Profile: The Hub of this co-creation business
By Hugh Jordan. Crowd creative. Crowdsourcing may not sound the death knell for creative agencies, but co-creation could be a catalyst for real change. ‘Adapt or die’ is the message coming from Andrew Needham, who has just launched London’s The Co-Creation Hub, a collaborative resource for brands seeking long-term, meaningful engagement with consumers.
So, what is co-creation and how does it differ from crowdsourcing?
“Crowdsourcing, in its crudest form is basically outsourcing,” says Needham. “Co-creation puts consumers at the centre of the creative process, but the role of the expert, if we can call ourselves that, remains fundamental. Editors, curators, spotters and planners become even more important.”
Experts such as The Co-Creation Hub help to guide, define and refine the creativity of online communities, then develop their most popular ideas further in structured workshops. Throughout, information is fed back to the online community for its opinion. And this continuous feedback loop is integral to the co-creation model.
“The skills required by experts will be the same but those skills will be applied in a different way,” explains Needham. “The make-up of agencies is going to have to change. As soon as you put consumers at the heart of the process, equal to the brand, that is inevitable.”
If this all sounds a little radical, rest assured – Needham is no novice. He co-founded and runs co-creation agency Face, which has worked with the likes of Coke, Nokia, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser. And for The Co-Creation Hub, Needham and Face have linked-up with some of the finest minds working in the co-creation field today: Farm, Opticomm, Touch of Mojo and Thru Digital are all involved.
The outfit’s first project is Co-Create London.
Londoners are being tasked with thinking of ways they could improve their city. Ideas generated so far include free Wi-Fi hotspots in public places, an organised book swap on the Tube, and enabling the Oyster travel card to be used for purchases under £20 anywhere in London. The top three ideas will be presented to Mayor Boris Johnson and his team on 18th March.
Needham says his team would ideally have liked more time. But he believes that by the 18th The Co-Creation Hub will not only be able to present three ideas, they will also have practical plans for how they can be implemented too.
Co-Create London not only demonstrates the benefits of co-creation as a model, it also shows how easily co-creation can be applied to fields other than advertising. Such as politics. Indeed, shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey is giving a talk to 130 people later this month on that very topic.
In many ways, a project like Co-Create London represents the ultimate in democracy. Every person has the chance to have their opinion heard in an accessible and structured way, with the very real chance that ideas may come to fruition.
Needham, as one would expect, is enthused by the possibilities.
“Everywhere you look you see the old model – brands doing things ‘at’ people – is failing,” he says. “Consumers increasingly want to be engaged and collaborate in a brand’s story. The wider marketing community has a duty to recognise this, adapt and reorganise, to do things ‘with’ people, rather than ‘at’ them.”
