Online communities (and the use of digitally based social
networking) are revolutionising the adoption of the co-creation
process by allowing cost effective, iterative and highly engaging
collaboration.
GSG, through our strategic alliance with Promise in
the UK, a world leader in co-creation and online communities,
brings to the Australian market the most powerful online
communities capability available today.
Our online community approach differs from that provided by
traditional research agencies. With a dedicated focus to innovation
and problem solving, we see the role of online communities as a
highly purposeful management information tool rather than a more
narrowly defined research tool. In short we ask respondents for
their creativity not just their opinions.
In line with our co-creation philosophy and broader growth
problem solving focus, we use online communities to work
iteratively with customers, staff and other key stakeholders to
deliver context rich insights and collaboratively problem solve our
clients' business issues around innovation and brand
development.
The most productive communities are the most engaged
communities. Organised around a clear business issue based
community activity plan, participation and creativity is best
achieved by challenging the community members to be active
particpants in solving major business problems. The bigger the
problem to be solved the more engaged a community genreally is.
From reinventing next generation products to cracking open better
customer service solutions, we use communities to democratise the
innovation process and apply the power of many minds and diversity
to solving problems. Community members are engaged in ideation and
a constant feedback loop with the internal development team. The
longitudinal and iterative nature of our communities allows for
deeper engagement, understanding of needs and time for creative
problem solving.
Our communities are managed and moderated by our experienced
consulting team and provide community members with a a highly
stimulating and rewarding experience.
An online community can be used as a continuous insights tool to
stay close to customers on a 24/7 basis or for time specific
projects such as NPD, organisational vision development, or for a
single business need. In all cases, success of the community starts
with having a clear purpose which is shared with the community
members.
Innovation
Using online communities, we work with clients, customers, staff
and other key stakeholders from need identification, through to
ideation, development, prioritisation, refinement and testing. This
provides significant advantages over traditional approaches in that
we can work with the same group of stakeholders over time to bring
new products and services to market. There are considerable
efficiencies gained in collaborating with a group of customer
advocates who are committed to finding the right solution for their
needs, and the company's.
Insights
The most 'traditional' use of an online community is to get
closer to the customer through the power of conversations and
deeper engagement. We don't run large quantitative panels, where
customers merely respond to surveys - instead we engage community
members in a range of activities to truly understand how they
think, feel and act. Insights communities provide constant access
to customers, ensuring that the customer view can always be
represented in business decisions.
Strategy
We don't just listen to customer and other stakeholders using
online communities, we can challenge them to help us and our
clients work out what the future should look like. This means
directly inviting them to contribute to the strategy development
process, ensuring we capture multidimensional perspectives on big
business issues.
Our communities are:
- Underpinned by world's best practice technology and thinking
from Promise Communities
- Invitation only, and built for purpose
- Managed, moderated and analysed by experienced consultants
- Populated by the people who matter to our clients
- Readily accessed by clients so they can see and participate in
the action
- Highly engaged and motivated to contribute
- Constantly working on a range of activities used to derive the
best insights
We don't:
- Treat communities as panels and bombard them with surveys
- Hand over the technology and leave our clients to do the
work
- Create communities just as alternative to focus groups
- Build marketing communities to promote brands
