Abstract:

With the advent of Web 2.0, the belief that consumers now have in their own voice, in their own creativity and in their own ability to express themselves is becoming more apparent. They clearly no longer see themselves as just passive respondents in their relationship with our brands but active equals who have the confidence to come into our space and play whether we have invited them to or not. Rather than shy away from this desire for our customers to engage with us we have embraced it with co-creation. Our approach to co-creating with consumers on some of our major brands and the results they have produced will be of interest to FMCG companies because it shows not only consumers have a significant role to play in the innovation process but also points the way to how it can be done effectively. Most innovation and new product development cycles are not able to generate enough quality ideas, quickly enough and our co-creation programmes have gone some way to address this.