Business impact of the project

1. The afterlife of the club. The pop-up club now travels around the world. Clubbers from trendy cities are able to enjoy this new nightlife experience. Next to that, some of the most well perceived design object will be produced and serve as “branded utility” provided to owners of trendy clubs and bars by Heineken.

2. Impact on the brand. The online interviews among visitors of the concept club indicate that the whole of the project makes that the brand is being seen as more “original” and “unique”, “cosmopolitan”, “innovative”, “self-confident” and “a brand to be seen with” than before – a rather unique brand image for a beer, among these young, trendy and influential people. They were surprised by the fact that Heineken did this project, but it was perceived as a great idea, a cool project and a very relevant end result. To conclude, four out of five visitors stated that they have a better perception of the Heineken brand now

3. Online conversations and PR. By analyzing the online conversations on the project in the period February 11th 2012 to May 11th 2012, Heineken team learn that Heineken’s presence at the Milan Design Week strengthened its ties with the design world from within the creative scene. Heineken “Open Design Explorations” was featured in 127 articles, mainly posted on specialty blogs focusing on one of the project’s design disciplines. In the defined period, the project generated 1,595 conversations on Twitter, with a boost of 214 tweets on the third party night (April 19th 2012). These conversations show a highly positive sentiment and are connecting values like “uniqueness”, “fun” and “surprise” to the Heineken brand. The highly targeted and content-led design campaign proved to drive market and media engagement, resulting in rich global coverage, sparking positive conversations and elevating Heineken’s reputation in open design innovation.

4. Implications for the market research profession. This case study demonstrates how important it is that also creative professions lean on consumer insights in order to become more successful in what they do. It also shows that Heineken as market researchers need to become more creative in the way we bring research results and insights towards clients and their stakeholders, in order to become more impactful with what company do and to make sure that research results are really used.

Analysis

For more precise analysis of the project, the Co-Creation tree was created. This element helps to understand key points for satisfy the client’s needs and company objectives.

The results are presented in the following table.

Summing up, we can say that the project was created by the interaction with designers, clubbers, and customers by communication through the virtual creative lab and traditional meetings, with the reason to finally participate at design exhibition and realize the club in real life. The managers of the company decided that creating a completely new branded place will drive an increase in consumer loyalty, the brand association line and will increase sales in a long- term.

Using the DART models the main aspects – access, dialogue, risks and transparency – of the project are defined.

Dialogue

There is a dialog between club goers and designers. Over the last years Heineken has invested a lot in sharing their passion for design. So Heineken decided to go one step further kicking-off a global design project connecting club goers an designers in the development of a visionary nightclub.

Transparency

Key to the deal was that pop-up club should not be created by Heineken’s in-house design team alone, but in co—creation with emerging design talent from the same age group as the current generation of clubbers.

The clubbers crowd-sourced young designers from four global design capitals by inviting them to submit their portfolio via Heineken Facebook page.

Risk

The real question was if all created concepts would be as relevant to the clubbers. There was a risk not meet expectations. Heineken brought the ingredients together that would lead to a beautifully designed night club.

Access

Heineken opted for an online research community with 120 participants. In four different rooms they could share “their current clubbing experiences” and “the role of clubbing in their routine”. The day after enjoying the new clubbing experience, visitors of the club were invited for an online interview. They were asked to write a review, give the club score, and rank your favorite design objects that were showcased in the club.

The morphological analysis also helps to check feasibility and specify company’s co-creation activities and projects by cross consistency assessment and elimination of illogical solution combinations in the grid box.

Part 1. The main question: At what stage in the innovation process co-creation should take place?

Firstly, co-creation took place at the generating ideas stage. Clubbers shared their thoughts, experience and left comments on the online lab. They discussed what they like or dislike in existing clubs and what innovations they would like to implement.

Secondly, it appears at the stage of product/service design creation. Those 19 designers involved took into account clubbers’ wishes and tried to develop graphic, fashion, interior and motion design.

Thirdly, both participants together developed a perfect club of the future, this is the stage of product manufacturing.

Part 2. The main question: What kind of customer is best suited to co-create with?

In this case both intermediaries and end customers took part in the co-creation process. There were designers working on the project as intermediaries and clubbers sharing their opinions and feelings as end customers. During the co-creation process managers and designers communicated with existing customers because their incentives were intrinsic and it was their personal will to help Heineken team to bring the idea to life. Clubbers can be named innovators as they suggested crazy ideas and were not restrained by any frames. The designers as well as the clubbers were found with the help of the Internet: first ones sent their resumes to the Heineken official Facebook page and the second ones just came to the online lab and there interacted with the team and with each other also.

Part 3. The main question: How should the course of co-creation be designed?

This particular project was run only one time but Heineken managers in their interviews said that they liked such form of interaction with the intermediaries and end customers so that they would probably organize it one more time. In the first part of the morphological analysis it has been already shown that co-creation in this particular project took part in several stages. Clubbers had open access to the online lab and left their ideas there. All the process was branded so that the clubbers knew that they interacted exactly with Heineken. As it follows from the things said above in the process there were used crowdsourcing platforms and online labs & toolkits. Communication pattern “Producer/customer/customer” was used and actually there was not intermediation in this project.

Conclusion

In the current business environment, open innovation through proactively engaging customers and consumers in developing new products and services and co-creating value for the company represents a strategic imperative for enhancing organizational competitiveness. Focused on customer engagement in innovation process, Heineken business success is based on company’s strategies for new product development, sustainable development and long-term orientation. The engagement of all categories of stakeholders in company’s open innovation efforts creates sustainable value for the company and for the whole society. Accordingly, the proactive engagement of customers and consumers in creating innovative products, which involves sharing ideas and innovative solutions through the online platforms, has a positive impact on innovation, sustainable value creation, and on company development. Heineken approach based on sustainability involves the innovation for improving the existing company processes. Also, the engagement of the external stakeholders in bringing new ideas and solutions and co-creating value for company and customers represents an effective strategy which leads to increased business performance.

Bibliography

1. H. Chesbrough, Open Services Innovation. Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era. San Francisco, CA: Jossey- Bass, 2011;

2. Heineken, About Us: Our History, retrieved on 11 October, 2014;

3. Heineken, Brands: Global Brands, retrieved on 13 October, 2014;

4. G. Rusu, Co-creation value through customers’ proactive engagement: a case study on Heineken, 2014

[1] H. Chesbrough, Open Services Innovation. Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era. San Francisco, CA: Jossey- Bass, 2011

[2] Ibid.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 630