Co-creation in the food and beverage industry

‘Co-cre­ation. Another buzz­word, noth­ing new under the sun’ , the scep­tic may think. Focus groups, mar­ket research and the like have been around for decades to find out what con­sumers want. That’s part­ly true. Of course, com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions have always tried to get under the skin of con­sumers. In light of this, it is pos­si­ble to con­sid­er co-cre­ation as a nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion­ary process. But what is it all about? And are there good exam­ples from the food industry?

What is co-creation?

To under­stand co-cre­ation, we start by look­ing at what the rela­tion­ship between com­pa­ny and con­sumer has tra­di­tion­al­ly looked like. Surely cus­tomers and con­sumers pre­vi­ous­ly have been involved in var­i­ous activities?

Well, sort of.

Traditionally, com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions have used mar­ket research, sur­veys, focus groups, feed­back and the like to involve con­sumers. And of course, in these ways, you can reach a suf­fi­cient­ly large mass to cre­ate sta­tis­ti­cal cer­tain­ty and gain insight into var­i­ous things such as seg­men­ta­tion, mar­ket trends, ten­den­cies, and more. But these sur­veys are one-time activ­i­ties and do not last long. And above all, they do not engage the consumer.

Co-cre­ation is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent animal.

With co-cre­ation, you cre­ate val­ue-cre­at­ing activ­i­ties by col­lab­o­rat­ing with con­sumers. In return, you will of course get every­thing that mar­ket research pro­vides: opin­ions, atti­tudes, insights, and more.

But it does not stop there.

Building a relationship

Successful co-cre­ation goes deep and invites the con­sumer to par­tic­i­pate, to be involved and influ­ence, to be seen and heard. It is a rela­tion­ship-build­ing activ­i­ty that does not stop at stan­dard­ized ques­tions in a survey.

In order for the con­sumer to be able and above all to want to help you, there must be incen­tives for the cus­tomer to do so. The cus­tomer must feel involved, includ­ed and encouraged.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion can take dif­fer­ent forms. It may be that the con­sumer is encour­aged to con­tribute their own con­tent on social media such as images, text and rec­om­men­da­tions that are in some way linked to your brand.

But it can also be more in-depth efforts. In its most ambi­tious form, co-cre­ation can be used to devel­op com­plete­ly new prod­ucts. We will return to that, but first, we will answer the ques­tion of what makes co-cre­ation possible.

Why now?

The tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment has meant that it is now pos­si­ble to bring con­sumers and com­pa­nies togeth­er in a cost-effec­tive way and form a rela­tion­ship. Modern tech­nol­o­gy is need­ed to con­tin­u­ous­ly keep a rela­tion­ship alive and to be able to receive ideas, views and feed­back. Without it, every­thing would just be expen­sive, slow and not worth the effort. With the help of tech­no­log­i­cal advances and the dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty that has tak­en place in the last 10–15 years, co-cre­ation is an opportunity.

The devel­op­ment of social media, smart­phones, tablets, video con­fer­enc­ing and advances in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, and more, are just a few exam­ples of things we now have avail­able. Users and con­sumers can not only share infor­ma­tion but also cre­ate con­tent them­selves and con­tribute to what hap­pens on the web in a two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion with com­pa­nies and organizations.

Examples from reality

Let’s look in-depth at an exam­ple from reality.

In 1877 in Italy, a food com­pa­ny was estab­lished which is now known all over the world. It all start­ed with bread and pas­ta in the city of Parma and since then it has grown into a glob­al food group with many brands. Every year, they launch about 50 new products.

If you are guess­ing at Barilla, you are absolute­ly right.

Barilla is, as many know, a major pro­duc­er of, among oth­er things: pas­ta, bread, sauces and bak­ery prod­ucts, with a turnover of sev­er­al bil­lion euros each year.

The glob­al food com­pa­ny had noticed that their cus­tomers were engaged in the brand and the com­pa­ny and often expressed their thoughts and opin­ions via email. At Barilla, they noticed that there was poten­tial for some­thing big.

Barilla took action and in 2009 the glob­al food com­pa­ny start­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tion with its con­sumers to man­age cus­tomer engage­ment by lis­ten­ing to them.

A plat­form on the web was cre­at­ed, spe­cial­ly devel­oped to col­lect ideas from con­sumers in a sys­tem­at­ic and thought­ful way.

The guiding principles

Barilla devel­oped three prin­ci­ples for guid­ing the cam­paign and the dig­i­tal platform.

1. Our inten­tion is not to talk to con­sumers, it is actu­al­ly the oppo­site, it is to listen.
2. The goal is not to teach, but to learn.
3. It should be an oper­a­tional plat­form, with the ambi­tion to pro­duce action, rather than talk.

Barilla want­ed the plat­form to engage and lead to open and active con­ver­sa­tions to get an insight into what inter­est­ed con­sumers. It would not be about high­light­ing Barilla. The whole project should be per­ceived as being gen­uine and sincere.

Five categories

In order to keep order among the ideas, five cat­e­gories of ideas were also developed:

1. Products (ideas for new prod­ucts, new ingre­di­ents and new recipes)
2. Brand (ideas and feel­ings asso­ci­at­ed with the con­sump­tion process)
3. Packaging (design, shape, size and material)
4. CSR and envi­ron­men­tal responsibility
5. Other areas

In order for the whole thing not to result in a lot of spam and friv­o­lous chat­ter, par­tic­i­pants had to live up to cer­tain stan­dards. For exam­ple, to cre­ate an account and reg­is­ter on the forum. The ideas also need­ed to show orig­i­nal­i­ty and innovation.

The cam­paign includ­ed a blog page. On the blog, employ­ees could con­tin­u­ous­ly write about imple­ment­ed projects or launched prod­ucts, but also inform about how ideas and pro­pos­als were handled.

