KL Communications is an online research supplier, and if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you are too. As we’re trying to proselytize the benefits of consumer co-creation to the masses overall—while bringing it to our clients with a unique process and platform we (naturally) believe is superior—it is both frustrating and extremely satisfying to see brands co-creating directly with consumers.
Every month I turn to Google to scope out the competition; I’m looking to see what firms similar to ours are up to, but I can’t help but notice some of the better examples of the big guys going it alone with consumer insight communities.
First, there’s the BMW Group Co-creation Lab. BMW’s lab really fires on all four cylinders in that it offers an organic community for enthusiasts, invites them to contribute original ideas, and asks them to evaluate concepts already in the making—all in a well-thought-out online interface with gamification elements.
Completed projects include co-creating concepts for better interior customization, which yielded a color-matching camera so you can match your car’s interior to your shoes (or anything you like), and right now they’re looking at ways to improve trunks, or the “luggage compartment” as they call it, either because they’re European or because BMW really wants to know what people with baggage think.
Do you remember the printer scene from the movie Office Space? You know, the one where they put the printer out to pasture in epic form after being unable to troubleshoot a “PC Load Letter” error message? Mike Judge was going for hyperbole but it’s funny precisely because there’s a grain of truth there. The folks at the Fuji Xerox R&D Square Co-creation Lab would gamely call the characters’ frustration “finding the seeds that will grow into solutions” and troubleshoot at their on-site lab.
In one project, university professors were not utilizing their school’s digital system for administering and collecting assignments. When Fuji Xerox brought them in to the lab with their own R&D engineers, they learned that many still preferred issuing paper tests. They then worked with the professors to come up with a solution to better integrate paper media with the online grade-tracking concept.
The proprietary learning management system Fuji Xerox created as a result recognized student handwriting on scanned paper tests and automatically registered the scores in the online system. Students could then log in and view their grades, as well as their tests as electronic documents.
Normally, I wouldn’t call accommodating paper in an online system an improvement, but Fuji Xerox specifically sought to overcome an adoption problem and they got to the heart of the matter and creatively increased utilization using co-creation.
Consumer co-creation allows customers to feel heard by the brands they use and like, and lets companies create products and services that actually resonate with them. And when co-creation is achieved within the context of a market research online community (MROC), organizations reap the additional benefits of cost-savings, around-the-clock availability to participants, and quick-turnaround consumer insights. While I wish these guys were doing it with us, I’m happier still to see them doing it at all.