Agencies launch co-creation initiative

The Co-Creation Hub, a collective of agencies, organisations, academics and individuals, is launching with a strategy to be a “more collaborative, adaptive and continuous model of marketing.”

The founding members of The Co-Creation Hub London are Face, the co-creation planning agency, which has co-created projects for international companies such as Coca-Cola, Nokia, Unilever, and Reckitt Benckiser; advertising agency Farm, which has co-created communications for Nestle’s Skinny Cow; media planning agency Opticomm; Touch of Mojo, the brand design agency; and thrudigital, the social media development agency.

The Hub founders are actively looking for organisations and individuals from different fields that share their way to get involved and help develop the co-creation movement.

They say that The Co-Creation Hub London is the first of a planned number of Hubs across the world, as the principle of co-creativity grows and develops in territories such as Latin America, Asia and the USA.

Andrew Needham, founding partner of Face, says:”The Co-Creation Hub London recognises that social media isn’t simply another channel; it has fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with brands.

“We need a more collaborative, adaptive and continuous model of marketing – one that is based on the core co-creation principle of doing things with people not at them. We call it Adaptive Brand Planning. It is a model that will ultimately be better placed in helping our clients deal with the advent of social brands”.

The Hub says that its key principles include constant consumer involvement throughout the entire marketing planning and brand communications process; a continuous process with no end points, and the creation of communities and fan-bases with constant contact with them.

The first project is Co-Create London, an independent initiative asking Londoners to join together to air their most pressing issues and help devise solutions. It is a social initiative giving Londoners the chance to change their city and is a “gift” to the capital.

The project is designed to crowdsource the problems and ideas of the general public by asking the question ’What Would You Do To Make London a Better Place?’ Tangible ideas from the crowdsourcing phase will be taken forward into a co-creation workshop and the top three ideas collected from the co-creation workshop will be put up for voting online. The idea with the most votes will then be presented to London Mayor Boris Johnson.