Co-Creation versus Top-Down

Olivier Blanchard has a great post today at the Corante Marketing Hub called Co-Creation vs. the Top-Down Model. I couldn't agree with him more. Inviting customers to co-create is a situational activity. It's not right for every brand in every situation.

Likewise, the idea of top-down must evolve. Instead of thinking about it from a highly structured, militaristic point of view, think about as the power to enable. While co-creation and innovation are necessarily not top-down processes, the necessary support and nurturing must absolutely be top-down.

Comments

[GrahamHill]

John

I tried to post a comment on Olivier's entry today but the Corante Marketing Hub wouldn't let me sign-in (so much for co-creation!). So I'm posting here instead.

I think Olivier is mistaken. He seems to conflate bottom-up co-creation with full-scale open innovation in all its emergent glory. And to see co-creation as an automatic threat to the hegemony of "we are the brand" marketing narcissists.

As Chris Lawer points out in his "eight types of co-creation" model, co-creation covers many different things: from working together with a limited number of invited lead customers, through managed customer generated media, all the way to full-scale open innovation.

I would be willing to bet that there is hardly a single company of any size that wouldn't benefit from some degree of co-creation. With customers, with non-customers and with ex-customers. And that goes for Whole Foods, Rolls Royce, snotty-nosed restaurants and other "our way or the highway" companies too.

Of course, some companies may not want to co-create with customers, for whatever reason. These companies undoubtedly leave co-creation benefits on the table for others to pick up.

[john winsor]

Grant -

Thanks for the great comment. I couldn't agree more.