Customer Crossroads

The Age of Creativity: Fashion Co-creation

Infographics are a great way to communicate ideas -- they give you a snapshot of something really quickly. The one below is about fashion co-creation.

I've written on co-creation and customization before -- in transit design, maker communities, fashion and design, online sites like Google maps, more products and designs. It's a trend that continues to build in so many ways -- so I was intrigued by this fashion co-creation infographic sent to me via MyFashionSales.  It has some great examples, a few I hadn't seen before.

Even better, it meant I discovered the charming writing of the MyFashionSales blog. And I also checked out a site which you simply must investigate -- submitinfographics -- which has a lot of terrific infographics -- including many user-generated graphics. Another veritable hub of creativity.

We are just surrounded by creativity everywhere -- new ways to communicate, new ways to share ideas, new chances for everyone to participate. Someday the era we are now living in will be called the Age of Creativity [unless someone thinks of a better name. Maybe you?]

And aren't we lucky to be living in this time? The Age of Creativity.

 

Relationship marketing: how to start rethinking it

In the last post, I suggested that most relationship marketing strategies are hollow at the core, and are really a pretty label for direct marketing tactics. Which is fine, but don't call it a relationship. This post looks at a different approach based on research in the public relations sector.

In my research work, I often find myself seeking a stronger framework to support my approach and recommendations to clients. [If you want to be a great consultant, not just a good one, you need to make clear and focused recommendations. Yup, it's scary stuff.]

I came across a wonderful paper recently by Dr. Linda Childers Hon at U of Florida and Dr. James E. Grunig at U. of Maryland: Guidelines for Measuring Relationships in Public Relations. [Download the PDF] Sounds pedestrian, but isn't.

Outputs is the immediate result of a PR effort -- such as getting newspaper coverage. Outcomes is the longer term measure of whether the activity and outputs are making any impact on perceptions of the target audience.

Six Dimensions of Relationships

Hon and Grunig make a case for six dimensions of relationships that can be measured, which they define as follows:

Control Mutuality

The degree to which parties agree on who has the rightful power to influence one another. Although some imbalance is natural, stable relationships require that organizations and publics each have some control over the other.

Trust

One party’s level of confidence in and willingness to open oneself to the other party. There are three dimensions to trust: integrity: the belief that an organization is fair and just … dependability: the belief that an organization will do what it says it will do … and, competence: the belief that an organization has the ability to do what it says it will do.

Satisfaction

The extent to which each party feels favorably toward the other because positive expectations about the relationship are reinforced. A satisfying relationship is one in which the benefits outweigh the costs.

Commitment

The extent to which each party believes and feels that the relationship is worth spending energy to maintain and promote. Two dimensions of commitment are continuance commitment, which refers to
a certain line of action, and affective commitment, which is an emotional orientation.

Exchange Relationship

In an exchange relationship, one party gives benefits to the other only because the other has provided benefits in the past or is expected to do so in the future.

Communal Relationship

In a communal relationship, both parties provide benefits to the other because they are concerned for the welfare of the other -- even when they get nothing in return. For most public relations activities, developing communal relationships with key constituencies is much more important to achieve than would be developing exchange relationships.

The paper provides questions that can be used to measure on a Likert Scale, such as "This organization treats people like me fairly and justly".

Are you seeking Communal when you are actually offering Exchange?

I found these definitions, and the questions proposed, quite thought-provoking. I believe one of the significant disconnects people experience in their relationships with large enterprises have to do with the expectation of a Communal Relationship when the other party is operating on an Exchange Relationship model.

For example, some providers of research platforms seek loyalty from people like me. But my loyalty is almost completely related to performance and pricing -- in the absence of those elements, I would move to other providers, despite having good interpersonal relationships.

The lack of control is an important issue in some business categories: financial services (especially lending), telecommunications (those cell phone contracts!) and health care come immediately to mind.

Better as a thought-starter than a measurement framework?

Not everyone agrees that this form of measurement is the pinnacle for public relations practitioners. See the article by Kim Harrison below.  This is a very valid point -- I am working on a project right now where the client wants to generate new ideas for PR events that will result in actual new customers for the retail stores. That's a very crunchy measurement. 

However, I am jazzed about this model as a thought-starter. Perhaps a touch-stone. And maybe even useful for thinking about things like brand advertising efforts.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any experience with this model?

Resources

More on Likert Scales  http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/scallik.php

Kim Harrison, Cutting Ede PR Blog. The Myth of Relationship Building as the Key Measure of PR http://www.cuttingedgepr.com/articles/relationship-building-pr-measure.asp

Seeking another way of looking at relationships

So much BS is written about relationship management in the current era of consumer power that you need a power-shovel to find any gems in the smelly stuff.

