1. Johnnie Moore on February 19, 2005 06:11 AM writes...

John: I'm also fascinated by Bohm's thoughts about dialogue and by how it supports the possibility of thinking together. It takes us away from the much more familiar experience of lobbing well formed conversational bricks towards (or, at) each other and hoping somehow to build something out of them.

A lot of conventional branding runs counter to this notion of dialogue. Instead, it attempts to do the meaning-making for the customer. It's quite common to hear the language of ownership in discussions of this sort of branding. "Owning the brand"; "owning mindspace".

We've collectively blogged a lot here about co-creation. Although for some this is another suspect piece of jargon, the idea it points to seems pretty important. It points to the making of meaning together. Not a battle of ideas.

David Weinberger offered a shorthand for this polarity in this admirably succinct post: It's the difference between "!" and "?".

I'm not saying, by the way, that "!" is wrong and "?" is right. I will say that I find more and more personal satisfaction in conversations where there is more "?".

2. Bruce DeBoer on February 19, 2005 12:24 PM writes...

Johnnie et all,

Here's my take on what was stated earlier: Co-creation is only jargon when we add the word marketing at the end: e.g. Co-creative Marketing.

The concepts and ideas under most of the jargon banners are excellent but the context that these banners introduce can be a death blow to the concepts for which they are raised in the first place. Co-creation and facilitation describes a human process NOT a marketing methodology owned by an Association of loosely knit professionals. That is what makes this discussion work for me.

My favorite example is Word of Mouth Marketing. By adding jargon, we are adding "!". Like it or not, we are not great cultural anthropologists discovering new concepts. There is plenty of jargon already in existence under which we can place these ideas in context. Did we really need the WOMMA?

My favorite element of these posts and comments has been when we apply these concepts and talk about how they succeeded. Hence my occasional short rants about integrating these ideas into overall business strategy. These concepts are not new but their application can be very innovative. It's exciting and challenging and it's not far removed from what Bill Bernbach's writings exhorted.

The occasional definition of terms is necessary but I think it's too easy to get stuck - myself included.

Now, about dialog: I think it's always been true that the more we engage our customers the more effective the campaign will be. It's more necessary now since our prospects have honed their skills of tuning out. Prior to my marketing career I was a 20 yr. professional artist. Through that medium I learned that tapping a human emotion is what makes your art worthwhile. Same goes for marketing.

Owning Mindshare (or should we now call it Lifeshare or Heartshare -- nah, mindshare is good enough) is what we want and dialog (what we used to try and do with market research) is a method to get us there. Again, getting caught up in jargon - what's wrong with it or what's right - is a trap. Co-creation leads to mindshare; facilitated well and it’s a path to our customer’s emotional connection to the brand.

Is there any doubt that Peter Drucker understood what we are talking about when he said: "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."

Thanks for the great posts. I'm continually challenged at this site.

-bruce

3. john winsor on February 20, 2005 05:27 PM writes...

Bruce, great thoughts. I really agree with you that the idea of co-creation is much bigger than marketing. It con become jargon if the context is too narrow. The context for co-creation is human interaction. The idea that we can create things together from blogs to products to a new physics law.

Drucker did understand this much sooner than most.

4. Tom Guarriello on February 21, 2005 12:09 AM writes...

There's a lot going on here.

First, "co-creation" is a phrase that has a history in existentialism that is relevant to what we're describing as both "involving the customer in the design of a product" and as "making-meaning together." Those are very different kinds of activities, so we need to be clear about what we're referring to when we use the word, "co-creation."

Second, "dialogue" is a distinctinve way of being-with-others that needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated. It's demanding, often frustrating work. Staying focused on deep meaning calls for participants to be highly rigorous.

In my experience, "branding" is not the kind of topic that spontaneously emerges in Bohm's dialogues. One might intend to facilitate a dialogue on branding, but in so doing, violate one of Bohm's most fundament principles about dialogue.

I was part of an extended project team that taught and used dialogue in a corporate setting, and while the work was largely successful, it required a significant commitment of company resources to allow participants to explore ideas in a unique, non-directed fashion.

Dialogue is not the way most people are used to communicating with one another is business settings. Bohm's work focuses on a different plane, and we should be very careful not to appropriate language from one domain and use it for purposes other than those for which it was intended.

That's not to say that "dialogue" is antithetical to explorations of the meaning of "branding," only that it's important to be aware of our powerful temptation to use new language to re-package familar concepts.

5. john winsor on February 21, 2005 12:45 AM writes...

Tom, thanks for adding this. I spend a lot of time thinking about how language can affect relationships, especially between companies and their customers. My company, Radar Communications' goal is to help our clients listen to their customers in a more human way. Still, many of our clients struggle with trying to take their customers out of the context of branding and marketing and into the context of a more human relationship.

This is an evolution where the language needs to be developed so that people stuck in the current paradigm of branding can have the confidence needed to evole with their customers. I think what we are trying to do at BrandShift is co-create as making meaning together.

Thanks much for your input on the subject. This is a big, hairy idea and your thoughts help the conversation a great deal.

6. Johnnie Moore on February 21, 2005 05:04 AM writes...

Tom: Thanks for your very interesting perspective and sharing your experience. I think this blog is encouraging me to think a little more carefully about how I use the phrase "co-creation".

You say "In my experience, "branding" is not the kind of topic that spontaneously emerges in Bohm's dialogues". I believe you!

I believe I have a good sense of what Bohm dialogue is like, and I have experienced it a few times... and it is almost impossible to describe it in words. And yes, there's quite a gap between one of those dialogues and what the most enlighted organisations might need by way of day-to-day customer contact.

It is deeply ironic that no-one really agrees what branding is. There are so many different definitions of it, many of them asserted as if they are an agreed fact. They're not. I think there is a case for looking at branding as a form of making shared meaning although it may sound a bit esoteric. And not what a lot of people think it is.