Brandworks University® 2009

In this third installment of summaries from Brandworks 2009 presentations, Scott Cook of Intuit takes on the value of what he calls "user contribution systems" (UCS) and how successful companies are leverageing UCS to jumpstart their brands performance.

For more on Brandworks 2009, view previous entries from this blog or check out the whitepaper.

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How to Tap Into and Leverage Conversations Your Employees and Customers are Already Having
Scott Cook, Founder, Intuit

At Brandworks University 2009, Scott Cook, Founder of Intuit, helped us learn why volunteerism is not just for charity.  Cook introduced us to the phenomenon of what he calls “User Contribution Systems” (UCS) and how they are “fueling some of the world’s fastest growing and most competitively advantaged organizations,” according to Cook’s Harvard Business Review article.

As defined by Cook, contribution systems are, “Software, social systems and conversations that directly solve problems for other people by collecting and leveraging people’s contributions, behaviors or data.”

Admittedly, Cook was initially incredibly skeptical that people would volunteer their own time or knowledge to contribute to this type of model, and even if they did, he wondered who would trust the advice of a stranger over that of a documented expert.

The answer is: a lot of people.  Cook went on to study the success of sites like Amazon, Wikipedia, and Skype that have experienced unprecedented success by leveraging user contributions to create value for the companies.  It turns out that people are more than willing to offer up their own goods, services, or advice in order to help solve problems for other people.

It is this willingness that makes User Contribution Systems a wise choice for companies who want to present value to consumers at a low cost. The key take-away of Cook’s speech was that it’s OK to fail, to experiment, and to try again to find a way to integrate user contributions and conversations into your business model.  Of course, not everyone will be the next Amazon, but utilizing user contributions can help reduce costs, entertain consumers, forge relationships, provide personal recommendations and, “create a community around an important topic that will help promote engagement with the brand,” said Cook.

Cook urged all in attendance to begin experimenting with a UCS model, because “if you’re not conducting an exercise like that at your organization, you risk missing the boat on a sea of change that’s transforming business.”

Brandworks University® 2009

In the second in a series of blog posts recapping presentations from LSB’s Brandworks University 2009, we review how Nike’s Global Director of Brand Connections, Stefan Olander is jumpstarting conversations with brand fanatics worldwide.
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How to Inspire Customers to Jumpstart Conversations on Your Behalf

Make no mistake. Stefan Olander, Nike’s Global Director, Brand Connections, loves the Nike brand and thinks the shoes are marvels of technology. But even he admits that “In the past, the product was the end point of the customer experience, now it is just the beginning.”

Thanks to social networking media, Nike has had to learn to turn over responsibility for the Just Do It brand statement and brand conversations to Nike’s athlete-customers. “The responsibility we have because we have a brand statement like this is to enable people to Just Do It. We’re just scratching the surface of everything we can empower as a brand.”

One way Nike is empowering consumers is with Nike Plus, an application developed in partnership with Apple. Nike Plus lets runners use their iPods to keep and view a graphic history of their routes, running times and pace; get real-time voice reports on their times, distance and calories burned during a run; and even play a “power song” at the push of a button when they need an extra energy boost. Hundreds of thousands of runners from 160 countries now upload their running data to nikeplus.com. 

But a funny thing happened once runners could see a graphic display of their times and their friends’ times shared on the website. It started to function like a social networking site.

“Runners are competitive people,” he explained. “They want to challenge others to beat their time. So your friend pings you by email and challenges you, and now, after every run, you plug in and you see who’s ahead. We established a dialog we never had before.”

Nike took the conversation to a higher level by creating the Human Race 10K, a worldwide running event held August 31, 2008. On that day, 800,000 runners all around the world ran in a coordinated event. “What was great was the connectivity,” Olander said. “Wherever you were in the world, you knew there was someone else running.”

Empowering athletes to create their own social networks is all fine, Olander said, but the question is always asked, “are we selling any more shoes?”

“At the end of the day, we are about selling shoes and Apple is about selling iPods. We can’t just cash in at the end of the day, but if you’re coming to our website three times per week to interact with our brand, eventually you’re going to try our shoes. If you enable someone to get better at what they’re doing, it’s going to benefit your brand.”

Incidentally, Nike’s sales are up 6-8 percent since the introduction of Nike Plus.