Archive for the ‘Face’ Category

South by South West Interactive: a weird science

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Right. So, where do we start? Well I guess I should have sent updates from the front earlier, but I got sucked into the carnival of geekdom and couldn’t help but just enjoy it. Three days into South By South West Interactive and the first thing I feel I should mention is that I’m tired. I’m knackered infact, as if I had been working on 6 debriefs, 5 pitches and had run the New York marathon all over the same weekend. The good news is the weekend is over. The bad news is, it has gone by far too quickly.

SXSWi is the most intense conference/festival ever. And it’s not just because of the ridiculous number of panels, talks and workshops, or the mental number of parties kicking off as soon as the last speaker of the day drops the mic. I think it has more to do with the immersive nature of the experience as a whole. SXSW is basically a massive social experiment a la Zimbardo about a world, a few years out, where every single human being has totally embraced the real-time social web and is always logged on, life-streaming and constantly connected to his own tribe.

There’s no in or out of SXSW, once you are here you can only be IN: in the conference centre, on the streets, in the virtual space. It’s a total experience, a world that Tim from @madebymany yesterday described as the “Kingdom of Awesome, a metaphorical ‘State’ of hive-mind” where for one single week you’re intensely sharing and life-sharing with hundreds of people on Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere collapses into a physical space, a few blocks weird town in Texas. No wonder that the two apps that are rocking this year’s edition, Foursquare and Gowalla, only do one thing: connecting virtual characters to physical spaces.

Foursquare experienced an extraordinary day yesterday, recording a record-breaking 347,000 check-ins in one day (as in people checking in a conference room, a venue or a bar when they get there, to let their connections know that they are there). I’ve been using Foursquare for a while in London but using it here in Austin has a completely different meaning. In a context where only a few people are using it, the engagement leans towards the gaming elements, while in situations like SXSWAustin the app serves a solid social purpose.

Foursquare’s location-based sharing meets a need that couldn’t be met by any other media: facilitating face-to-face connections between people who build and manage their networks through social media, i.e. people with ahigher number of active social connections. Imagine if you were to phone, txt or generally engage, 1-2-1, with the hundreds of people you’re constantly in touch with on Twitter… One week wouldn’t be enough just to get hold of half of them.

I had the same feeling last year, when I came to SXSW for the first time and realized how different it was to use Twitter in a place where 12 thousand other festival peoploids were doing exactly the same at the same time. In a situation like this Twitter is simply way more efficient than any other available media. And it’s not just a question of scale, it’s a completely different way of existing in a social space, building knowledge, relationships and ultimately societies. You know all this. But being immersed in it is a completely different story.

So, even if every panel had been useless, every party boring, and even if it had been pouring rain for a week (as opposed to the amazingly warm summer that welcomed us), it would still be all very worthwhile. Because SXSW is not so much about SXSW but more about the community around it. It’s not about emergent technology in itself but about bringing together in one place, people who use fairly common social technologies just to see what happens. It’s about taking part in this weird laboratory of the future, where you can really start grasping what social technology is all about, what are the opportunities, what are the challenges and the dangers ahead.

Note to self: next SXSW posts, a lot shorter and with actual content/no random rumblings

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How Researchers and Planners Should Harness the Crowd

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

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.

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Co-Create London – Top 10 Ideas So Far!

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Co-Create London has been live for exactly 10 days and thus far we are ecstatic about the results! As this is being written we have received 249 ideas from 191 people and a staggering 2,219 votes have been cast!!!

We thought we would let you know what’s been going on over at CoCreateLondon.com, starting with the Top 10 ideas on the site so far as voted for by Co-Create London users.

1) Free Wi-Fi hotspots in public spaces across town – 127 votes
Free WiFi access seems to be something that Londoners want to see in the city. However there has been some backlash to this with other users asking – how would WiFi make London a better place?

2) Open library-style book kiosks/ book swap system in Tube stations so Londoners are never without reading material on the underground! – 63 votes
Bringing some culture & entertainment to the transport system is something that has been a running theme on the site. This idea has been the pick of the bunch with a strong backing from Co-Create London users.

3) Oyster Card becomes Oyster London card – pay for anything in London up to the value of 20GBP – 58 votes
A few users have been quick to say that this idea has already been explored by TFL but didn’t go ahead due to financial regulation complications. However, making it only for small payments adds in a new angle and would encourage spending.

