In this Halloween-themed presentation, we explain why brands shouldn't fear the opinions, insights, and ideas of their customers, but should instead embrace them and involve them in innovation. We also highlight some common issues, and provide advice to help you avoid challenges faced by brands who don't do customer participation correctly.

1. How to Conquer Your Fear of
Customer-Driven Innovation
Let Them In

2. David Gardner
VP, Marketing
@david11gardner
Chad Neufeld
Digital Marketing Manager
@chadneufeld
@chaordix

3. What We’ll Cover
• Customer Co-Creation – Who uses it, and how
• Common fears and myths
• What can go wrong
• How to overcome your fears
• Results of successful Co-Creation

4. Who is Chaordix?
• A software company with ten years of experience
building brand communities and customer
participation platforms
• Our Participation Platform is used for customer-driven
innovation, brand engagement, and insights

5. The most successful organizations are
those that Co-Create products and
services with consumers and integrate
customers into core processes.
“
“
survey of over 500 global CEOs

6. Co-Creation: Defined
An ongoing, creative and social process, based on
collaboration between brands and their biggest fans,
that is initiated by the company to generate joint
value for both the brand and its customers.
1,000,000+
23 models

8. Common Myths & Fears

9. #1: Our customers don’t know enough

10. They Don’t Know Enough
They define the use case for your product
They use your product every day
They find issues and gaps through use
They aren’t filled with biases

11. #2: Lawyers are terrifying

12. Legal Issues Will be a Nightmare
Be transparent
Set detailed guidelines
Give credit where credit is due
Incentivize

13. #3: I won’t make my investment back

14. The ROI Isn’t Great Enough
Quick case: Lego Ideas – 23 best-selling products
Market research costs slashed
Innovation cycle dramatically reduced
Brand loyalty & advocacy

15. #4: Oh goodness, more tools

16. Social Media for Co-Creation
Control over content
Direct line of communication
Workflows & structure
Analytics & stats

17. But things can go wrong…

18. Internal Culture Issues
Do not embrace open innovation and external ideas
Community does not get attention, content and goals
Not treated as a team-effort

19. Misuse
Only give co-creators a suggestion box – one-way
Limit content to boring surveys and polls
Not keeping things fresh, consistent

20. Too Much, Too Fast
Moving right into major challenges
Not taking time to build community
Focus is too broad right off the bat

21. No One Shows Up
Recruitment isn’t prioritized or built into owned or
earned media strategies
Existing customers/clients/lists aren’t invited
Events to publicize at events are not taken

22. Wrong Prizes are Used
Only offer one big prize
No intrinsic motivators
Focus on leaderboards makes things too competitive

23. How to Overcome Internal Fears

24. 1. Share data & results of successful
Co-Creation

25. 2. Start slow & small: Creative Challenge

26. 3. Begin with most loyal & passionate
brand fans

27. 4. Let different business stakeholders
get involved and participate

28. 5. Empower members to advocate for
the community

29. 6. Tap into experts to supercharge
community

30. If we swallow our fears,
what actually happens?

31. So We Started Co-Creating…
• Trust drives Participation
• As advocacy goes up, risk goes down
• Variety drives participation
• Investment in strategy in resources that deliver ROI
• Strength of Weak Ties
• Rethinking rewards and incentives that offer an
amazing customer experience

32. Case: American Airlines
• Goal: Understand and improve the experience for high-
value clients
• Co-Created new lounges for international travelers
• Created an app to help frequent flyers utilize their
loyalty points
• Optimized customer experience with 100K points of
feedback from biggest brand fans

34. Q&A ?