Co-creation and Crowdsourcing
“The real revolution here is not in the creation of the
technology, but the democratization of the technology.” Chris Anderson.
Consumers are connected and
empowered, and they increasingly express their views and ideas online for
brands that they harbour strong feelings for. Their affinity for a brand can be
constructively channelled towards co-creation, a process where brand owners
collaborate with consumers in creating brand value.
Exhibit 9.13 NIKEiD is a service that allows you to customize your shoes exactly how you want them.
Co-creation is a growing phenomenon; more and more
companies encourage consumers to participate in activities for the development
of advertising and new products. People are building their own shoes
(NikeiD, Exhibit 9.13),
rings (Blue Nile), designing their own T-shirts, mugs, cards, calendars etc.,
conceiving their own pizzas (Papa John’s), and developing advertising content
for companies as diverse as Coca-Cola, General Motors and Microsoft. These activities, usually contests or games, are helping companies engage with
consumers and innovate at low cost.
Crowdsourcing (‘sourcing from crowd’) is the process of securing ideas, services or funding
from a crowd.
The Wikipedia approach to content creation exemplifies crowdsourcing. There are
also an ever-increasing number of instances of the use of crowdsourcing for
product development and marketing.
Take for example LEGO IDEAS (Exhibit 9.14), a crowdsourcing programme
that invites participants to create a Lego project, share it on the IDEAS
website, and seek supporters. Projects that secure 10,000 supporters are
reviewed by LEGO for a chance to become an official LEGO product. And if the
project passes review and is chosen for production, the creator receives 1% of
net sales as royalty.
As of February 2014, there were 5,563 live projects at
LEGO IDEAS and seven co-created products had been launched.
Another highly successful crowdsourcing example was
Kraft’s “How do you like your Vegemite?” campaign of 2008. It generated
over 300,000 submissions, resulting in
the formulation of a new variant, blended with cream cheese.