Could it be used for other purchases beside travel?

4) Tube Tunnels as giant immersive flipbooks. We all travel miles & miles underground everyday through black tunnels. The Tube carriages have all got amazing windows to look outside of the train at… well, nothing. Wouldn’t it be nice if the walls of the tunnels were covered in series of pictures that vary gradually from one to the next, so that when the trains goes through the tunnel they get animated? – 56 votes
A new model for artists, creative types, brands and advertisers to get involved with. Would brighten up millions of Londoners journey to work but is it feasible?

5) Simply by putting air conditioning on the tubes would improve life in London during the Summer 100% – 56 votes
Boris has introduced air conditioning on the circle line and, as some Co-Creators have noted, there have been cut backs on energy use in stations to reduce heat but is it even possible for there to be a totally cool tube?

6) Annual Open Labs Day…Similar to Open House Weekend, but celebrates our city’s vast and under-appreciated science culture. The public get to question real scientists in working labs, and explore London’s scientific history (Darwin, Newton, Hooke, Faraday, Franklin, Jenner, Davy, Maxwell…) through open days at places like the Royal Society, Royal Institution etc. – 54 Votes
Exposing and helping the public understand the great scientific significance and heritage London has is a great idea! Could be amazing with the right marketing behind it, but will it get backing from Boris?

Boris has unveiled air-conditioned tubes on the circle line but can he do this for the whole of the tube system??

7) A swimming lane system on Oxford Street, people who want to walk slowly and browse you walk on the inside of the pavement (nearest the shops), people who have got to go places and are in a hurry walk on the outside (nearest the road). This would stop all the pushing, shoving, barging, dodging, frustration, pain etc that walking on Oxford Street causes!! – 49 votes
The human congestion on Oxford Street causes frustration for thousands. The new crossing at Oxford Circus has been a success so why not go one step further and create a manageable, easy and beneficial system for the rest of the street?

8 ) Turn Empty Shops in to spaces for performance, places to learn a new skill and mini-markets for creative local residents to sell their wares. – 46 votes
It is no secret that there are lots of empty retail spaces in London, especially after the recession. Why not do something positive with this free space? Giving it back to the community could help regenerate areas and encourage potential buyers.

9) Instead of the Oyster machines making the same beeping noise when you go through, each one has a different musical note, such as a piano key. – 45 votes
Would a series of these small, fun and quirky ideas cheer up commuters and make travelling in the city more fun? The users on the Co-Create London site seem to think so!

Outdoor dancing, big in China, could it be introduced in London???

10) Encourage more frequent outdoor dancing – 412votes
China and Japan have been doing it for years, it is hard to imagine Londoners getting involved though. Would be amazing if the right scheme was set up!

Throughout this week we will be running through some of our favourite ideas and releasing more information about the journey Co-Create London is about to go on!

What Would You Do To Make London A Better Place?

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The Creatives Role in Co-Creation

Friday, March 5th, 2010

In the spirit of co-creation and the core value of openness that comes with it I welcome wholeheartedly Lucian Camp’s thoughts regarding The Co-creation Hub. However I would like to counter some of them as well as try to enlighten him on the benefits co-creation brings to creativity and to the marketing process as a whole so that he will bring his experience and talent to bear on what we are trying to achieve.

He is right to highlight some of the very real concerns many people in the creative community have regarding co-creation. Indeed it is easy to look upon it as a process that makes creative people redundant and worse, fails to recognise the high esteem with which clients hold creativity and creative departments. But this is to misunderstand the nature of co-creativity. It’s not about dinosaurs versus trailblazers, it’s about a new way to find truly innovative and compelling creative solutions to clients’ problems and by the very nature of creative people we should all be open to new processes and approaches.

The good news is that as a Hub we have been engaging in this debate for a while and generally speaking we have been able to carry both people internally and externally with us on our journey. And there are three important reasons for this. (more…)

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Face: A Co-Created History – Part 3

Friday, March 5th, 2010

In the later stages of 2009 it was becoming clearer and clearer that research, innovation and planning should and could work together in a tighter environment. A continuous process needed to be adopted, as opposed to one based on silos; and consumers should sit in the heart of this process.

