Leverage Social Media for New Product Designs & Marketing

Posted by: Tim Reha | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 | 0 Comments |

There are a number of insightful blog articles that display the shift to “Social Product Design”.

In my opinion I believe that customers often hold more knowledge about a product than to the companies that create the products. Often customers will modify products with design defects to make them “work right”. In other instances, products are completely used for uses that they were unintended by the product designer. In third world countries, coke cans are twisted up into all sorts of toys since the aluminum material is flexible to be shaped and formed into new uses.

Social product design also has a side effect as a great form of marketing. In fact, both the product design and the marketing for the product may be energized by the customer. Zooppa http://www.zoopa.com is an internet startup that creates people-powered, marketing design competitions. With creativity and a small amount of programming your company could create a social product design and marketing competition with two prizes—one for the best product design and one for the best marketing creative design. Customer engagement often will unlock deep customer needs and desires, released via creativity. I imagine deep analytics meshed with customer creativity will create both better products and more fine tuned product marketing.

There are many smart people out there who are smarter than I am about this subject matter. Here are a few of their superb blog articles at your finger tips so you may glean new ideas for your product design and marketing teams.

Community Engagement and Skateboard Design

Comet Skateboards recently posted an account of how they designed their latest model of skateboard deck, and it’s a fantastic case study on how community engagement can benefit a you in very concrete ways.

Cadalyst - Social Networking and Product Development

Web 2.0 technologies bring advantages, disadvantages, and applicability to the product engineering processes.

Social Computing Meets Product Development

Needham, MA – (BUSINESS WIRE) – With the widespread adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and the evolution and acceleration of global product development initiatives, PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) believes the market is ready for a measurable shift in the way products will be developed.

The Product Ecology: Understanding Social Product Use and Supporting Design Culture