You know there are certain buzzwords associated with the technology culture these days, one being user generated content. It was not until I read a great article in this months Inc magazine about the tshirt company Threadless that I heard the saying “user innovation”.
Threadless, for those of you who do not know is a site where users submit the designs for tshirts. They are voted on and the best designs wins. The designer gets paid for winning and also some $$ for reprints. It is really pretty ingeniuos. The guys at Threadless gave created a social network of sorts that creates the designs they sell for them and makes money from it. User innovation at its finest.
While I had this article fresh in my mind I saw a post from my friend Jeremy Epstein titled, “Purell: Fanning the Flames … and a Marketing Challenge.” In his post, Jeremy pondered this about Purell ( yes the hand sanitizer ) :
You, as a consumer, may say “Purell,” but many of you will actually buy cheaper generic hand sanitizer.
My sister says: “I only buy Purell. I don’t like how the generics make my hands feel.”
Not everyone feels that way.
So, if you were the Purell team, what do you think you could do to give customers a reason to buy your brand when one could argue…hand sanitizer is a commodity?
At first I was busy trying to come up with a strategy that a Purell could use … and BTW I came up with this :
“Xerox, Coke, Purell … there are many imitators but only one name defines the product”
I am no marketing major by any stretch, but I liked it :) Anyway, as I was thinking, it hit me what Jeremy was doing. He was asking for User Innovation. Just like the threadless guys asks their audience for the next great design, Jeremy was looking for the next great ad campaign. Who knows what t-shirts they would buy over any other ones ? The consumers do. And who would know an ad that would appela to them ? The consumers would.
It is really brilliant if you think about it. Jeremy recently left his post at Microsoft and looked toward helping companies with what he called WOM, or Word of Mouth marketing. What a better way to start the WOM ball rolling on a product than to have the consumer start it for you ? I left my desk today and while walking to lunch told my peers about Jeremy’s post and his Purell challenge. I know it got them thinking about it also and as they ponder, who knows who they may tell. So with the simple post of a blog and a question to his readers, Jeremy lit the flame of User Innovation and who knows where it may end up. Threadless has become a multi-million dollar company using nearly the very same model.
Build what they want you to, and they will not only come, but they will come and buy what you built.
