Goodzuma, a socially activated online community launched by Crush Republic, is happy to announce winners for all 3 challenges posted for Rainforest Alliance, We Can End This (Hunger in America) and United Way NYC.

Please check out the winners. New brands will be announced in the coming weeks.

Innovate how you innovate. Over the past year, Crush Republic has been busy at work developing a new approach to collaboration, idea generation and brand engagement. From how consumers participate in brands, to how internal groups brainstorm, everyone (consumers/brand/employees) are seeking new methodologies, processes and even digital tools to allow this to happen. Our team is opening up parts of this relationship, and developing technology to enhance the experience. Currently, this includes the launch of online communities to foster collaboration and participation.

The latest launch included Goodzuma and an online idea community for one of the world’s largest creative communication’s agencies.

CoCreation is our social, revolutionary process of creation.  At Crush Republic CoCreation is the continuous engagement with the consumer through every aspect of the process.  This collaboration delivers intelligent design and groundbreaking innovation.  

The movement has begun.  A new approach to product development and innovation has hit the airwaves.  Consumers are helping to develop products, develop advertising campaigns, even participate in planning branded events.  This participation ultimately delivers products that consumers are excited about, helped to create, and will send the message about these products out to their social network.

Which brands are doing it?   Pepsi’s Mountain Dew has received the most press recently with their new Mountain Dew flavors and DEWmocracy 2.  Consumers chose flavors, names and are now developing the advertising campaign. 

As these brands see success from participation isn’t it time you started asking your consumers to participate in your brand development?

Last week our CoCreation team went out on the streets of beautiful Cincinnati and talked to consumers.  We asked them one question, “If you could invent or build anything in the world to make your life better…what would it be and why?”  Some of the answers are silly, some are insightful, but all of them are real.  Connecting with consumers, understanding who they are, building on this understanding to create beautiful and meaningful design…well, it’s what we do best.  

…sometimes the best thing about CoCreation are the consumers we talk to day in and day out.  We have had the pleasure of meeting so many people who are a little bit nuts, a little bit funny, and a whole lot honest.  And those are exactly the right people to talk to. 

When we talk about successful branding we often discuss it in terms of personal relationships (don’t get me wrong, I am no expert in relationships. Heck, I can’t even go on a good date but my life is surrounded by good, strong, healthy relationships).  

From what I have seen and learned from those I look up to in life, I have determined that a strong relationship is about love, trust, loyalty, and communication.  If we apply these attributes to the relationship between brand and consumer I worry we might be misunderstanding some of these attributes.  The attributes have been slightly changed or shifted to create an unbalanced relationship between the brand and consumer.  The brand has the upper hand; the communication scales are tipped in their favor.  This uneven balance of communication has been slowly addressed over the years.  Brands have added consumer research departments, they have started doing category based segmentations, they have started validating their brands with the “right” consumers at the end of the process.  But if we are only making minor adjustments to an archaic process we will only see incremental changes and incremental sales.  We suggest the following.  Take a moment.  Stop.  Breathe.  And re-evaluate your process.     

We suggest a new process.  A process we call CoCreation.  Listen to your consumers, create with your consumers, invite them into the entire process and just watch what happens.  

When we think about the typical agency process we usually see a linear path to our destination.  We begin by gathering insights from the consumer, then the design team develops initial concepts with these insights in mind, then we ask for consumer input, then we design, then we ask for consumer input, then we design…you get the picture (actually, you’ve probably done it a million times).  So often this process consists of individual steps; one step founded on the previous.  What if we stopped designing in a linear fashion?  The very basis of CoCreation is founded on the idea of design development and consumer insight happening together, in the very same moment.  Instead of individual steps, CoCreation is a forum where consumers and designers sit together, work together, and create together.  Imagine the impact of a brand that has been designed with AND for consumers.  As we walk down this road (actually, we might be running full speed down this road) of the CoCreation process it is by no means an easy path.  We are asking a lot of our designers, our researchers and our consumers.  But isn’t it the right thing to do?   Shouldn’t we see consumers as our partner and CoCreator?  In the end, aren’t they the only people we need to delight?

Seeking and accessing information online

Engaging in social and thematic communities

Providing unsolicited feedback to companies

Working or co-creating with other consumers to find their own relevant solutions

What do consumers really want from your brand?

CoCreation is an innovative approach to building brands; going beyond traditional research insights and statistics we have developed a new world of constant consumer participation.