The 1% rule in mass-customisation

I was quoted the other day in Dutch newspaper ‘De Pers’. I argued that the 1% principle (1% of each community is a ‘creator’) also holds for mass-customisation. Only the real affecionados are interested in tweaking and personalising their favourite products and brands. However, the generated buzz affects all consumers. The other 99%.

Here is what I said:

“Volgens merkenexpert Martijn Pater van Fronteer Strategy is de groep consumenten die ‘customizet’ relatief klein, maar gaat er een gigantisch marketingeffect van uit. ‘Wij hebben onderzoek gedaan naar het effect van personaliseren op het merk. Daaruit blijkt dat het merk er een open en toegankelijk imago van krijgt, als innovatief wordt gezien en daardoor populairder wordt. Het effect slaat dus over op het hele merk.’ Hij wijst op een slimme actie van Nike ID dat vorig jaar voor de wedstrijd Arsenal-Manchester United bezoekers van zijn website de schoenen van spelers als Wayne Rooney en Cesc Fabregas liet ontwerpen.”

LOVE FOR DENIM

Love for Denim. And…Almere ?

One of our current projects combines just about all my professional fields of interest, as well as one of my strongest personal passions. I’m as surprised as anyone to find two of its main components to be ‘the City of Almere’ (a relatively new town to the right of Amsterdam) and ’sustainability’.

Due to my former role as program director of Amsterdam International Fashion Week, i’m regularly asked to take part in discussions on economic & regional policy, especially relating to the development of creative industries and fashion business. During one of such discussions with the ambitious Economic Affairs team from the City of Almere, we got talking about one of my favourite topics : Jeans. Read the rest of this entry »

Co-creating for BNR Newsradio

Some time ago we took part in a conference called ‘The CoCreation Event’ held at the university of Eindhoven. Keynote speakers included Johan Sanders, innovation chief at Dutch Coffe brand Douwe Egberts and Martijn Staal of TNO, and I took part in a panel discussion about the question ‘Is Cocreation a Hype?’, which was fun.

Together with about 15 other co-creation specialists, we presented ourselves to around 500 attendants during a ‘market’-style mingle session, followed by break-out workshops. Rather than just talk about ourselves, we chose to ‘practice what we preach’ by spending both our time on the ‘market’ and in our break-out session on a cocreation topic.

We chose a topic close to any businessperson on the move: BNR Newsradio, the semi-quirky Dutch business & news radio station owned by the Dutch Financial Times. Read the rest of this entry »

Strong media interest for Fronteer study on relationship between ‘open-ness’ and ‘attractiveness’ of brands

The research recently performed by Fronteer Strategy and market research bureau Ruigrok | Netpanel has been very well received in the media; it was aired on Radio 1 and the number of websites that published the results of the research exceeded expectations. Amongst them Adformatie, Molblog, Distrifood, VEA, Marketing Tribune and Zibb.

The results, that state that the more accessible a brand, the more it is perceived as “attractive” and “innovative”, are also picked up across the border: Frank Pillar links the research to a recently performed MIT research study by open innovation expert Eric von Hippel and Johann Füller.

Fronteer and some of the brands included in the research were present at Ruigrok’s ‘Zomerborrel’, where the results were presented as well. Some brands have already reacted to it and want to have deeper insights into the results. We are proud and happy that the research has brought about so many reactions and are looking forward to the potential continuation it can have.

Research shows: Open brands are most populair

“The more accessible a brand, the more it is perceived as attractive and innovative.” This is the result of a research amongst 500 Dutch consumers, performed by market research bureau Ruigrok | Netpanel in cooperation with strategic consultancy firm Fronteer Strategy.

The research looked on the impact of openness of a company on brand value in different sectors, among which supermarkets, banks and electronics. Coffee brand Douwe Egberts, supermarket chain Albert Heijn and Rabobank are considered to be the most accessible brands and in line with that also the most attractive and innovative. Beer brands Heineken and Grolsch are performing on similar, but mediocre levels. Nokia is performing best in the electronic sector, leaving Samsung and Apple behind.

Read the rest of this entry »

‘Innovating through the Crisis’

At Fronteer Strategy, Innovation and Brand Development are our two favourite topics, so we were very happy to be called this week by one of The Telegraaf’s senior business editors who was writing an article about the need for “A”-brands to innovate, ‘even’ in times of crisis. Here’s a summary of our point in English.

Many brands’ innovation programs are frozen like a deer in car headlights. The knee-jerk reaction of ‘putting your hand on your wallet’ (as we say in The Netherlands) is worsened by recent experience of mediocre-but-expensive innovation projects. Read the rest of this entry »

Schizophrenic? Or just tired of all the yada yada about the crisis…

(Sorry, only in Dutch… Here’s an article posted on the tongue-in-cheek business blog www.925.nl)

‘De Economische Crisis creeert Schizofrene consumenten!’. Adformatie bericht deze week over een onderzoek van BBDO Worldwide. Altijd lachen natuurlijk, mensen voor schizofreen uitmaken.

“De schizofrene consument denkt het een en doet het ander” - zo wordt ons uitgelegd. Uit onderzoek zou blijken dat we als gevolg van ‘de crisis’ ineens onlogische aankoopbeslissingen maken. Read the rest of this entry »

High margin brand activation

LEGOWORLD : Great Fun. Great Activation.

Probably, also great Margin.

The past few years, we’ve seen more and more brands re-think their marketing mix. Simply putting your name on the back of a football team is becoming rather ‘last season’. Cleverly, some companies are using their ‘brand activation’ efforts to generate revenue as well as recall, loyalty, rumour and excitement.

Last Saturday I took my god-son Justin to a great example of this: LegoWorld. All of the existing and new product lines (Pirates, City, Techno, Star Wars, Ferrari, Racers, Indiana Jones, you name it) were featured, as well as a room full of exhibitions by fanatic Lego freaks, who had built scale models of everything from the royal palace and a cruise ship to a roman battle (I tell you, there are some REALLY enthusiastic Lego-heads out there) Read the rest of this entry »

GREAT! Another consulting firm…

JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDED

Actually, no. Fronteer Strategy isn’t ‘just’ another consulting firm, but one with a clear idea of why, how and what. The ‘double e’ is a conscious typo (thanks for warning me though, mum) that refers to our backgrounds: engineer, marketeer… and anthropologist. We apply our wide variety of interests and experience to develop clutter-cutting marketing strategy: innovation, co-creation and brand development. Read the rest of this entry »