Innovation - Co-creation - Communication

Co-creation in the music industry: creating personal value

2010-05-20T17:27:00.007+02:00

The music industry has shown some good examples of innovation. Where Radiohead introduced a new business model for their album 'In Rainbows' (see blog Bas van Oosterhout), David Guetta takes the co-creation path.

It started with a poll: 'Help me select my new single'. A very smart way to estimate which song will have the most 'hit potential'. Around 40.000 people voted - which gives you quite some understanding of what your audience likes.

And now, David Guetta introduces 'CD on Demand'. In the online shop of David Guetta, you can create your own album, for which all songs, including all kinds of re-mixes, can be selected. Next to the song selection, you can create the artwork, the booklet and the bonus. The result is your own unique album, personally selected.

Is this co-creation? Co-creation is about creating personal value by involving your customers, audience or partners in the organisations- in this case artists - value creation. I would say that it is a start - you give your audience the possibility to interact and participate in the artists choices and the possibility to create something unique.

The next step would be to involve the audience in a much earlier stage: at the creation of a song. Imagine the creative results when people can upload their songtext, beats to be used in the song, sing the vocals...

Get your message across

2009-05-12T16:03:00.002+02:00

In several communication projects I have been working on, no matter what media or message you want to tell your audience, there are always a few principles you need to bear in mind when when developing your message.

One of the trends you see in the new media, such as slideshare and blogs, is the visualization of the message. The cliche 'a picture says more than a 1000 words' is in that case true: a picture or video in your message can either give extra meaning or focus on your message, or give your audience a new perspective. Whatever your intention is with the picture: it makes your message more appealing. I tried it with my 'principles on communication':

Principles Of Communication

View more presentations from isabelthijssen.

Another interesting webcast if you want to prevent 'Death by Powerpoint', is from Nancy Duarte: http://www.bnet.com/2422-13724_23-241933.html

Manage your reputation!

2008-08-26T19:21:00.000+02:00

Today, a good company does not only stand for profit, but also for integrity and social responsibility. The public is following companies more critically these days. Therefore, the corporate reputation, how an organization is known, is very important. A lot of research has been done on what reputation is, why reputation matters and how it can be measured. Less is known however on the management of a reputation.

What do companies do to build and manage their reputation? This was the question I wanted to answer in my research, in order to help (communication) managers with their reputationmanagement. In order to answer the question, I interviewed 19 corporate communication managers from the biggest companies in the Netherlands, to hear what they do to manage their reputation and what their main issues are in this field.

Results
Results show that there were a few companies that managed their reputation very strategically and proactively, whereas others didn’t. This resulted in three groups in levels of reputationmanagement: the leaders, the peloton and as I call ‘the sag wagon’.

The leading group has formulated reputation goals, continually measures the opinion of their stakeholders, shares this information in the organization and has a steering committee to discuss reputation goals, strategy and progress. By doing so, the communication department, mostly driving the reputation management, was more accountable, had tangible results and therefore gains influence in the organization.
Most of the companies, the peloton, did want to improve their reputation, but didn’t use any measurement or steering information to proactively manage their reputation. And some companies didn’t manage their reputation strategically at all.

I found the results very interesting: why are there only a few companies really managing their reputation? Especially when many research has shown that a reputation is related to financial performance? (See Reputation Management by Cees van Riel and Charles Fombrun, 2004).

My next step in the research was to actually see how many companies in The Netherlands are managing their reputation strategically. I set up a questionnaire to more than 600 companies in the Netherlands, to get this quantitative information. More than 150 questionnaires were filled in: Only 9% of all companies managed their reputation strategically. My hypothesis was, that certain companies, such as service oriented companies, bigger companies, companies on the consumer market, were managing their reputation more strategically. However, the results show this isn’t the case. I think that the reason to actually manage your reputation, is probably because the CEO thinks it’s important or that the company has been suffering from bad publicity in the media.

Conclusion & Recommendations
Although not many organizations manage their reputation strategically, it really does improve the professionalization of the communication department. It makes an intangible asset into something that can be measured and managed. To improve the reputation, organizations should do the following:

- Base their reputation strategy on their corporate identity, vision and strategy. Talk and listen to your stakeholders: what do they think your company stands for, where do you as a company want to be? The gap between the identity of the company and the reputation should be as small as possible.

- Once you’ve decided your strategy, position your reputation on a clear, consistent and differentiating matter. Sending out different messages only confuses people. And don’t try to be innovative, reliable and price champion all at the same time: Pick one theme and build from that. Think of Philips with their Sense and Simplicity: it’s a clear statement.

- Measure your reputation: this gives you insight in the drivers of reputation: what driver do you score good on and which not? There are many ways to measure your reputation, The RepTrak from the Reputation Institute (www.reputationinstitute.com) is used by many companies. Without a diagnoses, there is no treatment plan!

- Once you have the results of your measurement, share the results with other departments: If your company is not being rated as a good company to work for, go to HR and talk about what you can do to change this.