I work in a collaborative agency. I work in a highly creative agency environment. We genuinely believe that collaborations and creativity can work harmoniously together. I also think, further than that, collaborations can create a new wave of co-creation and creativity.
Collaborations seem to be a bit of a watchword at the moment. Everyone from Brian Solis to AMVBBDO are dropping the word “collaboration” into presentations, conference talks and as many tweets as their fingers can type. There is a good reason for this. They are an answer to a bit of an over-riding problem. So whats the problem I hear you ask?
The problem is that as creative communities grow, as bloggers become more powerful and more influential, and as accessibility to creative tools becomes easier, brands and agencies have found it more difficult to harness these powers.
Its why people wonder: how and why does a video from Keenan Cahill outperfom a brand created video which has had £m behind it? Why can’t your traditional PR agency just treat a blogger in the same way they have always treated their journalists?
The reason collaborations are become creatively important is that it is so much further on from a blogger simply posting about your product. Although we know bloggers need to be more honest about when they have been paid, some agencies are still trying to pay bloggers to post, not everyone is bound to be honest. How does a consumer cut-through the real posts and the paid posts? It feels for me that a post is less about love therefore and more about casual interest or perhaps just something to talk about that is topical. (or SEO friendly)
Love is what brands need more of. Love is what drives collaborations. Like any loving relationship it’s a question of trust. In a world where there is a lack of trust between consumers and brands, collaborations build a feeling of trust. This feeling is about making the collaborations genuine, picking the right influencer to collaborate with, picking a collaborator who loves your product or what you are doing. Whether its Josh Rubin collaborating with GAP to give it more cool cred or OkGo collaborating with our client, Range Rover to do a street parade and create web content, there is an immediate bond of trust and respect between that person’s audience and that brand. You can’t buy that sort of creativity.
The Collaboration Funnel 3.0
I guess the point is this: I don’t believe that collaborations can happen without Brand Love, without the collaborator genuinely believing in the brand its collaborating with. There should be an obvious fit in the eye of the consumers between that brand and that collaborator. Otherwise it simply just becomes about the exchange of money and that isn’t that collaborative really is it, that is simply an endorsement…and we all know how much those things cost right?!?±
Some of my favourite collaborators:
Josh@CoolHunting
Paloma@PSFK
Michelle@KingdomOfStyle
Leah@Fashionista
