It’s not always easy for organizations to come up with digital concepts that fit well with the needs of the customer. Usually these concepts are being thought out in high ivory towers by marketers who often never have seen a ‘customer’ IRL. Intervet Norway wanted to change that paradigm and asked us to initiate a C3 workshop.
The basis of a C3 workshop (Converse, Co-create and Consolidate) is the notion to jointly work on digital concepts. Not only internally, but also involving the customer. In this specific case the Aquaculture companies.
Session 1: Converse!
The goal of this session was to create awareness amongst the internal people about the possibilities of new media, and to discuss the current marketing plans.
In the morning (9am to 1pm) an interactive presentation was given in which the participants were taken on a journey through the new media space. Topics included:
• The background of Web 2.0
• Moving Health into the 2.0 Era
• Animal Health 2.0 – A New Frontier?
• The Power of the Blogger
• Everybody’s A Star (YouTube)
• What the Heck is Twitter About?
• Let’s All Flock Together (online communities e.g. Facebook)
• Do It Together (co-creation)
• Big Movements: Mobile 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0
• The Future Is Here (Web 3.0 and beyond)
After lunch presentations about the newly developed marketing plans were be given by the teams. Based on this information next steps in the process could be established.
Session two: Co-create!
The goal of this session was to investigate the main sources of new media communication of the customers and jointly collaborate with the customers to explore digital tools to improve communication. We did this together with a selected group of customers and people from the marketing team. Bringing the end user in house is quite a unique approach in Pharma and it was received very well by all parties.
In the morning all people presented their Digital Diet (=homework the received prior to the workshop) and the content was discussed in the group. This provided already significant insight into the way the customer are using these tools. In the next step the group was split in two whereby these tools were put on a timeframe (pre purchase, purchase and post purchase) to answer the question which tools were used in which phase of the buying process.
In the next step the groups were mixed again and by using brainstorm techniques new ideas based on digital communication were formed. This is a creative process whereby as much ideas as possible will be collected.
Session three: Consolidate!
In this session the goal is to consolidate the information collected in session 1 and 2, creating a plan and getting commitment from the teams to execute the plan. Priorities based on company key indicators are set and the outcome is written down using a predefined format for marketing planning. In the next step required resources are identified and incorporated in the planning. Finally the commitment of the teams is asked by presenting the planning to each other.
This final session is still planned.
Some statements of the participants, collected from our Quality Survey:
“New Media Masterclass was exciting, learned about other companies”
“Let’s start doing what customers are asking and involve”
“Will have to learn to think out of the box”
”Inspiring”
“Eye-opener”