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News, Opinion

The four most important lessons about social media

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Learned with the help of donuts…
Friday, February 3, 2012, at the end of a week of work, Nuno Gomes, creative director of Three Ships Media Agency decided to relax. And had fun drawing on the blackboard in his office, a table that explains social media creativity with the help of donuts. To Doug Ray, multimedia producer at the Agency, the ideas seemed terribly funny so he took his phone  and took a snapshoot of the board and, after passing through Instagram , posted it on facebook and announced it on twitter.Then, laughing, he went home.
Four days later – on 7 February at 10:39 – the photo reached 100,000 Like on Facebook. And thousands of references on Twitter. This photograph:Image

Social media explained – Twitter: eat a donut. Facebook: I like donuts. Foursquare: here is where I eat donuts. Instagram: here is a vintage photo of my donuts. YouTube: watch, eat a donut. Likedin: My skills include eating donuts. Pinterest: Here’s a recipe for donuts. Last FM: Now listen “donuts”. Google also: Google employee are eating donuts.

Surprised by the unexpected success of the photo – which to date has raised over 112,000 likes  – Doug drew some conclusions. “Old as the hills” but very true.
One.  You never know when something will go viral
It wasn’t his intention to make a viral. It was Friday afternoon and needed to fizzle a little after work. Simply you can not plan a viral.
Two. Loosen up
They didn’t care whether they might offend someone or if this thing had been done before using a far less tasty subject than donuts (even good artists steal, or copy- or something like that). Sometimes controversy can be good. And the only way to get there is through a full creative control. Sometimes it’s best to give up control to give partners more room to work…creatively.
Three. Sometimes the best ideas are the easiest.
There are a lot of projects that can and should require many hours of work. But sometimes the best ideas – and most successful – are coming on time. I used donuts for just talking about them. It took only five minutes.

Four. Low-Tech is OK.
Sure, they could have done everything in Illustrator and Final Cut Pro. But in this case, low-tech approach worked. Why would he need to make things more complicated than they should be?

Opinion

The Limits Of Mass Customization

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Hello everybody!

Mass customization is a widespread thought as an overwhelming competitive advantage. I want to share with you an interesting article that takes a second look at the benefits from the implementation of mass customization systems.

-It requires a highly flexible production technology. Developing such technologies can be expensive and time-consuming. Some processes, moreover, are more flexible and easier to digitize than others. Examples include information processing, printing, and cutting metal rods and tubes.
-It requires an elaborate system for eliciting customers’ wants and needs. To make something unique for someone requires unique information. Eliciting such information entails, for instance, asking the right questions and taking the right physical measurements — and that’s more difficult than it appears.
-It requires a strong direct-to-customer logistics system. Fulfillment is the weak link in much of e-commerce, and the same is true of mass customization.
-People are not willing to pay to have everything customized. In every case, companies must determine whether there is a potential mass market for custom features. Customers demand variety when they differ sharply in their preferences for certain attributes of a product. Under such circumstances, customization may truly add value. Products
that require matching different physical dimensions fall into that category.

I hope you enjoy reading it, it really got me thinking about the alternatives of mass customization. Good night!

Business Case

How to avoid costly product failures…JuJups and P&G

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JuJups is a co-creation platform that enables designers and non-designers to enjoy design and create things that they like. In JuJups they allow their customers to create their own designs by mish mashing. Some basic designs can be mish mashed by customers according to their wish. The firm delegates the creation of the products to customers. Or as they put it:
“JuJups lets you create your own designs – they make it easy and fun. You don’t have to be a designer to create what you want. You can now enjoy creating and sharing your own designs based on stuff created by designers.”
Because customers have different needs and wants and these needs and wants can change over time. This information is sticky. In the case of the customers of jujups it’s very difficult to get insight what the customer really want without delegating the idea creation to them. Jujups saves on costly consumers surveys and customers get the things they really want. By trial and error customers discover what they really want and even get more insight. They invest money and effort and in reward they get products they really want at the moment. They even can go beyond that. Jujups gives their customers a platform where they can display and sell their creations and get a percentage of the units sold. The firm profits by saving money on high cost customer surveys. They do have more costs because of the flexible production.
But how can a company involve their customers in the product development process if the products that company produces can’t particular be customized? This is the case for Proctor & Gamble (P&G). P&G has been credited for having the first written plan for Quality Function Deployment (QFD) process already in the sixties. Which they called: “ 12 steps to test market” process. QFD is a method to transform user demands into design quality, to deploy the functions forming quality, and to deploy methods for achieving the design quality into subsystems and component parts, and ultimately to specific elements of the manufacturing process. Through test market tests P&G got insights on what consumers wanted. Lately there has been a global movement towards customization. P&G however produces and sells products that have some restrictions with respect to customization. That’s why P&G came with their version of open innovation. They provide a platform for everybody that comes with a solution for the problems they encounter. They invite individuals, companies, independent entrepreneurs, the Government, laboratories, research institutes, financial institutions etc. On the P&G’s individual brands websites there is a reference to http://www.pgconnectdevelop.com/ . On this websites people can explore and get involved with open innovation process.

Khalid, Rihan, and Alexandra (team 6)