This idea was the seed for our hugely popular and controversial presentation, Do Brands Really Need Agencies. Within a packed room at London’s Groucho Club, brand managers and agency people ascended to listen to what this new adaptive approach could do for the industry. One of the agencies taking part in the conversation at the Groucho Club was our office mates and advertising gurus, Farm!

Farm agreed that the industry needed a shake up and that for brands and agencies to really understand the needs and wants of their consumers they would need to work with them, not at them.

Do Brands Need Agencies? | Face Forum, Nov 09

In November 2009 we worked closely with Farm to help Skinny Cow develop ideas and create their latest advertising campaign – ‘Oh Yes You Can’. The collaboration took place online within Mindbubble and face-to-face with members of the brand team, Farm creatives and Mindbubble ladies all under the guidance of our robust methodology.

After the experience of collaborating and co-creating with Farm, we started to talk about how this partnership could become a permanent yet agile business model. Here the idea for the Co-Creation Hub was born and a new way of doing things began to take shape.

After hours of meetings, arguments, laughter and much deliberation The Co-Creation Hub London was brought to life. The Hub is a collective of organisations, academics and individuals who passionately believe in doing things ‘with’ people rather than ‘at’ people.

The Founding Members of The Co-Creation Hub, London

Alongside Face the other founding members of the Co-Creation Hub London are Farm, the advertising agency, which has co-created communications for Nestle’s Skinny Cow; Opticomm, the media planning agency; Touch of Mojo, the brand design agency; and thrudigital, the social media development agency. And, they are actively looking for organisations and individuals from different fields that share their way of thinking, to get involved and help develop the co-creation movement.

Andrew Needham, founding partner of Face, as well as group managing partner of Tangible Group London, a core division of Cello Group Plc, is one of the key instigators of The Hub:

“The Co-creation Hub – London recognises that social media isn’t simply another channel; it has fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with brands. We need a more collaborative, adaptive and continuous model of marketing – one that is based on the core co-creation principle of doing things with people not at them. We call it Adaptive Brand Planning. It is a model that will ultimately be better placed in helping our clients deal with the advent of social brands”

The Hub’s belief that great ideas can come from anywhere means there are huge untapped resources out there that can flourish in a co-creative environment. The Hub is looking for organisations and individuals from as diverse a field as possible who share the same co-creation driven way of thinking, whether that’s a manufacturer, an artist, a school or even a government.

The launch of the Hub coincides with the release of Axe Twist, the first 100% co-created product. In July 2008 we co-created with 16 core Axe consumers from the US & the UK to create a new fragrance based around ‘freshness’. The workshop, which took place in New York, was a huge success and saw the idea behind the product (a fragrance that changes from day to night), the name and the actual fragrance itself co-created. Twist hit the shelves in late 2009 and early signs are that it is performing well in the market.

The Co-Creation Hub is the next chapter in Face’s collaborative history and is set to be as innovative, fresh, open and disruptive as the last one.

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Face: A Co-Created History – Part 2

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

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

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The Future Planning

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

“The ad industry establishment can no longer simply tweak its offering around the edges if it is to cope. 2010 must be the year to begin a head on overhaul of the way the (advertising) business is organized” Claire Beale Editor of Campaign Magazine, January 2010

The global marketing landscape has changed more in the last 5 years than in the last 50 but that the leading agencies in terms of the way they are organized, structured and the service they offer, haven’t.

The main driver for this change has been the rise of empowered consumers. They have exposed the traditional advertising agency model as one that is out of date and struggling to help clients deal with the current consumer landscape.

“The fact is: consumers now control brands. They play with them, reshape them and even imbue them with new meaning. In the next decade, we will see a shift away from the traditional branding model of agencies and clients” Owen Lee, Creative Chairman Farm

The big question on everyone’s lips is how should the advertising and planning industry respond? What is the new model of marketing that will ensure as an industry we can help brands to navigate their way through the new consumer landscape? These questions apply as much to the brands as to the agencies that serve them. If we wanted to be sensationalist we would say that “brands and agencies must adapt or die” or putting it in a more positive way that the brand and agency leaders of the future will need to be fleet-of-foot and structure their businesses to function in a highly fluid way.

