John Winsor

Productizing a Brand

Rob Walker's The Brand Underground is a must read for anyone trying to understand how youth brands work in urban sub-cultures. The passion and spirit of flipping the paradigm from branding a product to productizing a brand is inspiring.

The Seeds of Co-creation

Many people ask me, Where did co-creation start? The seeds of co-creation are planted all around us. For me, the best example comes from a group of passionate users who get together and transform an activity into an industry. This month Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge Blog featured an article entitled, How Kayak Users Built a New Industry, is a wonderful case study of passionate users co-creating.

Experience Immersion

If you haven’t had a chance to read Ian Wylie’s article this month in Fast Company entitled, Talk To Our Customers? Are You Crazy?, it’s a nice view into the idea of “experience immersion” with the same Gee Wiz attitude that most Fast Company articles exude.

The thing is, this isn’t a new idea. A lot of companies, like Radar, have been helping companies, with tools like ethnography, immerse themselves in their customer’s culture and experiences for a long time.

In fact, many powerful brands, such as Nike, have created an internal culture of deep dialogue throughout the organization that they don’t need guides, whether they are internal or external.

Good Question

Four-year-olds (this is my son, Charlie) have a magical way of asking simple, provocative questions that are hard to answer.

More on Storytelling

Ever since Beyond the Brand was published, I've been posting a lot about storytelling and why it's so important in development of a brand. I just came across Alain Thys's post on Futurelab entitled, The Ten Truths About Branded Storytelling. Check it out, it's worth a read.

Mac Ad Hack

Here's a funny hack of the new Mac Ads:

Word of the Day

Freemium - Here's how A VC blog describes the freemium business model:

Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.

Eggciting Eggvertising

While 35 million laser etched eggs might extent CBS's reach for advertising it's fall line up but, as rm116 asks, is it relevant?

What Makes a Brand Cool?

Can advertising alone make a brand cool? Or, does it cool come from a deeper place, starting with the product itself?

The Co-creation Podcast is Up

Karl Long, of Customers on Fire, just posted the podcast of our wonderful conversation we had last week about co-creation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.