Co-Creation: When Your Customers Are Your Best Talent

Creating a product perfectly adapted to consumer needs is every company’s dream. Quantitative and qualitative analyses, market studies, and targeting strategies are all tools used by brands to successfully offer the product that tomorrow’s customers will scramble for.

But to ensure the product matches your target, why not include them in the creation process? Today, many brands opt for co-creation to put future customers at the heart of the process. Trustt has decrypted for you the advantages and best practices to adopt to guarantee the commercial success of your co-created project.

What is meant by “product co-creation”?

Implementing a co-creation process with your customers involves inviting them to take part in designing certain aspects of your product or service. This collaborative approach allows your future consumers to bring their ideas and innovation suggestions to your product and optimize their future customer experience.

Stakeholders can contribute to your product creation at different levels: they can participate in developing a new formulation, from the scent to the active ingredients of your cosmetic product, they can give their opinion on the flavor of your food products, or even decide on the era in which your future video game will take place. Beyond product development, your prospects can also share their ideas and wishes regarding packaging or delivery methods.

This process thus puts consumers back at the heart of the marketing strategy of your company by supporting your customer-centric approach.

What are the advantages of co-creation for my company?

The creation of a product adapted to your target audience

The main advantage of the co-creation process is the design of a perfect product as it will have been conceived by both the brand and the consumers. The number of commercial failures can thus be greatly reduced thanks to this approach. Moreover, 62% of French people declared they wanted to help their favorite brand create products and services according to the 2018 Brand Utility Barometer (Opinionway & Supper). Your company is therefore evolving in a climate favorable to co-creation…

Save Time and Money Through Co-Creation

Furthermore, setting up a collaboration between your company and your future customers can be a huge time and money saver for your brand. Beyond limiting the design of “failed” products, you adopt an agile strategy by directly developing a product that will meet the expectations and needs of your target. This can bypass the usual data collection steps via lengthy and costly quantitative analyses.

An Aid for Your Consumer Data Analysis

In the context of co-creation, you serve your targeting objectives by learning to better understand your prospects. You can gather information on your consumers’ expectations, their purchase motivations, their barriers, as well as their tastes and preferences on different aspects.

Texture, sensoriality, effectiveness, product eco-responsibility, packaging… Do you really know which criteria are most important to your users? The Trustt solution guides you to improve your information analysis by bringing you closer to your prospects through product tests.

The testers of your products write authentic and comprehensive reviews on their impressions related to all aspects of your product, to help you improve your offer until it’s perfect for your customers. The various services offered by Trustt thus simplify your co-creation approach!

The Animation of Your Community

Finally, co-creation is an excellent way to unite your community around your brand. Giving a voice to your consumers makes them feel heard and involved in your creative processes, which strengthens their sense of attachment to your company. You can thus serve your relationship marketing objectives while boosting your brand image: that of an accessible and consumer-centric company.

The participation of your prospects in the development of your brand is also an excellent way to strengthen your communication through valuable storytelling. Your co-creation approach can be shared on social media to enhance your e-reputation and engage your community. The latter, having participated in the development of your products, will also be inclined to spontaneously share content on social media to share their experience. This UGC, here again, contributes to improving your visibility and represents an excellent conversion lever.

Trustt understood this well by inviting testers and influencers to generate UGC on their social networks. Customer reviews on your e-commerce platform or on social networks are perfect for reassuring your future buyers and generating more sales: 50 consumer reviews increase your conversions by 30%!

Tools and Resources for Successful Co-Creation

Choosing Participants for Co-Creation

Naturally, posting a message on your social networks asking for innovation ideas for your service will attract a large number of participants. However, the results of your request are likely to be very numerous, without necessarily being viable and relevant.

However, there are solutions that can allow you to call upon informed actors who can propose feasible ideas. This represents a real time and effort saving for your company.

To find stakeholders whose skills can be put to use in your product innovation strategy, Trustt allows you to benefit from a panel of testers and influencers who are experts and passionate about your field. These product testing regulars provide you with a relevant analysis of your product, its design, and the improvements that can be made. These authentic feedbacks then accompany you in the development of new formulations, the design and production of new concepts.

Involvement, a Major Role of Stakeholders

As you understand, co-creation involves mutual participation and engagement of companies and participants in the various creative processes. The involvement and motivation of the actors are therefore guarantors of the marketing success of the approach.

To ensure that your stakeholders engage throughout the co-creation process, your company should not hesitate to remind the actors of their role in the production and development of the product or service.

