Frederic Martin's List: Co-Creation

• According to marketing expert Mikkel, a time has come where the old-fashioned relationship between business companies and the customer will no longer suffice.
• A new production cycle is arising, where the end user takes control in the process of creating new products, and plays a crucial role in shaping that very product to suit her needs.
• The more a company allows its customers to express their creativity on a brand new product, the more desirable that product will look to the target audience.
• The customers won't have the feeling of buying something already pre-packaged, but they will rather be more likely to perceive a product which has multiple dimensions and benefits and which can provide a unique experience for each single user.
• In this insightful report entitled "The Co-Creative Consumer", marketing expert and web-designer Mikkel takes you into a journey exploring the emergence of a positive collaboration between consumers and brands creating products and services for them.
• Businesses once had the control: they would develop a product which they advertised, then waited for people to buy it. Besides the necessary means of communication to make a sale, the businesses didn’t interact much with it’s surroundings. The economist Milton Friedman nailed this way of thinking with the words: "The business of business is business", an expression of a business being a closed and independent entity.
• Businesses today are keenly aware that there is little distinction between itself, its customers, its employees, the surrounding society and many other factors.
• But businesses struggles to control their image
• The problem is however that control is practically impossible - the technology is too advanced and the respect for authorities is too low.
• The desire to control an increasing amount of information, results in the need to become "omnicommunicative": watch and communicate about almost everything.
• The more "omnicommunicative" a business becomes, the more there is to monitor and control - and a negative spiral has begun.
• There’s also been a dramatic increase in the amount of criticism of and animosity towards businesses.
• More important - the perpetrators and critics could be employees, customers, competitors or complete outsiders. They will investigate the company and it’s products, spread stories and find secrets which the company would rather not have published.
• A bit will be false rumors, but most will be the accounts of frustrated customers about bad service and products, publishing of confidential notes or rumors conveyed by employees. The newest official statements will be compared to earlier ones, the personal lives - past and present - of key officials will be googled, press announcements will be commented out of proportion, rumors will arise out of thin air and for a short moment be regarded as truth.
• There’s so much of this criticism, that control is impossible - it doesn’t even make sense to talk about "fragmented communication" (nor "integrated") any longer. We have to talk about the "fragmented world" or society, which is the new condition that everyone must work within: a uncontrollable world where everyone that has an opinion of the company, also is a part of it.
• Attempts to direct and influence this fragmented world, for instance through PR-people, will fare badly - one cannot control a fundamentally uncontrollable world - at least not without losing ethical capital.

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