Trendwatching this month have produced a superbly researched newsletter devoted to what they call ‘Customer-Made’. The article is crammed with amazing articles, thanks partly to their Springspotter network, and highlights a trend that PSFK has been monitoring where hyperactive self producers, or ‘Hyper Users’, use the tools available to them to create new evolved variations on companies’ products, services and even brand communications.
Some of the examples worth checking out include Joseph Jaffe’s Tiger Woods Ad, 6 Pack TV’s Design Your Own Ad, Converse Gallery, Ruffles Chips Ad, Core 77 Timex Winners, KTF Design A Phone Contest, Ikea’s fiffigafolket contest, Jones Soda, Kaiser Beer, Sumo Salad Baby Recipe Contest , JPG Magazine and Wikipedia.
The guys over at Influx have also a good piece on what they are calling the ‘Creative Consumer’ with links to examples like MLB and thought pieces in the New Yorker and Economist.
PSFK does offer two words of warning about how people interpret TrendWatching’s ‘Customer Made’. Firstly, consumerism hasn’t changed. It’s important to remember that our needs, wants and desires haven’t all-of-a-sudden changed to make us all Hyper Users. The tools around us have. We’ve been customizing and making brands our own for centuries. Think Harley Davidson, think school uniform.
Modern technology allows Hyper Users to blend new creative techniques with PSP, WiFi, VoIP, web, SMS and MMS, to name but a few, to create new offerings, some of these are just amazing in their simplicity (e.g. Google Maps/Craigslist Mash Up).
Secondly, for every yin there’s a yang, and for every person who tools themselves up to become a ‘Hyper User’, PSFK suggests, there’s a person who are astounded by all the options, want to back off and pay someone else to do it for them. And which ones do you think will be the more attractive market for the brand owners then?
TrendWatching Newsletter
Influx Article On The Creative Consumer (Part 1)
Related PSFK Articles
Hyper-User-Produced Content: Google & Craigslist Mash Up
2005 Trends: IDividualism
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Here’s a ‘Nike’ In The Air Ad that played at Toronto ResFest:
http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/shortfilm/1319/
May 3rd, 2005 at 9:47 am
Many companies are starting to involve their customers in their marketing efforts — or are they?
Ever think about why American Idol is so popular? I have, and I suspect that it’s because the program’s very premise is that the viewers control the story line. More or less, that is. In reality, like a lot of other brands, American Idol wins by merely creating the illusion of consumer empowerment.
Reveries / FC : http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/marketing/manners/050905.html
May 10th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
Here’s another example of Hyper User content:
Alex Mallison of X-bam illustration spent two weeks working hard to recreate the Citroen spot but with an interesting and very humorous twist. http://www.adrants.com/2005/05/citroen-robot-spot-gets-spoofed.php
May 15th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
An Example Of Hyper User involvement:
BBC Backstage Lets Developers Fiddle About With Their Innards
http://www.digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=cm&id=2215
May 15th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
When Participant Marketing Goes Wrong!
http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/print/what_were_they_thinking_22297.asp
June 7th, 2005 at 8:13 pm