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Brian Millar, Strategy Director, Sense Worldwide
Brian Millar
Mr Brian Millar is the Strategy Director at Sense Worldwide He is a advertising, media industry veteran. Millar has worked for Saatchi and Saatchi, and Ogilvy. He had built two
agencies, and a computer games company, before joining Sense Worldwide.
Sense Worldwide helps global companies like Nike, Philips, Johnson & Johnson and Vodafone create co-creation strategies for branding, product/process design, etc. Its invitation-only community, Sense Network, has about 2,000 creative thinkers. Co-creation has been at the heart of what Sense Worldwide does for over a decade. It recruits creative consumers and put them together with designers and other expert thinkers from The Sense Network to develop ideas and perform rapid prototyping of big concepts. "Share the glory, keep the IP"
Younomy: Is co-creation something that is going to stay and create a paradigm shift in the creation of economic values? Brian Miller: Co-creation is here to stay. Most of your customers now have the tools to communicate with each other and co-operate in remixing their own versions of your products. You can either embrace that and use it as a powerful tool to drive transformation in your industry, or you can wait for it to crush you. Your choice. Younomy: Do you think the practice of co-creation (especially, social media-enabled co-creation) has matured enough to give birth to a standard framework or a set of best practices? Brian Miller: I don't think there will be a definitive framework for co-creation anytime soon, as the technology and consumers are re-inventing it as we go along. We're starting to understand what's *not* real co-creation however: There are plenty of people out there who'll run you a "write our next ad" competition, or rebrand their focus groups as 'co-creation workshops' when they're nothing of the sort. There's a real danger that the word will be co-opted by industries to rebrand business as usual. 'Relationship marketing' was a great idea until 'direct marketing' agencies all started using it to describe their junk mail. Younomy: How do you explain to a company that creating a community takes time, and how do you tell them that sometimes they need to forget the usual ROI metrics like number of fans in the facebook's like page, followers at Twitter, etc? Brian Miller: There's ROI and ROI. We show clients the kind of transformational results we can get through co-creation: doubling sales, re-structuring organisations, creating whole new product lines, transforming brands into thought leaders. Those are big returns. Getting a million fans on Facebook is a means to an end. There are plenty of brand managers with a zillion fans on facebook who haven't made a single sale. Younomy: I consider identifying the true co-creation partners or participants a big job - bigger than even engaging them. What are the characteristics of a true co-creation partner, who is above biases and vested interests? And how companies can find him/her/them? Brian Miller: Sci Fi writer William Gibson said that the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. Co-creation means going out and looking for it, finding the people who are using products - or abusing them, or rejecting them - in a way which the rest of us may one day adopt. We've spent over ten years building up an online global network of creative thinkers and doers. Classic market researchers look for the people in the middle of the bell curve - your typical customer. We look for extremists. Sense Worldwide has recruited a pagan witch, a newspaper editor, an airline pilot, a TV mogul, and a prescription drug addict. We also look for creative types. Younomy: Are companies willing to be open about the problems they face. All along, the emphasis of corporate communication is about publishing the solutions - "what we (companies) know", instead of "what we don't know"? Brian Miller: Co-creation doesn't mean you have to drop your corporate firewalls. One of the advantages of running an online or realtime community is that you can co-create with superusers while keeping the IP under control. The important thing is to reward your key participants. Money and free product is good - praise and creative credit is great. Share the glory, keep the IP. Younomy: Companies that have proven track record are able to attract more response to co-creation and crowd-sourcing campaigns. An example would be Starbucks or Dell. What is the correlation between the on ground performance of a company and the success of its online co-creation initiatives? Brian Miller: Everything is interesting to somebody. You just have to ask the right questions in the right way to the right people. Yes, a lot of people feel strongly about Starbucks or Apple. On the other hand, corn plasters sound unglamorous, but they're a fact of life for supermodels and other fashionistas. Younomy: With co-creation Prof CK Prahalad envisaged the emergence of democratisation of industry - "a company is run by, for and of people". What do you see as the scope of integrating co-creation in the very management of a company, instead of involving public in peripheral activities like slogan contests, etc? Brian Miller: The big message for companies is that co-creation is happening anyway. Live with it. It's not a question of whether you'll allow customers to play with your products. They're already modding, hacking and remixing them. It's a question of whether they'll allow you to join in. The art of co-creation is to get consumers and corporations to play nicely together for the mutual benefit of everybody. Younomy: What percentage of co-creation is technology, and what percentage of it is management? Why? Brian Miller: It's exactly 12.652% technical engineering and 81.598% social engineering. The remaining percentage is taken up with choosing great coffee and snacks. |