The Effect of Co-creational Marketing in Music Industry on its Attractiveness
Master Thesis Presented to University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, the Netherlands
In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirement for the Degree Master of Science in Business Administration
Major in Marketing By: Irina Chatarina 11015314 Supervisor: Marcel Weber Final Version 23 June, 2016
2 Statement of Originality
This document is written by Irina Chatarina, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its reference have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not the contents.
3 Acknowledgement
First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Marcel Weber for his help, understanding and patience throughout the whole thesis process. Secondly, my gratitude goes to my family and friends who always believe that I could finish this thesis on time and always
4 Contents Statement of Originality ... 2 Acknowledgement ... 3 Abstract ... 6 I. Introduction ... 7
II. Literature Review ... 12
1. Music as Experience Good ... 12
2. Co-creational Marketing in Music Industry ... 13
3. Typologies of Co-creational Marketing in Music Industry ... 15
1. Viral Marketing ... 15
2. Sponsored User Generated Content ... 16
3. User Generated Content ... 17
4. Vigilante Marketing ... 17
5. Prosumer Marketing ... 18
4. Co-creational Experience from the Perspective of Consumers ... 19
5. Hypothesis... 21
III. Research Design... 22
1. Data collection method ... 22
a. Sample ... 22
5
2. Analytic Technique ... 32
IV. Result and Discussion ... 33
Prosumer as the Most Preferable Typology ... 35
Vigilante : Only for Loyalist ... 38
Viral marketing: The Marketing Forces ... 42
Sponsored User Generated Branding: Control from Sponsor ... 45
User Generated Content: The Least Favorable Typology ... 47
V. Conclusion and Recommendation ... 55
VI. Limitation and Further Research ... 58
VII. Index ... 59
6 Abstract
Marketers in music industry are struggling to earn income as much as possible to keep the next project going. In order to increase their income, they have to boost popularity of the artist they are working with. Co-creational marketing is one of the new management initiatives, where consumer and producer work together to jointly produce mutually valued outcome. It is interesting to see what if this new strategy is being applied in the music industry, where expectations of the outcome in creative industry is not in the same with the one in search good industry. Based on five typologies of co-creational marketing, consumer involvement and control was chosen as the benchmark of their willingness to co-create and interview was conducted to dig into the reason why certain type of typology is more interesting to consumer. The study further points out that there are three underlying behind fans willingness to co-create which are expectation, self-recognition as a fan and the ability to co-create. The result show generic information how to enhance fans willingness to co-create and which typology of co-creational marketing is the most effective one.
7 I. Introduction
“The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife” – David Ogilvy
Companies are competing to find the best marketing strategy to deliver the fit value that answers the consumers’ need exactly like they want. Especially in cultural industries; where value can be perceived differently on each end of the process, for each of the individual. Marketers started to apply Service-Dominant Logic rather than product-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch’s 2006, 2011) where the exchange is not the core variable anymore, but more in the way to achieve value in use (Irene Ng et al., 2012).Co-creation is the way to execute such logic. There are many companies that have applied these strategies and gained success in the production and development stage, and now the marketing department starts to use the same approach.
By this sense, Kotler’s definition of marketing (2000) started to be obsolete since the role of marketing process is shifting to another direction. Kotler said, marketing is a societal process by which individuals and group obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of value with others. The basic notion that marketing involved the exchange between buyer and seller or producer and consumer started to be replaced with the contemporary idea.
Value as an important discussion on this paper defined as a way of measuring products based on specific social context (Baldwin and Clark, 2000). Coming from resource investment and combinations by business and development of innovative products, value is expected to crate higher return for the business (Moran and Ghoshal, 1999). Value creation itself can be
8 divided into intrinsic and positional. Intrinsic value is in the provision of product or service needed by consumers where the business acted as the value provider who obtain, use and combine resources to create a complete product to the client-end. Positional value comes from interaction between members of the enterprise, who develop and organize diverse value creation activities with interpersonal judgment and simultaneous construction (Normann, 2001). This thesis is focusing on the positional rather than the intrinsic value.
