Corante's Renee Hopkins Callahan, Johnnie Moore, Neville Hobson, Hylton Jolliffe and Paul Gladen are live-blogging at the IMC (check out Fast Company's Blog Jam for the full feed). Here is what they've blogged about so far:

From Paul:

Co-Creation

Blogging live from the Corante Marketing Innovation Conference, which is being held in conjunction with Columbia University Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership, where we've been discussing Co-Creation. In our breakout discussion group led by John Winsor we have co-created this blog entry to summarise our discussion. Our conversation covered a range of different issues and dimensions including:

- The concept of holistic co-creation
- Opensource and Linux as the original cocreation model
- Using "jams" (internally and externally) to drive cocreation - and ensuring these are focused on positive issues
- Realizing that while cocreation is mostly thought of as creation with customers, many businesses often have untapped opportunities to cocreate internally
- Continuing the theme of expanding the participation of cocreation, opportunity exists to work with business partners and providers of complementary products and services to build a cocreation network
- the importance of nurturing community - taking baby steps and not getting frustrated early on, being willing to "fail fast and move on" and having a thick skin
- considering the consequences of not co-creating - i.e. your customers will cocreate with your competitors (and your employees may move to businesses that enable them to cocreate with customers)
- by developing the community over time you will learn what what customers truly value and can align your pricing to those values (rather than your internal cost structure).

Are You Paying Attention?

John Hagel has lead us in a very thought provoking discussion on the issue of attention scarcity. Our group drew out some key aspects of attention that need to be worked through. First was the idea that attention and permission are interlinked and permission is a function of context as well as trust (and privacy). So the timing, extent, depth of my attention to my financial advisor is very different to the attention I may be willing to provide to my cable company. So if you want to increase the level of attention you receive from current and prospective customers you must create capabilities, situations and scenarios that are consistent with the context, needs and expectations of the customer – otherwise you risk “assaulting the customer” at inappropriate times and in inappropriate ways.

Another area we discussed was the use of tools to help manage attention – for example using RSS to channel and manage those information sources that we are willing to give our attention to. John Hagel also provided the example of CISCO which provides diagnostic tools that help customers better identify their needs and help focus the conversation.

Marketing is Broken - Here are the Repair Tools

A stimulating day which included an animated discussion led by David Weinberger about what's broken in marketing. Plenty seemed to be the consensus, but plentiful also were the ideas about how to fix it. There was a clear consensus that the ideas of social currency and co-creation offer opportunity to re-orient marketing - but that underpinning it all is TRUST.

From Hylton:

Johnnie Moore on Co-Creation

Conversation's intense so blogging's light but for a taste tune in to Johnnie Moore's blog where he follows up a point he made during the wrap-up for the co-creation session: "We sometimes talk about co-creation in marketing as if it is something that some folks are doing and some are not. That's fine, but I think the truth is that as human beings we are co-creating the whole time, but maybe not noticing..."

And also: "What if organisations took the time to simply attend to what is being co-created in all their relationships. so perhaps we can avoid just using co-creation as another stick to beat ourselves with."

From Renee:

Challenges of Co-creation, Within Organizations and Outside Organizations

From the Corante Innovative Marketing conference: We've just finished listening to a terrific presentation bby Burger King CMO Russ Klein (about which more later). We broke into groups to discuss co-creation....my group essentially raised a lot of challenges, such as:

-- How can you navigate co-creation in a culture where the customer experience is "owned" by more than one group? The person who raised this question called marketing departments the "most guilty" of this, of feeling as though they are the only ones who can truly understand customers and should own all customer co-creation initiatives.

-- It seems to our group as though there are two ways to *do* customer co-creation. One would be to proactively seek customer input and ideas through specific projects and initiatives. The other would be to watch your customers' behavior, by any means you already are connected with them, and react to it.

(Read the rest here.)

John Hagel on Attention Scarcity and its Effect on Marketing

Live from the Corante Innovative Marketing Conference -- John Hagel set the challenge for the second round of table discussions.

In short, the challenge he posed is: The new scarcity = attention; there has been a profound shift in busienss economics from shelf space as the key scarce resource to people's time and attention and the key scarce resource.

So what does this do to/for (because there's opportunity as well as challenge) to branding, marketing, metrics?

(Read the rest here.)

Discussion on Attention Scarcity

Permission vs attention -- how do those things work together? Sometimes a brand have my attention but I don't want to give you permission.

Contextual -- if my mind's on food, I'm not interested in hearing about a car. And some feel they are already assaulted enough, that they want to protect their privacy.

John Hagel says the gap is in creating value for the customer out of all the information companies gather from customers. Companies should think in terms of value exchanges.....how can you exchange trust for value over time?

How can a company become a trusted advisor? According to John Hagel, the answer is helpfulness. Offer to be helpful, move beyond intention. Genuinely offer to help people use your product, and offer to help them navigate the context, find what and who wlese could be helpful to them. A comment -- "the answer to 'how' is 'yes' "....we all know how to get someone's attention, it's not rocket science, but someone at the company needs to take a risk and do something different.