Part of the challenge is that most of what you will find is tactical -- "here's what you need to do" -- and is not necessarily informed by a guiding philosophy of any kind.

We went right from Permission Marketing and The Cluetrain Manifesto to "How to make a killing with E-mail marketing".

The challenge with focusing exclusively on tactics is that you will quickly find no basis for making your tactical decisions. For that, you need some kind of a strategy.  In developing a strategy, you will quickly find yourself trying to back your way into some sort of guiding philosophy.

I went questing for some meatier material to support a current project, and came upon a gem of a report about relationships and how to measure them. 

See more in the next post.

Resources

Seth Godin's influential book, Permission Marketing, published 1999, has principles that seem to have been forgotten in the age of better targeting tools. What people seem to want now is HOW TO MAKE AN ABSOLUTE KILLING WITH EMAIL MARKETING !  Interestingly, the book is actually titled "E-mail marketing for Newbies", but Amazon kindly provided the marketing phrase. [Maybe they read the book. I confess I did not.]

The Cluetrain Manifesto, by David Weinberger, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and Jake McKee is also available free online. Or you can buy it from many retailers if you prefer a hardcopy read.

 

 

The post-consumption era: this is the real end of the world you need to prepare for

There was lots of collective fun-making when the recently predicted end of days did not come to pass. "Rapture photos" were posted (empty clothes in amusing places), and there was a frenzy of Facebook status updates monitoring the fun.

The real Armageddon for most of us will creep up more slowly -- it's the shift many are predicting to a post-consumer culture.

Consumer Culture is the water we swim in daily

If you live in the affluent societies of the first world, the dominant culture is a consumer culture. A nice definition is available on the AQR website:

A culture may be understood as a pattern of beliefs, values, meanings and customs shared by a group of people, often existing at an implicit or taken-for-granted level. Consumer culture suggests that consumption - the act of buying goods or services - is a cultural activity, one imbued with meaning and driven not just by practical or economic factors. Mapping and exploring the business implications of these cultural meanings is one of the principal functions of qualitative market research.

Consumer culture is not the only thing going on, but it's a big part of our individual and collective mission to make meaning.

If you doubt this, here's a simple self-test for you -- name the first 10 brands that come to mind.

For most people, this exercise quickly becomes complex, especially if done in a group. Are you a Tide person? Are you defined by Crest? By Apple? By Mercedes? By Prada? By Black + Decker?

Global Alarming -- the forces driving change

There are signs that things are changing. Terrorism and the uncertainties it has brought to all of the first world (we now get to share the terror with the rest of the world, who never stopped experiencing it), is thought by many to be an important driver of cultural change.

Our increasing awareness that the planet cannot indefinitely support this level of abuse is another important driver.  It's not just air pollution now, or the holes in the ozone layer -- we have an abundance of environmental issues that are concerning: overfishing, extinctions, climate change, water shortages, melting glaciers, and peak oil, to name a few.

The global recession is another key driver here, adding an immediate need for many to look at their individual lifestyle and decide what is important.

What it all means for business and marketing

A nice piece of work from David Carlson called "Closed Wallets, Closed Minds" looks at this phenomenon from the designer's perspective. "We are increasingly suffering from consumption fatigue", says Mr. Carlson. Companies that want to be part of this change, rather than a victim of it, will need to "listen to what the consumer wants, rather than tell them".

Mr. Carlson posits that a relationship economy is forming, but admits none of us can really see the future.

Only the future will tell if the climate of anti-consumerism is genuine, or if we are only on a pause between mad bouts of bag filling.

It's a beautifully constructed report, as always, and will get you thinking -- as it did me.

What's your take?

What signs of change are you seeing? I love to hear your comments, thoughts and observations.

How to save on qualitative research

No matter how large your research budget, you probably wish you had more. Here's my list of ways to save money on qualitative research -- some more obvious than others. You can get a PDF of the full article, with more details on each method, here.

Here's my top 10 ways, in brief:

1. Keep a tight focus on objectives
2. Reduce the number of participants
3. Cut the travel
4. Manage the number of markets you touch
5. Manage back-room catering demands
6. Decide if you need transcripts, video and other goodies
7. Work with realistic deadlines
8. Remember that the screener is not a survey project
9. Consider your written report needs
10. Be a valued client, easy to work with

These are times when organizations need insight more than ever to compete, but every
expenditure is under scrutiny. A collaborative approach with a skilled researcher will help you
get more for your research dollars without sacrificing quality of insight.

Resources

This piece was published by AMA in their newsletter as "Good to the Last Drop: 10 Ways to Save Money on Qualitative Research".  You don't need a subscription to read the article, and there's a nice PDF here.