The Cultural industry itself can be defined as an industry that produces experience goods with considerable creative elements to the consumer market via mass distribution (Peltoneimi, 2015). These activities belong to cultural industries concept, including film, music, book and magazine publishing, TV and radio, fashion and video games. The products of this industry are experiential which means that they are judged on their ability to offer fun and pleasure, and it is impossible for consumers to foresee whether the goods will succeed in delivering the value (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). Goldman (1983) described this character as ‘nobody knows anything’, taken from a catchphrase within the film industry describing the extreme unpredictability of consumers’ respond to the product, meaning that it is impossible to forecast the success in advance (Caves, 2000). The other characteristic of this industry is that there is a common challenge which in the production process, artists have their own artistic expression and most of the time distributors and consumers have different critical standard (Hirsch, 1972). This enhances the first characteristic mentioned above that the future of production’s outcome is very unpredictable.
These lead to a question about the application of co-creational marketing in the cultural industry, especially in the music industry. Co-creational marketing seems to be the key that helps creators to deliver what audiences perceived as pleasure and fun. By creating value
9 together with the audience, it can be assumed that the risk of market failure will be reduced. But this could also be a double-edged sword, that the involvement of co-creator will reduce the interest of the other audiences because it was not originally made by the artists themselves.
Co-creation marketing is a transformation of the traditional commercial “company-and product-oriented” which is more to the consumer and experience oriented system. From this definition, the idea of co-creating value appears. Users and companies are working together to create various experiences, and the companies interact with the users to produce more additional value. Companies exchange more than just opinion, they also involve the users in the development stage and content creation.
Marketing in the music industry started centuries ago, as music was used as a communication medium as well as for individual expression. Start from interpersonal music marketing to mass marketing. In this era of rapid development of technology, music marketers can make use of numerous channel in distributing their products and services (Ogden, et al., 2011). In the development of co-creation marketing, numbers of companies started to use this strategy using typologies such as viral marketing, sponsor UGB, UGC, vigilant marketing, and prosumer marketing (Gamble and Gilmore, 2013). There are numbers of journals discussing co-creational marketing in the music industry, consumer motivation on joining co-creation and even how co-creational marketing works but none of it talks about its effectiveness. Yet the fact, some typologies of co-creational marketing does not really work well in the practice. Most artists who are engaged in viral marketing and prosumer marketing strategy could not make it to the hits list. On the other hand, sponsored UGB and UGC seem to help the artists in gaining popularity.
10 Practitioners are excited about the idea of co-creational marketing and this approach have nevertheless been widely applied in the search good industry. The idea or bringing consumers down to the production and marketing process of a song or an album supposed to alleviate marketers in delivering the right value to consumer. But then, is it true in the practice? Would it be attractive to consumer or in these case fans if co-creational marketing is being applied in music industry? To feel this gap, based on the preliminary assumption of co-creational marketing typologies taken from Gamble and Gilmore’s paper (2013), the effectiveness of each co-creational typology in the music industry is going to be analyzed by inspecting consumers’ response on the level of control and involvement they could have in the process. What do consumers think about each marketing typology? Which typology is the most attractive one according to fans? Under which level of control and involvement are fans willing to join? Which co-creational marketing typology works best?
To be more precise, which co-creational marketing typology is the most effective to be used in music industry measured by its attractiveness?
The result of this paper hopefully would help music producers, policy makers and marketers to make a better decision whether to use such typologies or not and allocate their marketing budget efficiently. This research also incorporates scientific relevance because it will fill a research gap about the application of co-creational marketing and enlarge the knowledge about its effectiveness, especially in music industry which needs more academic consideration.
The outline for this paper is as follows. First, in the Literature Review, theoretical background about co-creational marketing and the environment of music industry will be discussed. Research question and hypothesis will also be explained in this chapter. In the
11 second section, Method and research process are defined, and the set-up of research is outlined. In the next section, result will be reveal one by one for each typology along with the discussion. In the last section conclusion and recommendation will be addressed. It will give one final summary of the research and its key findings.
12 II. Literature Review
This chapter discusses definitions of co-creation, value, and cultural industry characteristics. It also discusses the co-creator side about such matters; who are they and in which level of involvement and control they are willing to join.
1. Music as Experience Good
Price and Quality is used as consumers’ information processing benchmark, but Nelson (1970) broadens this assumption that evidence of the quality is the main question for the consumer. Price and quality are attributes that are different in nature. Quality is uncertain because it can only be measured after purchase, while the certainty of price is known before purchase.
