think native

I am regularly impressed with the people at Penguin UK for their willingness to embrace new ways of telling stories. First there was their wiki-book experiment A Millions Penguins that invited mass-collaboration to create a slightly schizoid tale.

Then came We Tell Stories - a project that took six respected authors and challenged them to add dynamism into traditional writing through the use of social media and twitter, googlemaps and live online writing sessions.

So I was impressed again when I noticed a number of blank covered books in my local bookshop that invites readers to create their own cover designs for classic stories. Perhaps less geeky than their previous experiments, but the first (as far as I can tell) that marries their traditional publishing business with a experience co-creation concept. The project, called My Penguin, invites readers who have created covers to share their work online to sit alongside celebrity efforts from Beck, Razorlight and Ryan Adams. Sweet.

And if you get bored designing book covers why not design a tshirt for Boxfresh and win stuff (judged by the Boxfresh community, natch).

My buddy at AKQA alerted me to this - Nike PhotoID allows users to take a photo of anything they like on their mobiles, and via photo recognition, the two dominant colours in that image will be used to create a pair of Nike Dunk high-tops. An image of the shoes is sent back to your phone, along with a unique code that can be used to buy the trainers online. Simple but rather cool use of the mobile as a personalisation engine. Sweet.

Video.

I used to promote a club night, and as part of our marketing, we’d get tshirts printed up, usually to be wrapped tightly around a lithe young PR girl (hey, hate the game, not the player).

There would be a substantial minimum order (unless you wanted to pay £100 for a single shirt) and it would take about 3 weeks (picked up from the printers, not delivered).

Which is why German company Spreadshirt seems that much more amazing to me, both a guy-who-likes-tshirts and as a digital planner.

So, first as a guy-who-likes-tshirts. Once signed up, the site sports a very simple web interface where you can create your own products. You pick which shirt (or hoodie / handbag etc) that you want to use as a foundation, then upload a design (or simply type text) to make it your own. You can then sell these designs on your own webshop, choosing your own commission (and therefore the final price to the consumer). There’s no minimum order, so I could use my shop to make one-off designs for me and my friends. Or I could sell my designs on the Spreadshirt Marketplace and try and make a few bob with my designs. Blimmin ace.

It’s experience co-creation meets social media meets crowdsourcing. Spreadshirt also pay users for their user-generated content via advertising displayed each user’s shop, a trend that we’re likely to see more and more of as UGC begins to attract real traffic (and therefore ad revenues). Genius.

Experience co-creation requires consumer involvement in order to create product or service - Spreadshirt provide the basic materials, leaving users to be creative. These created products by their very nature have social currency. If I make a tshirt, I’ll want to tell people about it, as it’s mine and says something about who I am (mine says ‘it would be rude not to’ btw). My friends will visit the shop, maybe buy a tshirt, and probably in turn want to set up a shop to create their own products.

Designs that are popular across the Spreadshirt network are then sold as top picks on the company’s Marketplace. Or users can chose to keep designs private, and create short runs as small as a single tshirt. Quite how they make money is something of a mystery to me, but they seem to be thriving, so something must be right.

So with giants like Nike and adidas offering mass customisation services (Nike Custom and Mi adidas), is this what’s next for apparel? Well, Spreadshirt is more a manufacturing and logistics company than a clothing brand, and it’s unlikely we’ll see a big player surrender all design responsibilities over to the hoi poloi. However for one-off campaigns (like adidas’ adicolor), this could be a way to allow consumers to feel real ownership of the brand.