Self-expression

I dashed off this comment on a BrandShift post on co-creation, and thought I'd reproduce  it here. It merits some additional thought...

Successful brands allow customers to assign their own meaning to a product or service, which gives them a feeling of ownership and self-expression. So for example, it's not really about open-source software, it's an open-source movement where participants have assigned a bigger meaning (power to the people) to a product.

Most examples of co-created products and services (like Lego Factory, Google's API, epinions.com, etc.) are really about facilitating self-expression. So even in the case of Lego, it doesn't really matter whether a design is actually implemented: Lego has facilitated self-expression and peer recognition. iTunes facilitates self-expression. epinions.com facilitates self-expression. Tivo. eBay. Amazon. Today's recipe for success appears to be: To serve as a facilitator for people to do, say or experience what they want. Because the underlying pent-up dissatisfaction in society today is having too much pre-packaged crap shoved down our throats... whether that's products, media, information, whatever. Witness the revolution of the masses. We want control.

Comments

[Graham Glass]

And of course blogs themselves are another great tool for self-expression!

[Rodrigo Soares]

Those topics about co-creation and self-expression are ones of the best posts I´ve ever read in business oriented blogs. I have followed the comments and thought a lot about how to put it in practice with my clients. Congratulations to Jennifer and all the commenters.

[Bruce DeBoer]

I agree with that, plus:

Give our customers a method of interacting with our product; Personalize it. Marketing is a contract with our customers, a give an take. The problem with most marketing campaigns are that they are mostly take. Our customers are getting ragged. These days we need to give more.

Give them part ownership and you have built in loyalty.

[Chris Lawer]

I like the idea of self-expression and meaning - that simplifies powerfully a lot of things.

You could even say that the I in Innovation is where it is at. Though a key challenge remains - how do firms collaborate with empowered and active customers to enable the creation of unique, personalised and Individualised value.

You could say that in western economies at least, we are emerging from the era of "E" to the age of "I". But where next? "We-Pod" anyone?!