These two characteristics led Nelson to classify it to two ways. The first characteristic is experience claims which can only be evaluated with certainty after purchase and usage. Ford et al. (1988) added that experience products are those that can be accurately evaluated only after the product has been purchased and used for a period of time, which is relatively short in comparison to the product’s total usage life. However, experience product tends to be essentially evaluated on effective criteria that are more subjective or emotional.
The second characteristic is search claims when a definite evaluation can be made before purchase and use. According to Ford, search goods are those claims that can be accurately evaluated prior to purchase using prior knowledge, direct product inspection, reasonable effort and normal channels of info acquisition, such as consumer reporting. Search products tend to be essentially evaluated on cognitive criteria that is more objective or rational.
13 Music belongs to the experience category. It requires feeling or experiencing and it is more difficult to describe under specific attributes. It also triggers different reactions among consumers; these goods are evaluated by affective cues (Cui et al., 2012). Nevertheless, there are attributes that can match to the consumer group who like the same thing such as artist, genre, producers and other facilitators that are involved in the making of the product.
2. Co-creational Marketing in Music Industry
The traditional approach mentioned that consumer relationship was only primacy of the knowledge of the organization and also the act of purchase. Nonak & Hirotaka (1995) emphasized the social interaction between individuals, that while organization believes it controls the meaning of its brand, it can be argued that the meaning itself is created by the consumer and another stakeholder in the process of interaction. This leads to a conclusion that the meaning of the brand itself is still dialogic (Morris 2003).
Co-creation as the modern approach itself is a process where people and organizations joinly generate and develop meaning. There are two elements in co-creation. Creation here is not only about the creation of things, but also interpretation and meaning making. The second element is that co-creation move away from product to the service by the idea that product always include service element since it is the usage that matters to consumer. This is the basic idea of the Service- Dominant Logic Model as the basis of the co-creation (Vargo and Lusch, 2008).
14 How about the value? The producer might generate the potential value, but the act of usage really defines the real value. Supported by the engagement provided by the internet, it is becoming clearer that consumer is the value creator (Gronroos, 2011). Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2000, 2004) strengthen this statement by saying that creation of value between the customer and the firm rather than solely inside the firm will be able to connect with partners and to focus on personalization for customers at the point of production.
In the music industry, a content of the product is usually generated by brainstorming between producers, writers and director. Intended value delivered by the content maker is sometimes based on consumers request or the happening hype, or just simply the creative style they carry. But most of all, the “diehard” fans or loyal consumers have their own faith to the producer, so no matter what they do, they are still willing to consume because they have the tendency to believe that their idol is going to produce a great product.
Co-creational marketing is defined as a representation of a radicalization of the consumer-centricity that is a cornerstone of "Kotlerite" marketing thought (Zwick et al., 2008) which re-conceptualizing the mundane site of exchange to a vibrant "communication hive" (Tapscott and Williams, 2006). In the more casual word, co-creational marketing is the process of joint creation of marketing act; where the producers working together with consumer in deciding how to deliver the value of a product to the end consumers.
There are 2 important variables in co-creational marketing. The first variable is control. In this new era of technologies, the main influential factor to be considered
15 are social function which include the increase of consumers‘ desire to be interactive (Daugherty et al., 2008) and the resistance to oppressive marketing control (Cova and Dalli, 2008). The meaning of control in this sense is consumers’ level of supervision of what ever influence they sent to the market. Involvement refers to the extent of consumers’ level of engagement in the co-creation marketing practice.
3. Typologies of Co-creational Marketing in Music Industry
There are 5 typology of co-creational marketing:
1. Viral Marketing
This is an approach that turns customers into a marketing force with the aim of generating brand awareness and “buzz”. Consumers have minimal control over the marketing process because they are dictated by organization involvement to limit the referrals. The benefit of this approach is that it is a natural selection process that reduces redundancy with a more targeted high speed communication and incurs little expenses since it is voluntary. On the other hand, bad news travels fast and generally unidirectional with limited lifespan. There is also a tendency of emergence of unfavorable attitudes toward products which reduce the effectiveness of knowledge-sharing acts and makes changes or shifts of the core brand or message which seen as spam.
Referring to what have been stated by Vargo and Lurch (2008), it is true that what matter the most is how consumer perceive such product after they
16 experience it. For example, we can see from how long a band or artist is on the chart list. When it comes to the content, the buzz will linger longer than if the artist is sell out. Hence, low level of involvement and control does not necessarily leads to failure.