(Read the rest here.)

The CEO Should Be a CMO

That was the end point of the heated discussion referred to below. I'm not sure everyone agreed with it, although one person said "That would be nirvana."

But if marketing is about demand (either driving latent demand or creating it out of thin air), and serving as the entry point in the corporation for the customer co-creation and conversation, why *not* have the CEO be CMO?

UPDATE: In his closing remarks, Columbia's Bernd Schmitt characterized the heated discussion as like Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" -- either everyone at the company should be a marketer, or no one but the CEO should!

Also: Download the podcast of Neville's awesome interview with Bernd Shmitt here, and the podcast of his other interview with Russ Klein here.

And (courtesy of Hylton), check out some photos of the day's round table discussions at flickr. (Click here.)

See you tomorrow for more in-depth coverage of IMC Day 2.

:)

John Winsor's been on a roll lately. In his latest opus (I'm kidding), he puts into words a phenomenon I was forced to witness more or less helplessly for years:

"So many companies spend a great deal of time counting everything, but seeing the significance of nothing.

When you count things, you first have to define them in measurable ways, letting the system manipulate the figures by narrowing the definition. The reality is that the more you count, the less you understand."

Reading this reminded me of a Sales Manager I once shared a suite with who used to pore through dozens of economic indicators and other industry charts to find one that most closely match our company's preformance. He used this prop in monthly brass meetings to appease the powers that be... who always seemed quite impressed with the nice magic show he put on for them.

Unfortunately, no matter how entertaining and seemingly impressive, the correlation between our numbers and the ever-changing graph of the month meant absolutely nothing. (Good thing our sales numbers were always pretty decent.)

Given the right audience, the right amount of charisma, or just enough bullsizzle to talk your way out of anything, you can make numbers say just about anything you want.

If this sounds crazy, that's good. Just know that a large number of companies fall prey to this sort of nonsense. (Consider yourself lucky you aren't working for one of them.)

Here's more from John:

"So much of modern marketing strategy takes the white tower, arm’s length, and quantifiable approach to strategy. Strategy can’t be so sanitized and kept so distant from what’s actually happening in the market. Being so reliant on quantitative models misses the point. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”'

True... but interpretations aren't objective, are they? Of course not. But now that we know that numbers aren't either, we're free to have a look around. To test new theories. To consider new points of view. To go seek out relevance and context and meaning out there in the real world, where our clients and customers live. We aren't chained to numbers anymore. We know better now. Don't we? (Anyone? Anyone?)

What you have to realize is that objectivity is a myth. Perhaps more importantly, objectivity has no place in the world of business. Everything out here is subjective. Everything is about likes and dislikes. Everything about markets is about choice and prejudice and competition. There is no objectivity here. People buy things because they like them. Because they love them. Because they feel that they need them. People buy things and choose services based on their likes and dislikes. Objectivity might as well be scratched out of our dictionaries. It has no place here.

Now, don't get me wrong: I am not advocating that we stop looking at sales figures and other performance indicators. Of course not. But what I am suggesting is that in order to make the most out of what often turns into a confusing heap of blank nod-inducing "data," we turn to the real world for meaning and context. Yes, that's right, that big bubble of space outside our companies' four walls. (I guess that would be a whole lot more than just four walls, but you get my drift.)

Meaning, context and continuity live out there. (Pointing in the general direction of your office window or building's front door.) They absolutely do not live in here. (Squinting up at your fluorescent ceiling lights.)

In order to make sense of your numbers, you have to spend a whole lot more time talking to customers than you are. (Or pay very insightful and engaging people to do it for you, which is probably even better.)

Here's more from John:

"Even numbers have to be integrated into a story in order to be made meaningful. (...) I often find that, when asked by a client to solve a particular problem, the solution becomes clear after spending time in the field listening to people who use the product. I might get the same result by looking at internal reports and Excel spreadsheets, but it would take a lot longer. I would also miss the opportunity to discover the unexpected, become exposed to new ideas, or learn how the customers’ expectations of the product could lead to real innovation."

Having just spent almost four years directing product development projects, I can tell you from personal experience that innovation doesn't happen in labs or design studios. Those are the places were theories and ideas are applied and tested. Where they are put into motion. Where they take on a real life of their own. "Innovation," though, happens out there. It happens by being out in the world. It happens when curious and imaginative people observe and listen and reach out for new experiences. It happens when people allow themselves to be inspired, and then turn this inspiration into something actionable. (... And by golly, may I suffer a thousand lashes for having used that wretched word in a sentence.)

Find out more about Innovation in the business world - and particularly as it applies to Marketing - by attending Corante and the Center on Global Brand Leadership of Columbia Business School on June 8-9 in New York City for the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference. The theme of the conference: innovation. It will tackle head-on the question of the future of marketing — drawing on the best practices from the past, and the real promise of the future.

Find out more here.

There's plenty more great stuff in the network feed, but we'll try to get to it tomorrow. Have a great Tuesday, everyone. :)