Co-creation 2.0

But the com­mit­ment did not stop at engag­ing con­sumers on a sin­gle occa­sion. The com­mit­ment con­tin­ued and devel­oped through con­sumers being able to vote and sug­gest improve­ments to oth­er con­sumers’ con­tri­bu­tions. The pot kept boil­ing and it was up to the con­sumers them­selves to make win­ning contributions.

The ten most pop­u­lar ideas then went on, but Barilla kept their veto power.

Transparency

The next step after each ‘cam­paign’ was to inter­nal­ly eval­u­ate the ideas vot­ed on. The eval­u­a­tion process and how long the imple­men­ta­tion would take, etc, was com­mu­ni­cat­ed on the web­site to the pub­lic, to bring about open­ness and transparency.

Professional help

Staff at Barilla helped con­sumers con­cep­tu­al­ize and refine their ideas.

Spitting out ideas may be an easy task. But gen­er­at­ing ideas in a pro­fes­sion­al way requires a cer­tain system.

Consumers were there­fore helped to go from the tac­it knowl­edge to the explic­it. The tac­it knowl­edge is per­son­al, unar­tic­u­lat­ed and can be dif­fi­cult for the envi­ron­ment to under­stand. The idea must be explic­it, i.e con­crete and clear, for the recip­i­ent to under­stand it.

Communication

Communication with the pub­lic and con­sumers was main­tained at all times. It was up to the mar­ket­ing depart­ment and the research and devel­op­ment depart­ment to con­tin­u­ous­ly pro­vide feed­back on ideas – those that could be imple­ment­ed as well as those that could not.

It was explained why some ideas with poten­tial could not be imple­ment­ed at the present. At the same time, the Barilla staff were keen to share infor­ma­tion about new events, prod­uct launch­es and prod­ucts devel­oped from cus­tomer ideas.

The web-based co-cre­ation plat­form was also inte­grat­ed with social media such as Twitter and Facebook to con­tin­u­ous­ly com­mu­ni­cate with the public.

The result

During the almost three years that the co-cre­ation work was going on, Barilla received over 5,000 ideas, over 10,000 com­ments and over 100,000 votes.

The new ideas led to new prod­ucts and ser­vices, which were not pro­posed by either the research and devel­op­ment depart­ment or the mar­ket­ing depart­ment – but by ordi­nary con­sumers. Ideas in the cat­e­go­ry prod­uct were most with almost 3000 ideas and over half of these ideas could be clas­si­fied as original.

The new ideas result­ed in, among oth­er things, a new series of wheat flour cakes and new types of packaging.

Spin-offs

In addi­tion to idea gen­er­a­tion, reg­is­tered users on the plat­form could choose to par­tic­i­pate in mar­ket research.

But wait a minute! Market research? Wasn’t it a poor and out­dat­ed method, some­one might object?

No, it’s not that sim­ple. It may work well as a com­ple­men­tary method, espe­cial­ly if you have an audi­ence that is already com­mit­ted and will­ing to share, just like in Barilla’s case.

In addi­tion, par­tic­i­pants could col­lect points which could then be redeemed for the company’s prod­ucts. At the same time, users on the plat­form vot­ed for an idea for email noti­fi­ca­tion for each new sur­vey conducted.

More than 20,000 peo­ple took part in the sur­veys. In this way, Barilla gained an incred­i­ble insight into needs, desires and con­sump­tion habits; invalu­able infor­ma­tion to make even bet­ter seg­men­ta­tion, which in turn can lead to bet­ter and more rel­e­vant products.

What can we learn?

It is worth men­tion­ing that suc­cess­ful co-cre­ation often requires great efforts on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent lev­els. On the tech­ni­cal side, there must be a plat­form in place that is up to scrath. Also, the employ­ees must be on the ball and ready to adapt to a new way of work­ing. The efforts pure­ly finan­cial­ly and orga­ni­za­tion­al­ly may there­fore be high. At least for a start.

But once you have all these things in place, co-cre­ation can bring ben­e­fits and advan­tages that are dif­fi­cult to achieve in oth­er ways. Here are four exam­ples of what you have to gain.

Thoughtful and ambi­tious co-creation:

1. can cre­ate unbeat­able loy­al­ty and com­mit­ment to your prod­ucts and brand
2. is an ‘idea engine’ that nev­er sleeps. In this way, employ­ees in mar­ket­ing and devel­op­ment depart­ments who would oth­er­wise have done the job are relieved.
3. can cre­ate valu­able insights ear­ly in the prod­uct devel­op­ment phase. If many peo­ple get involved in a spe­cif­ic idea, it may be a clear indi­ca­tion if the idea becomes a hit on the market.
4. can cre­ate large amounts of data that become valu­able insights when it comes to mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion. Simply put: You get to know your cus­tomers and can there­fore pro­duce bet­ter and more rel­e­vant products.

Co-creation in the future

What does the future of co-cre­ation look like? No one knows for sure. In any case, it is clear that the tech­nol­o­gy that enables co-cre­ation will be even bet­ter. In par­al­lel with this, a new gen­er­a­tion is gain­ing influ­ence; Generation Z which can also be called ‘dig­i­tal natives’. This is a gen­er­a­tion that moves seam­less­ly between the phys­i­cal real­i­ty and the dig­i­tal. The con­trast is not as clear as it is for old­er generations.

Technological devel­op­ment and the pro­gres­sive new gen­er­a­tion points to a future where co-cre­ation is more rule than exception.

Further reading

Do you want to read more? At Bayn Magazine, you will find columns, fea­tures and arti­cles on busi­ness devel­op­ment and prod­uct devel­op­ment.