2. Sponsored User Generated Content
This typology is described as actively seeking for consumer contribution through blog, contest, voting, selected fan contributions or other form of campaign. In this strategy, consumer has more involvement in the process through selected contributions and opinions, even though companies still initiated and regulate the campaign. There is an existence of an incentive in this approach. It drives down the expenditure on traditional TV ads and it shows customers that their views matter. The drawback is that it may encourage “fake” reviews gleaned from other reviews.
Some example of Sponsored UGB Marketing are Focus Group discussion (MTV), SMS Music Video Selection ( MTV), Store location (Rough Trade), Bespoke Music Radio stations (Gracenote and We7), Collaborative Playlist (Apple), Collaborative artwork (OK Go), Channel Partner Behavior, Live Event Photos/Video (Kiss).
Thus, more control and involvement might attract fans more to co-create. In the example of Live Event Photos and Video, consumers are more eager in joining the act and other consumers are more attracted to see the result.
17 3. User Generated Content
Some other terminologies to describe this approach are consumer-generated media, consumer to consumer e-Marketing, electronic word-of mouth marketing Consumer-generated content. This approach is owned and controlled by consumers where consumers acted as a broadcaster. MP3 Blog Feedback, sharing of music opinions / product through social network through Facebook and twitter, blogs, mashups, online review are the example of this approach.
UGC is one of the best approaches that can be witnessed through the internet. People take their peer group’s opinion into account, thus the effectiveness of reviews, blogs; mashups throughout social networks are never in doubt. This might happen because of the balance level of control and involvement of the consumer, where they still keen on the original content, but they make arousal around it.
4. Vigilante Marketing
It is the act of an almost maximal involvement for purposes of intrinsic enjoyment, self-promotion to change perceptions; involvement includes unpaid advertising and marketing efforts and maximal control through crafting ads and broadcasting them. Here, consumers gain control of brand values, while managers’ roles shift from control to facilitation of sharing extensive
18 losses of control of brand values. Consumers are acting as self-appointed brand promoters which have firm loyalty to product/ service. The drawback is that there is a potential change in brand values through amateur campaigns which might decrease the brand perceptions. Fan created music videos is one of the ways to do this approach.
5. Prosumer Marketing
As one of the fastest growing and highest value segments approach, it is a typology which highly involved in design/manufacture of products/services control over individual specification. It is also raising the control over pricing and customer services where organizations plan and co-operate with consumers. The downside is that the level or degree of cooperation is feasible. Some of the example of this are; when fans contribute to the making of song lyric like what Jason Derulo did, or when fans attend rehearsal/ song writing session like what happen in Gebby Young’s case.
Most people know the song “Wiggle” by Jason Deluro, but only a few know the song “Undefeated”. Jason made this song together with his fans as his attempt to promote this single; still this song does not even count as Jason’s top 20. Too much involvement by consumer might diminish the originality of the artist and make the song less attractive.
19 4. Co-creational Experience from the Perspective of Consumers
Verleye (2014) in his journal added that the benefit of using co-creational marketing is more than to minimize the cost of new product development, reduce failure risk and speed up the market penetration. One of the best attribute of co-creational marketing is that it generates better consumer experience and thus, this marketing strategy will appeal more attractive.
What it means by customer experience in co-creation is more about the consumer perspective such as co-creation benefits (what consumer expect from co-creating) and customer role readiness (the degree which consumer ready to fulfill their role as co-creator).
Expectation can be anything. In this case, expectation could be the intrinsic playful tasks (hedonic), opportunity to keep up to date (cognitive), to connect with like-minded people (social), self-efficacy and recognition (personal), pragmatic benefit in form of solutions better meeting personal needs, and last of all, the economic benefit in form of monetary rewards.
In terms of readiness, is more about the technical part? Technologization as one of the criteria s is defined as the availability of online tools and devices that enhance the co-creation task. Connectivity is the other important criteria. Connectivity is the availability of help from other consumers.
20 The relation among strategies for the control and involvement are summarized in the figure below.
21 5. Hypothesis
The basic premise of this thesis is that the more attractive a type of co-creational marketing is, the more effective it is to be applied in music industry. Attractiveness is seen in the perspective of consumers’ willingness to co-create and how appealing is the effort to them. Each level of typology will be distinguished by its level of control and involvement.
Based on what was found in the literature review, it is expected that the more the control and involvement consumer could have the more attractive the strategy is. The more attractive the strategy, the more effective the typology is to be applied in the industry.
