Co-Creation Marketing - Boon or Bane?
In today’s digital world where there is a decline in the organic reach on the social media platforms, marketing teams are still able to reach to their target audience and deliver the brand stories.
How can this be done? One of the means to achieve this is Co-Creation Marketing.
Co-Creation Marketing is a collaborative effort of the firm/organization with experts in a particular field, or stakeholders (such as customers or suppliers), vendors, other marketers, designers, and retailers. Co-Creation Marketing increases the scope of innovation (as ideas are exchanged and shared, and not kept to oneself) and assists a firm in the design and development of a new product offering, which in turn adds value to the firm. The process of Co-Creation Marketing consists of Contribution and Selection and is mostly applicable in Digital Marketing.
According to new research published in “Journal of Consumer Marketing” by Dr. Eric Kennedy and Francisco Guzmán from the University of North Texas,
the following were the brand goals achieved with the help of co-creation Marketing :
Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/gv3Ha3CWKzV7CQLv9
The instance of Consumer Co-creation Marketing: Threadless.
Threadless, the internet-born, America-based design shop known for screen-printed graphic T-shirts, was once heralded as the best example of how to make money on the internet. The company’s initial idea was that anyone could submit their designs which could potentially be printed on t-shirts in the future.
The process was very simple, all the received designs would be asked for votes and scores from the registered users themselves, and after being reviewed by the staff and firm’s designers the winning designs would receive the honor of being printed and sold, which offered the common people with social recognition and financial rewards. They had all the support from local and community designers, which helped the firm earn millions of dollars.
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According to CEO and Co-founder, Jake Nickell, “When an artist submits a design, they tell everyone they know to go vote on it, and then those people join the community and it snowballs.”
The firm organized contests with the following tagline: “You are Threadless. You make the ideas, you pick what we sell, you’re why we exist.”
The cash prize set by the firm varied from $250 to $750 in early 2006. And in mid-2007, Threadless’s prize for winning the design contest rose to $2,500 in cash and merchandise. But, these contests gave rise to a controversy until 2014, some artists and designers asked for copyright upon winning the contest, as they wanted to earn profits beyond base cost on all their printed designs. Gradually their quality of t-shirts also started to deteriorate, level of designs they printed also fell.
As per the article published in RACKED, things started to change in 2104. Threadless laid off more than one-quarter of its staff, cutting 23 of 84 jobs, also lost Twitter followers, falling from 2.2 million to 2.13 million. Threadless rolled out Artist Shops in 2015, which again allowed designers to sell items printed with any designs.
No doubt, that Threadless once dominated the clothing industry on digital platforms but it gradually lost its buzz once had. But, it has matured in ways the early days didn’t predict, morphing into something stable and lasting.
The aforementioned facts make us reflect on the challenges faced under co-creation Marketing.
Co-creation requires open innovation which in turn leads to a diminished focus on control, planning, and forecasting inside a firm. In this digital world, where almost all industries are adopting socially digital platforms, this is a big challenge as it counters the old paradigm of closed innovation and will provoke considerable resistance from managers who still believe in that traditional approach.
Source: GETTY IMAGES
Outcomes can be unpredictable and unexpected. Sometimes, too many inputs and less structure can lead to chaos, and mismanagement on the firm’s part. This can further lead to missing out on some valuable and creative inputs. As a co-creation platform always tend to grow more and more, some protocols should be implied.
“Consumers are God,” they say, The consumers who can lead a firm to grow can also be the reason for their downfall. They can “make or break” a brand, such is the power of consumers, especially on a digital platform. A post gets viral in minutes, may it be good or bad.
However, collaborating with industry experts and scholars can reduce this risk as they are on the same level.
As a part of the conclusion, let’s leave you with a question to reflect upon. Is Threadless, success or failure?!?