Brands becoming porous

Hot on the heels of my post about My Starbucks Idea, I thought I’d share a couple of pieces of Brand 2.0 love that I’ve come across recently:

• The church of co-creation and community, Communities Dominate Brands: go here for some deep insight into how some companies are recognising the (well-documented) need to get closer to their customers, and embed them into their processes.
• Understanding what co-creation actually means: by Corante.

I’m starting to think of brands as being porous – for the reason that the word ‘porous’ implies a flow into something, but in a gradual, slow-but-sure way. It’s not like most large businesses move (to use Tom Peters’ phrase) at the speed of light, and yet they’re waking up to the fact that they have to constantly shift and adapt to the changing needs of their customers. So…porous.

My Starbucks Idea

This is fabulous example of a global company reaching out to its customer base and giving them the opportunity to share their ideas on how to reinvigorate its customer experience. Of course, the idea is only as good as Starbucks’ willing to adopt any of the suggestions that are made – and from what I’ve seen, they’re taking steps to do just that.

I’d like to see more companies taking this kind of approach – and it ties into some thinking I’ve been doing recently around brands and how they become more porous…