According to Verleye (2014), if consumer can expect more benefit from the activity, they will have a better experience on doing it. If it is linked to what is said by Gamble and Gilmore (2013), the less the level of control and involvement, co-creator can have more space in doing what they want with the co-created product, yet they have more to expect.
This notion leads to:
H1: Prosumer as the type of co-creational marketing which account the most portion of consumer control and involvement should be the most effective method because it attract fans to co-create
H2: Viral marketing as the type co-creational marketing which account the least portion of consumer control and involvement should be the least effective method because it doesn’t attract fans to co-create
22 III. Research Design
As described in the previous chapter, the focus of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of each typology of the co-creational marketing in the music industry. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, exploratory, aiming to determine the nature of the co-creational marketing typologies and help to gain a better understanding about its effectiveness. By conducting a literature search and netnography study through the internet, the relation between consumer involvement and control, and the attractiveness as the mediator will finally be defined to answer the research question. Explorative study is also important to test the feasibility of a more extensive study. This would be a vital first step before deciding which typology is the most effective to be applied in the music industry.
To analyze the hypothesis of this research, qualitative research is conducted. As explained by Rynes and Gephart (2004), qualitative research is a multi-method research using an interpretive and inductive approach to the subject. The goal of qualitative research is to describe the meanings and understandings about the subject matter, where phenomena are being studied within their natural environments. It is thus about descriptions of actual human interactions in real-life contexts. Thus, exploratory is used as a strategy in the qualitative method to collect and analyze the empirical evidence.
1. Data collection method a. Sample
There are two samples that are needed to test this research. First to find the cases of each of the co-creational typology as the evidence, purposive sampling is used as the
23 non-probability sampling. Due to the limited time constrain, it is hard to get the complete list of songs that are co-created and the number of co-creational campaign that has been conducted. By the judgment of the researcher, 5 most viral evidences of each typology are need to be analyzed using desk research method to see the strength of the involvement and the control in the process of co-creation. The number of the sample in this stage is going to be 25 cases (5 samples for each 5 typology). The explanation of each example is described as bellow:
Viral marketing
The intention of marketing message in this strategy is to recruit consumers and encourage them spread awareness to their like-minded peers. The control of the message is fully under the marketers’ hand and the involvement of the audience is only limited to their participation on creating the buzz.
a. Lily allen’s flash game
Targeting to people who are unaware of Lily Allen and her album, the game Escape the Fear was created as part of the viral marketing Champaign. This is a game with Lily as the main character, and her song with the background sound. This game has topped the worldwide viral charts and being played over two million times.
b. Most of OK GO’s music video
OK GO’s video was YouTube’s first viral music video with over 1 million views in less than a month. OK GO is always known with its viral music
24 videos that hooked the audience with innovative choreography. They always keep it simple, but technologically advanced. Most important key of the success of OK GO’s videos are that they made the content relatable and exaggerate everything.
c. Gangnam Style
Gangnam Style was one of the hit in 2013 not because of the celebrity tweets as the popularity force, but the way YG entertainment structured and executed the campaign. Starting with the setting up, YG entertainment invested in all media exposure platform and the pre-Gangnam effort to gain the buzz. Second, the content itself is flashy and eye-catching and they made the intro easy to remember. Lastly, the maximization on the coverage of the social media platform.
d. Kanye West’s Yeezus
In the release of Kanye West’s album, Yeezus, Kanye and his marketing team created a sensational stories to generate buzz from the fan base. Kanye used the word “Yeezus” for his album to describe “God” in his own head, and as a tribute for his baby and Kim Kardishan. Nonetheless, unfortunately Yeezus is merely a meme in the internet.
e. Get Lucky – Daftpunk
On February 28, split silver and gold helmet images merged together were released on the Daft Punk website and Facebook page as the marketing
25 strategy of the album, followed by the exploration of social marketing teasing. They then release the interview with Daft Punk and the collaborators and wrapped it as a documentary of the album. This was the build up to Daft Punk’s album that bring back the disco feeling.
