Letting Go by Letting It Out! The Co-Creation March Continues

And so the "co-creation" movement beats on!  Essentially, brands are  inviting other consumers to participate in the advertising creation process.  One could easily argue this one of the highest forms of consumer engagement, although it's hardly a given that any brand can pull this off.  In this particular case, a consumer packaged goods player, Kimberly Clark is unloading a trifecta of participatory Web 2.0 offerings: video upload, a brand sponsored blog, and a portal for viewing videos. In some respects, the brand site where all this is hosted now looks a bit more like the home page of Technorati than a typical CPG site -- tags, easy search, playlists and all.  Importantly, such functionality sets the stage for the site to always look freshly updated to visiting consumers -- this is contrast to 90% of the largely static consumer goods sites out there. 

Reason to Speak? One key requisite for making these things work (beyond the need to convince the brand legal department that consumer participation and informal brand communication, e.g. blogging, has more upside than downside) is ensuring the campaign rests around a genuine, emotion grounded "feedback moment."  (Think less about "reason to believe" than "reason to speak.") For brands like Kleenex, there's no short shortage of compelling stories to draw from.  The key balancing act for brands is to find the right balance between "authenticity" and "advertising."  If you set too many requirements for what the consumer can say -- almost like a strict "RFP" -- the content starts to feel like outsourced (lower cost) advertising.  Then again, if you open up the creative pipeline too much, the message can start to veer off-equity. (Recall, the GM "create your own ad" contest.)  Kleenex's competitor, P&G's Puffs also has a participatory element, but it's more form-fitted to a very structured path of expression; still potentially appealing (especially to brand enthusiasts), but not nearly as sticky from a sharing or social currency perspective. 

Keeping the Participation Principle Credible: One other important issue: in order for such campaigns to be credible, there needs to be 100% consistency in how the brand invites expression.  You can't have a Web 2.0 "participation elements" standing next to a Web 1.0 consumer affairs listening pipe.  In the case of Kleenex, there appears to be solid, if not directional, alignment (see welcome and inviting face to the left); the desire to listen seems sincere.  You'll also recall this is why I felt Dove Real Beauty campaign was so breakthrough: there was consistency across the entire brand campaign and consumer tough-points around the value of the consumer voice.  The advertised campaign was all about self-expression, self-esteem, and empowerment, but the "willingness to listen" factor cut across all dimensions of the brand experience, including consumer affairs.  This was a major theme of a presentation I recently delivered to the executive board of the  Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP), and it's a point I will hammer away at again as a keynote at SOCAP's annual convention next fall.  I summarize a few of these points in a recent ClickZ article, as well as in a panel last week at the University of Chicago. 

Full  Disclosure: The three brand examples I've referenced above are from companies with whom my company has done business.  I am not involved in, or associated with, any of these campaigns.