As research, brand and communications people we always felt we wanted to get closer to consumers, but for practical reasons were not able to no matter how creative we were. But now that’s all changing. Social media allows us to listen to consumers and monitor the conversations they are having around brands in real time. This offers valuable insight and understanding, but more importantly identifies opportunities to establish a completely new way for brands to engage with their audiences. The challenge for the industry is not to view social media as a channel, but to use it to facilitate collaborations between brands and consumers to innovate and co-create communications more effectively. It has heralded:

The Advent of Social Brands
New social media tools will help brands to be on 24/7: this is part of what we call “the socialisation of brands” where campaign and channel marketing gives way to “continuous brand engagement marketing”. The environment the brand lives and breathes in is always on and is always changing so brands need to be listening to and observing their consumers not just in communities but also on the web as well as involving them on a continuous basis in everything they do.

The Need for Big Social Ideas
“Big ideas” need to be a big SOCIAL ideas – one that has the power to live and breathe through what consumers do with it in their interactions with each other and the brand. A big social idea has to be able to evolve, adapt and gain new meaning through those consumer interactions. Ultimately this requires agencies and brands to embrace a more open creative approach based on the philosophy that ideas can come from anywhere: a new model which combines the creativity of experts with the creativity of consumers so that more big social ideas of better quality can be produced. This means experts have an even bigger role to play than ever before. Our recent case study with Nestle’s Skinny Cow where we co-created the advertising with Mindbubble women is a good one – in three months there are already 41,000 fans on Facebook.

The Need to be Fast, Adaptive and Continuous
The process needs to change as well; the annual planning cycle making way for real-time planning which allows brands to remain relevant and interesting to changing consumer needs, overall a more fluid, highly responsive and iterative way of planning, which we call Adaptive Brand Planning. The new imperative will be to maintain a dialogue with your consumers to harness their opinions and ideas to fine-tune your product and communications. One of the main benefits of this approach is the speed with which you can develop concepts and communications as shown by our recent work with Unilever and Axe/Lynx Twist.

Consumer Communities Will Reign
The focus on the 30 second TV spot will give way to the content and conversations that are being generated by consumers and between consumers around the brand. This will in turn produce different segmentation models where brands see consumers not just as potential customers who want to buy something from them but as people who want to have a relationship with them. Engaging and managing brand fan bases will be key: developing creative ways for engaging and managing fan bases will be critical.

A New Planning Mindset
The planner of the future will be more interested in how people interact, and how to stimulate those interactions. The sage-like planners will be replaced by people who are comfortable working in tightly knit teams of agency planners, each with their area of specialism such as social media or building and harnessing the power of communities. The line between planner and researcher will become blurred because there will be a constant dialogue with consumers that will offer insight, understanding and ideas in real time. A key part of the task will be to observe and spot these insights and ideas and use them to inspire creative experts to build upon them.

Conclusion
Consumers will be treated in a fundamentally different way. They will be given more responsibility and will be more involved throughout the brand marketing process. Co-creating with consumers as direct and active equals to deliver a range of marketing outputs will be a major part of the marketing model. Also the new generation of planners will treat consumers in a fundamentally different way. The gaming generation of young planners will be comfortable in this fast changing environment, where remaining in constant contact with your audience is more important than one-off research interventions. These planners will be the architects of a new contract between brand and consumer, founded on listening, understanding, adapting and co-creating.

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Face: A Co-Created History – Part 1

Monday, March 1st, 2010

This story begins in 2004, a year when 120 million Americans voted George Bush Jnr into government for a second term, The Lord of The Rings: Return of the King won 11 Oscars, Ireland introduced the smoking ban and a small start-up called Face started to get going.

In 2004 participating in social media was not a widespread activity, early adopters and young people were the groups pushing the format forward and exploring its possibilities. In its early days we were helping brands stay close to young people and therefore close to the ensuing high paced changes in on-line behaviour they were leading.

Skip forward three years and in May 2007 we proudly launched the first ever co-creation community, Headbox.com. Headbox was the result of spending loads of time with young people, researching their habits and ultimately understanding the way they interact with each other and with brands.

At the time there were no on-line qualitative research platforms for any category, let alone youth, the driving force behind the internet. In 2007 social media was beginning to reach its massive potential and the world of research needed to react. By offering clients a way into the minds of young people it opened up a more collaborative and mutual relationship between consumers and brands.

