Making it mine: the customers who get creative with brands

A new kind of mass customisation is emerging, in which consumers help drive creativity. Here, Future Foundation’s Will Seymour looks at the opportunities for the daring brands that encourage a ‘making it mine’ philosophy.

If you ask people what they value highly in a potential partner, most will say something along the lines of ‘a good sense of humour’. Which in theory means that anyone who thinks that a GSOH is important in a partner implicitly believes that they themselves possess a good sense of humour – how else would they recognise it in others?

While it must be true that not everyone can have a good sense of humour and value it as a scarcity at the same time (individual interpretations aside), there is something about humour – perhaps the creativity, the sensitivity, the calculated vulnerability of self-deprecation – that we find immensely appealing. And we link our social capital to humour so inextricably – like a currency to the gold standard – that we can’t afford to admit we’re not all comedy geniuses.

Humour is the obvious example of something everyone, from Brent to BoJo, thinks they have. The same is often true of another great totem: creativity. Most of us feel that we possess at least the kernel of a creative impulse: we’re just too busy, too tired, too poor to nurture it.

Foundation research shows that 53% of people feel the need to fulfil themselves as an individual by being more creative; 71% feel the need to learn more; 56% feel that they have to satisfy their need for new experiences.

Now, profoundly unfunny people still find funny things funny. People who can’t draw a stick man can still extol the sublime realism of Gerhard Richter. Just as with our precious sense of humour, we find ourselves expressing an appreciation of creativity by identifying it in ourselves. We tend to bestow the attributes we search for in society, rather optimistically, upon ourselves.

Many companies are waking up to the opportunity to exploit this paradox – that their customers value their own creativity but, given some power tools, would probably harm not just the product, but themselves and others.

We call it Making it Mine – the introduction of safe creation zones that sate the appetite for creativity without letting anyone get carried away. An obvious example is the optional engraving service offered on many Apple products.

Brands are now taking this further. A new kind of mass customisation is emerging, in which the customer’s creative involvement is taken out of the manufacturer’s factory and put back in the hands of the consumer.

IKEA’s blog community, Hackers, has been running since 2006, hosting discussions on alternative uses and adaptations for IKEA products. Moleskine runs a similar page, encouraging users to share images of creative uses for the prized leather notepads.

Then there’s the growing interest in Lomography, the hipster-turned-mainstream adoption of ‘toy cameras’, dodgy film and unprofessional one hour photo shops in pursuit of the authentic Instagram aesthetic. Lomography has astutely engaged its audience with the promise of authorised hacking; with elements of a certifiably functional product with which you are encouraged to tamper.

This isn’t a Meccano set; it means finished products and services designed with tinkerability in mind. And it all chimes with The Big Lie – our proposition (and newly published book) that the ‘social norm’ can often prevail over actual habit; that the vocal need for creativity exceeds creative activity.

The opportunities for media brands are obvious. Thanks – in large part – to the smartphone, 39% of people now take photographs for entertainment (38% say that they cook for entertainment; 11% create content to go on websites).

Publications have been flirting with citizen journalism for a while – but framing user-created content as a creative fiddle with the newspaper’s material might prove to be the real boon for the genre, and help turn some of those photographers (39%) into content creators (11%).

The Guardian has pushed everyman voices to the fore with a new, more inflammatory Comment is Free structure, ‘featured’ external blogs, and its photography sharing site Guardian Witness. The sense of collaboration with a big title is worth a great deal to each budding photographer – and platforms that encourage amending, disagreeing, disproving take this sensation further into the realm of Making it Mine.

60% of Gen Y respondents like talking about the creative activities they do (or don’t do): it’s public recognition that matters, something a prestigious title can provide.

IFTTT (If-This-Then-That) takes the open-source ideology of the internet age further. This website allows you to create simple rules to automate how digital content interacts, without any programming knowledge. For example, you might make a rule that knows when you’re tagged in a photo, saves it to your Flickr photostream and tweets it.

We are being encouraged to disrupt or personalise the movement of media content. But we still find ourselves dealing with reputable platforms, other people’s photographs, content created by professionals.

Hacking group Anonymous announced this year a website for citizen journalism. I wonder if this is too close to full-blown creativity for most of today’s casual snappers and tweeters? Are we really all lusting after our own tortured mania of creation, or are we drawn to the non-committal soft play area: #filters instead of the darkroom?

Making it Mine suggests that most of us are in some sense invested in our creative side – but that we need someone else to give us a nudge in the right direction, to mandate our creativity, to trace the outline before we do the colouring in, perhaps.

In humour, we might prefer to retweet a gag than write one ourselves – we still ‘have a good sense of humour’. In creativity, we might prefer to respond to a photo brief than start a new Tumblr – we are still ‘a creative person’.

So maybe our socio-instinctive urge to create is more accurately described as an urge to co-create. To respond rather than inspire; to tinker with rather than invent; to contribute to something bigger. To be given something good, and be allowed to Make it Mine.