamers. It seems to have something more appealing. I think the key factor in parental control is actually experiencing the game for myself though.”

While my Mum has been musing about whether to buy herself a Wii since interviewing her, there is definitely a thread that the violence of games past went unnoticed by parents and there are plenty of examples of kids appealing to internet gaming community members to help them persuade their Mum’s to buy them Modern Warfare 2 (examples here, here, here and here). Yet in a lot of cases (well, at least in mine), Mum’s decision was often final and perhaps it needs that firmness to give children a clear sense about how to choose what games they can deal with. There is no doubt that it’s essential to censor young children to games in some form, but my discussion with my own Mum also suggests that it is possible to find a middle road, where both parents and children can enjoy games together, where censoring can become more of a behind-the-scenes issues rather than a confrontational one.

Nathan Miller is an Assistant Community Manager @ Face

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