Headbox in 2007!

This was an extremely exciting time for us; working in a more concerted and creative way was being adopted as a philosophy. It was the beginning of the co-creation driven approach that would define the company, although the term co-creation was not being used just yet!

It was whilst presenting our second annual TechTribe report at the 2007 MRS Youth Conference when the real turning point came. The Axe team had seen our presentation and were interested in the approach. Axe wanted to engage with their consumers more closely and involve them in every step of the marketing process.

It was here at the 2007 MRS Youth Conference that co-creation was first put forward to a client brave and willing enough to try something new.

A few months later in the heat of Alicante, Spain, 16 young, creative Axe consumers from Headbox took part in Face’s first big co-creation project. Working alongside the Face and Axe team their task was to co-create an Axe Summer Variant.

Our first Co-Creation Project with Lynx was a great success

The co-creation workshop and co-creative approach was an instant success. By the end of 2007 we had co-created with Axe again on the infamous Dark Temptation ‘Chocolate Man’ variant as well as completing a co-creation project with Rexona, developing a new variant with their female consumers.

Next up… Part 2: 2008 and the birth of Mindbubble

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Axe Twist – An Entirely Co-Created Product

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

It’s with great pride that the Face team would like to announce that Axe’s latest deodorant, Twist, is an entirely co-created product! Using our online communities and co-creation process, Axe worked alongside consumers at every step of the marketing journey.

The Twist project began in early 2008, the initial steps of the process involved around 50 members of Headbox taking part in an online community. A smaller crack team of Headboxers from the US, the UK and South America were then selected to take part in a co-creation workshop. The agenda for the workshop, which took place in the Summer of 2008 in a very sunny New York City, was to co-create a new Axe variant that had ‘freshness’ as the key characteristic. The Headbox consumers worked for alongside members of the Axe team, the fragrance house, perfumers, Axe’s creative agencies and Face on various different concepts.

At the end of the 2 days the outcome was Twist – a fragrance that changes throughout the day.

Consumers Co-Creating in NYC

David Cousino, Unilever Consumer Marketing Insight (CMI) director, explains, “The Twist concept was born from the insight provided by our consumers that girls get bored easily and the real challenge is to keep them interested, or ‘hooked’. Using co-creation at such an early stage enabled us to engage with our target audience in a meaningful way, and deliver a new product suited to their needs and wishes.”

“In addition to invaluable consumer insight, this methodology gave us the added benefit of a much more efficient development process. By engaging key functions all at once, we were able to develop within only ten weeks a concept that had collaborative input from the fragrance experts, marketing team and creative agency,” adds Cousino

The Twist concept was then taken back online and fed into Headbox for testing and refinement. The completely collaborative approach meant that Unilever knew it would be well-received by consumers – something borne out by exceptional test scores and good initial response in its first launch market. The product has been launched in the UK and is being rolled out to the US, other European countries and Latin America.

Twist in the press:

More information on Axe Twist:

Video Case Study:

Client View – Why Co-Creation Delivers Better Results from Face Group on Vimeo.

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Join Us @ The Launch of The Co-Creation Hub, 18th March

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

To celebrate the launch of the Co-Creation Hub London, Face, alongside the other members of The Hub, will be hosting the inaugural members open evening.

The Co-Creation Hub – London is the first place to bring the principles of co-creation to all stages of the marketing process, and is founded on three key tenets:

1. Constant consumer involvement throughout the entire marketing planning and brand communications process – maintaining a continuous dialogue with consumers; harnessing their ideas and opinions to develop better products and communications and adapting to their changing needs and tastes in real-time.

2. A continuous process, with no end points as the communication is constantly building and evolving. A fluid way of working with a tightly knit team of agency specialists, seamlessly pulsing in and out of the process, as and when required.

3. Creating communities and fan-bases, and constantly communicating with them, online and offline.

Taking place on the 18th March at the Design Council in Convent Garden the event is your chance to find out more about The Hub and meet us all in person.

As it is an open invite anyone can attend, there is a maximum capacity though, so if you would like to reserve your place on the guest-list please Click Here

It promises to be a great night and we look forward to seeing you there!!

