Crowdsourcing: Next Gen Consumers in the Driver’s Seat

[image courtesy of @rachcreative]

Last week, Scratch’s Head of Consulting and Senior Vice President Anne Hubert joined Shelby Clark, Founder and Chief Community Officer of Relay Rides, Andrew Dinsdale, Assistant Director, Digital and CRM at Chevrolet and moderator Nick Pudar, Vice President of OnStar Planning and Business Development at Chevrolet in the SXSW panel, “Crowdsourcing: Next Gen Consumers in the Driver’s Seat” to discuss how the “co-” mentality and the Millennial generation are transforming GM and the auto industry as a whole.

The discussion touched upon many of the trends and insights Scratch has been exploring over the last year – including co-creation, collaborative consumption, and the “Apiary” mindset.

The panel highlighted some key insights about Millennials and the way they think and act as consumers. Some points that especially resonated with the audience:

-          They thrive in hives, building communities around friends who think and live within similar values. (h/t GSDM)

-          They’re looking to get involved so they can make the world the way they want it to be. They want to give their community a voice. (h/t GSDM)

-          They’re driving co-creation – they want involvement in new products, but not necessarily always from the ground up; they’re also happy to leave it to someone else to design as long as their input is considered (h/t @cajunjen & @alleyesonjenny)

-          A nice quotable from Anne: Millennials are highly sophisticated brand managers, they can detect bullshit. Brands have to act with transparency, accountability, and honesty. (h/t @cajunjen)

-          They’re  engaged online more than any generation and have changed our ways of messaging. (h/t @cajunjen)

-          They live in 24/7 connectivity which can be overwhelming at times – they’re in a constant state of “reinvention tension” resulting in the stress of being socially connected, but also the stress of not being in the loop.  (via @eckfactor)

-          They also like firsts. They want to be firsts at anything; they want to see firsts in online content. Chevy took that cue to develop their campaign, which shows their cars skydiving, bungee jumping, doing other stunts. The online campaign was up for five months, and resulted in massive consumer interest. h/t GSDM)

-        And finally,  in order for brands to be relevant and loved by Millennials, brands must be platforms for collaboration and bringing their young audiences together. Companies have to begin seeing themselves as more than sellers, but enablers. (h/t Moosylvania)

Thanks to Shelby, Andrew and Nick for a great discussion. And big ups to our Anne Hubert for killin it at SXSW.