When we talk about successful branding we often discuss it in terms of personal relationships (don’t get me wrong, I am no expert in relationships. Heck, I can’t even go on a good date but my life is surrounded by good, strong, healthy relationships).  

From what I have seen and learned from those I look up to in life, I have determined that a strong relationship is about love, trust, loyalty, and communication.  If we apply these attributes to the relationship between brand and consumer I worry we might be misunderstanding some of these attributes.  The attributes have been slightly changed or shifted to create an unbalanced relationship between the brand and consumer.  The brand has the upper hand; the communication scales are tipped in their favor.  This uneven balance of communication has been slowly addressed over the years.  Brands have added consumer research departments, they have started doing category based segmentations, they have started validating their brands with the “right” consumers at the end of the process.  But if we are only making minor adjustments to an archaic process we will only see incremental changes and incremental sales.  We suggest the following.  Take a moment.  Stop.  Breathe.  And re-evaluate your process.     

We suggest a new process.  A process we call CoCreation.  Listen to your consumers, create with your consumers, invite them into the entire process and just watch what happens.