To find out more about The Co-Creation Hub London, Click Here

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Face’s Week On The Web

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Every Friday the Face team are going to share their favourite link from the the last 7 days. It could be a video, an image, an article, a game… or just something completely abstract! So, every week make sure you check back for some internet gems.

Nick: Damon Lindelof’s 70 minute Phantom Menace review
This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen and also one of the most epic. A well-edited, well-constructed piece of geek film criticism. A must see! (***Strong Language***)

Danny: Crying Wife
What would you do if your wife cried inconsolably after every film you watched? Film it and publish it on the internet of course. Genius.

Lucy: Upside Down Celebrities
I love having a good laugh at celebs and everyone needs a laugh on a Friday!

Marion: Naive
I love the band Naïve’s website because it’s simple, beautiful and the animation is very relaxing… and their music is great!

Katherine: Beautiful Mouse Tracking
You go about your business while the movements of your mouse are tracked all day and then you can end up with a lovely piece of art work!

Esther: Nick Gentry
Gentry uses old Floppy discs etc to create portraits – It’s a really nice way to reuse something that is obsolete and turn it into something beautiful.

Philip: American Apparel Crowdsource World’s Best Bum
Glorious and a great example of the errr…. power of crowdsourcing?!

Saul: Omegle
Omegle sets up randomised anonymous IM chats between strangers. It’s quite an odd idea, but also fascinating in its potential.

Sharmila: Monkey Bashing with Noel Edmonds
Noel Edmonds devises quiz format involving a monkey picking the questions…say no more.

Francesco: Future Boy
I bet no one here is more future than this kid (***Strong Language***)

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Do Cultural Differences Impact International Co-Creation?? Part 1: Introducing The Project

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

I have been working amongst the busy bodies at Face for around six months now and am still enjoying it just as much as my first week! Working at Face for one year is part of my Business Studies with Marketing degree, in September I will be going back to student life at Brighton University to complete my fourth and final year. Whilst looking after the logistics at Face co-creation workshops and helping with the recruitment of co-creators for new projects, I will also be busy working on my dissertation!

The aim of my dissertation is to investigate how a key issue/problem of the market research industry is influencing Face.

Face performed extremely well in 2009 and their client base, range of products offered and team are all still growing rapidly! This growth has been largely due to new clients and brands that require international as well as UK based co-creation communities and workshops. Evidently, as Face grows they are being requested to work on a larger variety of briefs, including projects across a range of countries with varied cultures. I will be exploring this topic in my dissertation as it would be beneficial for Face to know how different cultures influence the outputs of co-creation. Therefore, the title that of my dissertation is, wait for it…. ‘How Do Diverse Cultures Influence The Outputs Of Co-Creation?’

Whilst carrying out my initial research, I found plenty of information on how the market research industry is affected by different cultures but I found virtually nothing about how cultural diversity affects co-creation. Initially, I will analyse the principles behind market research in countries across the globe and then apply these theories to co-creation using Face case studies. I will then identify ways to measure the success of online communities and co-creation workshops, using a specific set of KPI. This will then lead to recommendations that seek to improve the international co-creation process further – these may be small practical factors or larger ideas that concentrate on taking cultural differences into account when co-creating abroad.

It will be interesting, from a student and a company perspective, to see how people of different cultures react to being open,(and) being innovative with brands and co-creating. All of these factors play a key role in contributing to the success of a project. My report will explore how Face can keep co-creators engaged and how they can adapt their process further to better fit the culture of the country in which co-creation is taking place. This will ensure that Face’s future international projects are just as successful as of all their previous ‘First Class’ projects!

I am currently finding some interesting information about market research and cultural differences but I’m saving this up to share with you in my next blog!

Katherine

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Face 2010: From The Rebirth of Insight, to The Death of PowerPoint

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

At Face we don’t like standing still; partly because we are always looking to improve and do things better, and partly because as the world changes we need to change with it. 2010 will be no different, and we are bursting with new ideas for products, communities & projects. Here are our predictions about the research & innovation business in 2010, and a sneak preview of some of the things Face will be up to.

1. 2010 the year when research goes truly mobile as smart phones become commonplace and research on the go starts to catch up

Face will be developing a smart phone application that allows us to conduct research more effectively on the go and in real time

2. The year when the research industry embraces & empowers consumers as researchers, to truly reach the parts that researchers cannot reach – peer2peer research shows what the industry looks like turned inside out.

