Co-creation In SETTERS: How We Team Up With Customers To Create New Products

Co-creation is a collaborative approach to creating new ideas and solutions. At the same time, the collaboration itself can be anything: between different people, departments in the company, and even brands, corporations, and their audiences. For ourselves, we chose the “agency + client” format.

What advantages do we see in this and why co-creation is the future — we will tell right now together with Creative Lead SETTERS Nikita Labutin.

What Is Co-Creation

This interaction format is based on the fact that both sides have their strong expertise, which they combine to create a breakthrough project. No one knows the product and internal processes better than the business, but the agency has the experience, specialists, and a fresh look at things. Co-creation helps to come to an agreed solution that everyone will like.

It doesn’t matter who finalized the idea and formulated it the way it sounded in its final form: the idea is based on each participant’s thoughts in the interaction, so it belongs to everyone.

What Are The Advantages Of Co-Creation

Of course, the main plus is the sound reduction of resources and a more accurate hit on the task. The approach allows finding the best solutions through joint efforts.

Secondly, building relationships and well-developed communication

The communication agency is responsible for the client’s contact with the audience and for strengthening the connection with the client, which is a new level of trust.

Thirdly, unexpected ideas. Any word can attract attention and turn the idea around. Do not be afraid that the client may offer obvious ideas in such sessions. Wait – he will also get creative and bring you a statement that you will say: “Why didn’t I come up with this?”

Co-creation as an approach is universal for any business area since this is a preliminary stage: the agency, together with the client, storms and tries to work out the best solution, considering all the difficulties and opportunities. But co-creation is not suitable, for example, for the technical implementation of a project: the team’s expertise, experience, and professional skills come to the fore here. But this does not mean that the inclusion of the client is necessary only at certain stages of work: constructive and timely feedback is only for the benefit of any project.

How Did We Get There?

At some point, it became apparent that the iterative approach “brought an idea – got edits – finalized the idea – got new edits” could be too resource-intensive and negative. The team gets tired and begins to think that the client is nitpicking, and the business doubles the performer’s competence.

If both parties want to create an excellent product, are interested in working together, and match their views and values, they want to take this interaction to another level, making it much more convenient.

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