1. Who am I?
Social Strategist
MBA in Design Management

2. Employing customers for fun and profit Or Designing For Co-Creation
I won’t condescend to read this out to you, I’m sure everyone here speaks LOL
What I’m going to cover today is the idea that the structure of how businesses create value is changing in such a way that customers can now become integral to that process. And I don’t’ mean by just buying your product.

3. How Companies Think About Consumers

4. Consumer Theory: A gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash
Proudly stolen from the Cluetrain Manifesto

5. Companies tend to focus on one motivation, to purchase

6. Creative, messy
Creative

7. Empowered http://www.flickr.com/photos/passiveaggressive/911474278/

8. Connected

9. Be very quiet, I’m hunting consumers
How do we participate in this new world
We are still addicted to target market thinking and thinking we’re somehow on an opposing team to the consumer, trying to figure out when to pownce on them, inerupt them with your message as seth godin would say.
Target market is like saying, those are the ones I want to pick off because they are susceptible to whatever proposition I’m going to make, a hang over of mas market thinking
Be very quiet, I’m hunting consumers

11. What looked homogeneous at a distance is group of unique individuals

12. Who is the new consumer? Via. Trendwatching.com
Maybe there is no such thing as the new consumer
Via. Trendwatching.com

13. We’ll make it viral Add some web 2.0
Weak response to an amazing opportunity, an opportunity to create something amazing, to participate in the creation of something amazing.

14. Isn’t this just an internet thing?

15. Changing the role of consumers and changing business models: IKEA

16. Employing your customers

17. Companies as network of value creating activities
“What is Strategy” (Porter, 1996), Harvard Business Review

18. Hidden Value X 2.3 Million Subscribers = 345 Million Movie Ratings
June 2005, when Walmart gave up
Still a simple and basic example of co-creation or employing your customer
Hidden Value

19. Beyond Reviews, Examples of Real Co-Creation

20. 2000 for $500 $6.5 Million by ‘06 11 Employees Threadless
Started in 2000 for $500
By 2005 had 6.5M+ in revenue (18M by 06 and 25-30M)
5 FT employees and 6 part time
Threadless
Figures courtesy of Business Week

21. Customers do:
Research
Product Development
Design
Portolio Management
Market Sizing
Merchandising
Marketing
Advertising
Threadless does:
Prints T-Shirts
Business Development/Partnerships
Runs ecommerce infrastructure
Runs community infrastructure

23. Thx http://uservoice.com

24. How do you employ your customers?

26. 30 Open Positions Per Year
36,000 Resumes
From podcast interview with of John Winsor

28. Usability not a motivator

29. Hierarchy of Customer Interaction

30. Culture: “The Way We Do Things”

32. Making it happen
Make it easy to join in
Make it easy to get better
Reward the right behaviors
Recognize top performers
Provide increasingly more rewarding things to do
Provide rich feedback

33. Vote
Comment
Create slogans
Add designs
Make it easy to join in

36. Reward the right behaviors
User generated review site
Passionate community

37. Recognize top performers

38. Provide rich feedback

39. Experiment
Fail
Learn
In the end I have covered some reallly big ideas that challenge the current structure of businesses, but I hope there are some practical ideas you can take away from this about how you can employ your customers. In the end the best way to learn about how amazing your customers are (believe me some of them are amazing), you have to participate with them in the media where they are doing this, you have to do it too, and you will understand. Start a blog, get your pictures on flickr, start talking to the more minor influencers in what ever blogosphere your company plays in (and it may play in many). In the end we are all served by beoming more like anthropologists of our customers, see what they do, where they talk and join in.

40. Getting started with the anthropolists view of Youtube
Best 55 minute youtube video ever

41. Essays on Culture and Lolcats
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End Of Business As Usual
by Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger 1999
Co-opting Customer Competence by C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy
2000
The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers
By C. K. Prahalad, Venkat Ramaswamy 2004
SPARK: Be More Innovative Through Co-Creation By John Winsor 2005
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
By Clay Shirky 2008
You can find me here:
- Social Media & Marketing Strategy
- The Daily T-Shirt Blog
Essays on Culture and Lolcats
- I can haz grammer by Anil Dash