Through our communities Headbox & Mindbubble we are training consumers to act as researchers within their own peer groups going undercover and asking the questions we didn’t even know we needed to ask.

3. The year when Tech Research & Innovation begins to learn from FMCG research in terms of innovation and product development. Why? Because the consumer is now the subject & not the object of technology.

Face is launching our own tech community in 2010, aimed at engaging tech leaders in insight and innovation work

4. The year that social media & the web as a source of insight is finally taken seriously. Everyone wakes up to the fact that the greatest source of data is around us all the time – it’s just a case of harnessing it. No more excuses.

Face launches 2 new real time research products – Pulsar Snapshot & Pulsar Tracker – designed to monitor and analyse conversations and interactions around brands & categories in real time.

5. Co-creation & communities go east – increased confidence in the methodologies takes them firmly out of the west and into Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia & South Pacific

Face is launching community platforms & co-creation projects in India & Australia, building on existing platforms in China, Russia, Thailand, Philippines & Indonesia.

6. Death by Powerpoint becomes death of Powerpoint, slowly, slowly. One day soon. We won’t be crying.

Face will be emphasizing visual clarity & simplicity in terms of outputs and making more and more of our debriefs / output material available online as an ongoing treasure trove for clients

7. The year that the industry embraces communities in their ongoing insight, innovation & planning cycles, enabling them to work in the real world as their brands become as social as the people consuming them are!

Face has developed an adaptive brand planning process that helps Insight, Planners & Marketing people to keep their brand planning dynamic, organic and always on!

8. The year of the rebirth of insight. Researchers realise that processes like Co-Creation, Communities & Crowd-sourcing are not just there to play with, but are serious methods of getting better result, especially in the day in day out job of getting clients closer to their customers.

Face is doubling the size of its insight teams and putting actionable insight at the heart of everything we do

So, 2010, some big challenges & quite a journey ahead but a truly exciting time for us and the industry as a whole. Look forward to going on that journey with you.

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Unilever Global CMI Conference – Windsor

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

After years of enjoying being briefed by clients on their insight & innovation needs we at Face finally got to turn the tables yesterday and set a room full of senior client insight people one BIG challenge. At 3.30pm Face interrupted a Unilever Global CMI conference and sent delegates scurrying out into the streets of Windsor and crawling the web to get some hands on insights in the world of Oral Care. It was all just for fun, but it was great to see a group of senior people from Unilever not only interviewing each other & getting out on the street but also fully engaging with YouTube, Twitter, a variety of blogs and engaging with content produced by our own Mind-bubble women. There were a few cheeky calls to dentists, some great mother & child interviews on the streets and the shelves of local Boots and Tesco Express were stripped of toothpaste. All that was missing in the room was having consumers there in the room to work with us and get directly and actively involved in the process, but as we had plenty of mums and dads in the room, there was plenty of home truths available!

It all just showed how much can be achieved by a focused group of people in a short space of time, and how much resource there is avaible all of the time for us as research community to tap into. We can’t reveal too much about any of the outcomes, but it generated a lot of energy, enthusiasm and a huge amount of competitiveness. The final output from each team was a 2 minute film capturing their insights and the journey they went on to get there. By the time you read this the winning team will have already been announced and with Oscar season upon us soon, the likes of Cameron, Clooney & Eastwood might be starting to feel a bit anxious about their chances this year.

For those of you who were at the session and took part in making the films, you can go and watch them all by clicking on the following link <http://www.facegroup.co.uk/global-cmi-conference>. You will need the password you have been sent by email!

Thanks to all who took part for their commitment and making it such a fun session.

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Interesting Things

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Here at Face we firmly believe that to be interesting you have to do interesting stuff – it’s a basic input – output type of thing.

And so to that end, we have launched a new initiative this week…

Winter Wanders!

(or Spring Strolls or Summer Saunters, depending on the season)

It involves the Face Team finding something that is either free, or very cheap, that will take no more than 90 minutes to do over a Friday lunchtime.

It might be an exhibition, it might be a talk, it might be a pop up shop, it might be some sort of performance art, or it might be something else entirely.

But whatever it is, the idea is that it will stimulate and inspire us in different ways. Not to mention get us out of the office and into the fresh air for a bit to get rid of that slightly sickly grey pallor and have some fun team time.

