ESOMAR: Rulemaking or Playmaking? Implications of the emerging co-creation landscape. Online Conference Berlin 2010

Editor's Notes

• #3: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scarydan/ Bias through participatory techniques focus on process/technology Lack of clarity, lack of a common language, lack of theoretical framework
• #5: http://www.blank-label.com/
• #9: There has been a lot of buzz around co-creation! http://www.flickr.com/photos/kerryank/
• #10: Access to cheap, fast and reliable internet has reached critical mass in many societies. This is the pre-condition for anything we discuss at this conference! Development of Linux the blue-print for online co-creation as we know it today – however it took about 15 years for these principles to reach the masses. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ottonassar/
• #11: It is hard to underestimate how much the social web has empowered us: it has given us the chance to stop being ‘consumers’ of the industrial age and turn into active ‘participants’ who have and share opinions, create and distribute user-generated content and who have an active stake in the brands and products we like. Arguably today, people have the chance to influence the relationship they have with brands and products more than at any point in history. The rise and importance of co-creation is merely a by-product of these processes.
• #13: The web diverted overflow of free time from (largely) passive TV watching to (largely) active web participation Challenge: how to harness the free time in activities that engage and dont feel like work! http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/cognitive-surplus-visualized/
• #15: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piri_reis_world_map_01.jpg
• #16: http://www.museumwaalsdorp.nl/akoestiek_eerstopd.html
• #17: http://www.danielresearchgroup.com/Portals/0/images/FocusGroup01.jpg
• #18: Top-down model vs bottom-up Cathedral vs bazaar Disintermediation!!! Panels: transparency, true engagement and shared purpose is missing! They are researcher convenient and not consumer-centric!! They do not leverage the potential the web has been endowed with!
• #26: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/2490285058/sizes/l/
• #27: At least three questions come to mind: Is the sponsor(client/brand) known to the participants (or not)? Are the business and research objectives underlying the project communicated (or not)? Are the results of the research shared with the participants (or not)?
• #28: http://www.flickr.com/photos/weexinsitu/3397519379/sizes/l/
• #30: The GHA is the world’s largest alliance of independent hotel brands. In 2009 the GHA decided to develop a new loyalty program called GHA Discovery which is based on the idea of providing unique, local experiences to reward frequent guests as opposed to the somewhat generic gifts one may redeem in the usual loyalty scheme. To give an example, an experience might be something like the following: Be the star of the show and switch on the lights for the ‘Lighting of Michigan Avenue Parade’ on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Or in a hotel in Malaysia it might be this: Challenge yourself during a game of squash with the number one player in the world Nicol David! Moving forward, the challenge the GHA faced was to generate unique and appealing ideas for these authentic experiences across their 12 hotel brands as well as three loyalty tiers. The ideas had to be both local (i.e. something that is special to the country/area the hotel is based in) as well actionable for each individual hotel.
• #31: Promise Communities were tasked with setting up and managing the GHA Innovation Community to facilitate a web-based crowdsourcing project that would a) generate the needed amount of ideas for local experiences and b) help the GHA to rank and short-list the best ideas. Just after launch, over 200 hotels joined the GHA Innovation Community with each hotel being represented by a selection of staff – from receptionists and marketing managers to GMs. Over the course of a few weeks, over 1,100 employees joined the private community and participated in a series of ideation activities. This crowdsourcingcommunity proved to be a huge success with employees, who generated over 2,000 individual ideas of how hotel guest could be rewarded with local, authentic experiences. (See figure 5.)
• #32: This long-list of ideas was subsequently narrowed down by the community members and was shared with the executive team for further refinement and implementation. In June 2010 the new GHA Discovery Loyalty Program based on the co-created list of ‘local experiences’ has gone live and is being implemented across the globe. (See figure 6.)
• #34: In many ways, the GHA Innovation Community represents a form of crowdsourcing: its objective is to use a clearly defined ‘crowd’ - here the employees of the 12 hotel brands - to generate as many new ideas and concepts as possible as well as to create a short-list of the most popular and appealing ones through ranking/ prioritisation. When applying our set of criteria defined earlier, one would find that this represents are more controlled form of online co-creation: while the GHA has now extended this community to act as their ongoing innovation engine, the single-minded purpose of the community (generate ideas for experiences) was clearly defined and needed to be fulfilled in a relatively short duration. Furthermore, the project followed a linear process: diverging in the ideation phase and converging during filtration. With over 1,000 community members, it involved a relatively large group of people, who were tasked to participate at least twice during the engagement. In this instance, the functionality of the platform allowed members to submit ideas and to vote on them – however given the objective of the project, other more open-ended and interactive activity types were not enabled. For example, community members were not specifically encouraged to launch their own research activities and given the nature of the project, live online focus groups and chat functionality were not deployed.
• #35: The Tata Beverage Group – part of the multinational Tata Group – wanted to embark on an unorthodox and innovative New Product Development process in order to create a game-changing drinks product. The only factors that were pre-determined were the two markets in which the product was supposed to be launched as well as the wider category.
• #36: Tata and Promise Communities joined forces to facilitate the NPD process using online co-creation through the Tata Advisory Board, a community made up of 300 consumers from each of the markets. It began life by exploring current consumer needs as well as specific category insights. After having established a number of relevant platforms for innovation, participants were then asked to develop and refine the most successful concepts. The second phase was then followed by a period of in-depth prototype testing which involved in-home trials and live online focus groups to gather detailed feedback and consumer recommendations. Currently, the most popular co-created route is being refined by participants to prepare for manufacturing and includes optimisation with regards to product and pack design, on-pack messaging as well as the product’s formulation.
• #37: Additionally, the research has been unusually transparent: participants got to know individuals working at the Tata Global Beverages over time and were resourced with detailed information about the project itself and the results of quantitative as well as qualitative findings. Week-by-week they could see the project progressing – from the blank canvas through to the first prototypes that were send to their homes. Clientconsumer interaction was enabled and both consumers as well as client made use of the feature: consumer could ask clients specific questions related to the NPD process and Tata Global Beverages while clients had a chance to probe individual comments and points made by consumers directly. (See figure 8.)
• #38: Finally, the more interactive tools and features of the community platform were deployed to allow for a richer and more engaged research environment: small groups of consumers representing different target groups were invited to live online discussions (Live Jams in our terminology) where they would discuss particular issues in more detail and be exposed to/feedback on rich, multimedia, stimulus. Similarly participants were encouraged to upload pictures and videos (such as diaries, recording of in-home trials etc.) they had taken themselves to the site in order to drive ideation and co-creation activities.