It is often necessary to highlight the benefits that participants, who are tomorrow’s customers, will gain. This helps to reinforce their assiduity during the implementation of the design process, but also after the product is launched on the market, when it comes to buying it or talking about it on social media.

Social Media for Your Content Marketing

Of course, a co-creation approach would not have as much impact without social media. These are excellent solutions to relay your work and progress throughout the project.

These storytelling tools also allow you to give a voice to participants who share their experience alongside your company. Thus, in addition to benefiting from this UGC, you will be able to integrate your co-creation project into your content marketing strategy.

By offering high value-added publications to animate your community, you establish your notoriety on networks and contribute to making yourself known. For example, you can invite participants to Instagram lives, to show your audience how the design process unfolds. Another idea could be to produce educational content by delivering information that captivates and retains your followers, while positioning your company as an expert in its field.

Finally, why not organize a contest, to allow your network to win one of your products “co-created by the community”? In addition to engaging your audience, contests are a good way to collect opt-ins, essential for your email marketing strategy and marketing automation.

These 5 Examples of Co-Creation That Were a Hit

In Beauty: Huygens

In the cosmetics sector, the rise of “skintellectuals” is leading to a significant increase in consumer knowledge about their skin’s needs. They are becoming increasingly demanding and discerning about the composition and effectiveness of cosmetic products they consume.

It is therefore becoming urgent for skincare companies to consult their target audience about the active ingredients that attract them, the texture that suits them best, or the importance given to the naturalness of ingredients in their beauty products.

This is precisely the approach adopted by the cosmetic brand Huygens, by surveying Birchbox consumers, tens of thousands of whom shared the results of Huygens products on their skin and their experiences with the product.

Like the Huygens brand, you can collect hundreds of reviews on your product pages to multiply their value and reassure your future customers. Trustt is here to guide you in organizing your testing campaigns, then help you analyze the collected data to fully understand your community and its expectations!

In Gaming: Lego

While Lego is a historic brand today, it is far from being outdated. Even now, it brings together young and old around a creative universe… Perfectly suited for co-creation!

Indeed, given the renewal of the Lego toy range year after year, the company’s teams must use inventiveness and innovation to offer their community ever more original toys.

To do this, Lego had the idea to launch the online platform “Lego Ideas”, which allows fans to propose their ideas in the hope of one day seeing their project on toy store shelves.

Not content with benefiting from ideas that are all more original and creative than the last, Lego has thus found an excellent way to engage its community, which can vote for their favorite designs and interact with other Lego fans around the world.

In Food: Starbucks

In the food sector, participatory innovation is not left behind: Starbucks launched its platform “Starbucks Ideas” to allow millions of beverage consumers of the brand to propose flavors and recipes they would like to find at Starbucks.

This platform has allowed certain drinks like the Coconut Frappuccino to come to life, but also for customers to be heard and express the values that are important to them. Consumers were able to share their desire to find more eco-friendly packaging in their Starbucks cafes.

A good way for the American giant to probe the insights of its clientele!

In Early Childhood: Oxybul

As every parent always demands the best for their offspring, the baby and young children’s product sector is particularly suited to the co-creation approach. Indeed, many brands have chosen to give voice to parents in order to provide solutions to the problems they encounter on a daily basis.

The brand Oxybul is actually one of the pioneers in co-creation, as in 1993 already, it founded the community of Pilot Parents to listen to the opinions and needs of potential consumers before validating a product.

But while parents were invited to share their feelings, it was the children who were put in the spotlight and invited to test the toys in their OxyLab workshops. A good way to ensure that co-creating parents will become tomorrow’s customers, on the orders of their little ones!

In Sports: Decathlon

Decathlon is a company particularly recognized for its impactful way of communicating on social networks as well as for its ability to unite a community around strong values. It was therefore not surprising that Decathlon launched its co-creation platform Open Oxylane.

Beyond inviting its community to propose simple design ideas, Decathlon invites them to mobilize their skills and creativity to think of innovative and revolutionary products for the world of sports. Given the success encountered, the platform was renamed “Cocreation Decathlon” and now allows the community to test the company’s products, similar to the product tests that Trustt helps you set up.

Just like these big brands, Trustt allows you to optimize your product development process in a co-creation approach by connecting you directly with your target audience.

The feedback collected during product tests gives you access to valuable information about the insights of your prospects, as well as the tools and resources to mobilize for designing your future best-seller!