First on the agenda for January is going to be the wonderfully titled Museum of Everything which we’re going to wander over to on Friday.

We’ll let you know what we think was interesting about it so stay tuned….

Check out The Museum of Everything here

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A Hybrid Model for Open Innovation

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Slides up from last Friday’s Open Hardware conference at Nesta Hq. It was a really interesting day, engaging conversations and some (telling) arguments! All in all, It was very useful for me to reflect on the differences between the co-creation and crowdsourcing models on one side and the opensource model/community on the other side.

A Hybrid Model for Open Innovation

View more documents from Facegroup.

Most of the friction seemed to emerge around two cornerstones of co-creation: 1) rewarding the people involved in the process 2) involving consumers as active equals, at the same level of designers, coders and creatives.

The idea of rewarding the people involved in the co-creation project with incentives (cash or prizes) was seen by some as a deal-breaker: it “kills the magic of the collaboration” and outsmarts the “love” element in the motivation. But I think since most brands are nowhere near the idea of giving away their IP and go opensource, it is fair and crucial to reward the people involved for their time and effort.

It also makes sense to remember that a big part of the opensource workforce is made of paid developers (just think about Mozilla) and I would argue that certainly they mustn’t love their job less because they get paid to work on something they consider a cause. So, I think cash doesn’t exclude love/glory/fun. As a matter of fact it probably multiplies the three of them. Or at least it would in my case (if it wasn’t clear enough already).

The second friction-generator was the idea of involving in the process consumers/users at the same level as designers/coders/creatives. Some of the coders involved thought that (non-skilled) consumers/users should just be involved as testers, once the strategic and creative work has been done by “the experts”.

This is a kind of resistance we encounter quite often over any co-creation process. It may vary in degree but the idea of having non-skilled consumers coming up with ideas and “tasking” skilled developers/designers/creatives doesn’t go down well. So, it wasn’t big news, but what surprised me was that this resistance was coming from people that live and breath in the open source world.

So I decided to dig it up. And after discussing and arguing the various points, pint after pint, one of the explanations I was given is that the open source collaboration process is based on a principle of equal contribution while the co-creation one is potentially asymmetric. So if you’re not contributing enough to the open source community, or as much as the others, you’re not going to be taken seriously and you shouldn’t have the right to be tasking other users. But again, if I look at how opensource communities work I’m not sure symmetry and equal contribution are religiously observed. Also, the presence of paid developers in the open source community kind of compromise the “equal contribution” argument.

All in all, I think it’s important to have different types of co-creators, with different sets of skills, contributing to different stages of the process in different ways. Throwing them all together without a structure, a solid process and diversified roles it’s just not going to fly. And that’s why leadership is so important for any opensource community.

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Do Brands Really Need Agencies?

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Do Brands Need Agencies? | Face Forum, Nov 09

View more documents from Facegroup.

Following on from the success of our Web 2.0 Women forum earlier this year we thought it was about time we opened up another hot topic for debate. The last Face Forum revolved around the key question ‘Do Brands Need Agencies?’ On the 18th of November we have been joined by friends, experts and clients at the Groucho club to discuss what it takes to stay relevant and true to your consumers, how to engage the crowds in research innovation and planning and what are some of the tech trends for 2010 and beyond. Here’s a quick summary:

Relevance
The real-time social web has changed the way we communicate giving us the tools to get and share information at a pace we have not experienced before. This has made the web the richest insight field we have ever had. How can you harness the power of the world wide wave for research, brand planning and brand engagement? What are real-time research and adaptive brand planning? And how can they help your brand stay relevant?

Crowds
Barely a day goes by without a website, campaign or competition cropping up, promising to harness the collective wisdom of crowds for the benefit of brands. Peperami even ditched Lowe to ask the crowds. But is bottom-up really enough? When did crowdsourcing cease to be a means to an end and become an end in itself? Join us to discuss a hybrid model where crowd-sourcing and co-creation are used as complementary methodologies.

Trends
We asked 3000 19 to 25 years old young adults about their consumption habits, media and tech diet. The Forum will be the place where we present our latest Techtribe report, uncovering youth trends that will soon start migrating to other audiences

It was a great night! Here’s the presentation that kick-started the discussion, join in and tell us what you think

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