Sponsored UGB
By actively asking for consumer contributions through blogs, contest, voting, selecting fan contribution or other forms of campaign, marketer increase the level of control and involvement of the audience.
a. OK GO fan made videos
OK GO once invited young filmmakers to create a music video for their new song I’m not Through”, to increase the awareness and engage its audience. Nelson De Castro, Bostanian’s school graduate was successfully made a video as creative as what OK GO used to make. Moreover, this marketing attempt is successfully increase audiences curiosity of the music video itself.
b. Disclosure second album campaign –Caracal
To celebrate Disclosure’s second album “Caracal”, Universal Music International created a Global Heat Map in partnership with twitter to show the most engaging Disclosure related tweets for all around the world and make it into interactive map. The map consists of tweets from fans, bloggers, DJs,
26 journalist and collaborators. Fans got involved by tweeting the comment, reviews about their favorite track of the album using the hashtag Caracal and the most engaging tweets were selected to be the album-related tweet featured globally.
c. Jess Glynne album
Jess seek for help from her fans to complete her music video by building a consumer site where fans could download lines of lyrics of the unheard song of the album. She made it interactive by encouraging her fans to upload their videos to #GiveMeSomething and the best one of each line were edited into the full video with her starting off the lyric and passing the chain to her fans.
d. Sondre Lerche remix competition
In the run-up to the Sept. 23, 2014, release of his new album, Please, Sondre Lerche is inviting his fans to remix one of his new songs, "Bad Law” and post it on Soundcloud.
e. Taylor Swift – bad blood
UMG’s regional marketing team launched a simple campaign that invited the fans to create their Älterego” by uploading selfie and combine it with the single’s cover image. This campaign was made to promote Swift’s release of ‘Bad Blood ’and engage the audience in a fun and shareable activity.
27 UGC Marketing
Blogs, mash-ups, online reviews, peer-to-peer Q&As, social networks, second life avatars with the balance level of control and involvement.
a. Ellie Goulding – Burn
The official website of the songwriter asked fans to create videos that shows their feeling about their friends and post it to Twitter and Vine using the hashtag #ellieburnvine. The clips were later included in a mash-up video posted in YouTube.
b. Frank Ocean’s Cover
Covers is one of the example of UGC marketing. Frank Ocean cover video was one of the most famous cover video on YouTube that generates almost 10 million viewers.
c. OK GO and Cuervo integrate fans into music video
Tequila brand Jose Cuervo teamed up with the American band OK Go to create a series of pop-up concerts, and inviting the fans to participate via social media. OK Go’s performance is part of the Cuervo ‘A Quick Shot of Ice Cold’ campaign. The concerts took place in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Using specific technology, the fans were able to integrate their avatars into the OK Go music video via Facebook or Twitter. The result is a clip in which each pixel represents a different fan. The users could also incorporate a personal message. The final result can be viewed on Cuervo’s website.
28 d. Pink Flyod and Bee Gees Mash up
Another example of UGC marketing in music industry is Mash-up. Pink Floyd and Bee Gees Mash up are chosen as a case of the typology..
e. Nicky Minaj Cover
Another example of music cover.
Vigilante Marketing
As said by Muniz and Schau, 2007, Vigilante Marketing is an unpaid advertising and marketing efforts made by brand loyalist on behalf of the brand. Audiences have a complete artistic control and involvement in product marketing without the organization’s knowledge and consent.
a. Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, “Hello Brooklyn 2.0”
Geek typographer Greg Solenström recently paired black and white photos of Brooklyn with Akzidenz Grotesk font and Jay-Z and Lil Wayne’s “Hello Brooklyn 2.0” for a fan made tribute that audience think could work as an official video.
b. Arctic Monkey’s Unofficial band merchandise
In www.redbubble.com everybody can find any kind of unofficial band or artist merchandise. The content usually taken from the artist won artwork or fans generated.
29 c. Morrissey’s bootleg
After the false-start of The Smith debut album, that band was entering the short reign and fecundity of the Morrissey-mar partnership. During that time, everything they wrote together made into record, but some songs were still unreleased. Those unreleased songs are what called as bootlegged Troy Tate session, where 8-minutes uncut version of “The Queen is Dead”or a version of “Frankly Mr Shankly” featuring a trumpet solo were included. It took almost forever for both of those tracks to be out in the market. After anticipation of 20 years, this bootleg is finally famous in the internet with some additional unreleased song such as “Reel Around The Fountain”, “Ask”, and even the rare version of “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” with Morrissey still singing “there is a light in your eyes and it never goes out”.
d. Fan made documentary
A fan of Kanye West named Carl Christian made an inspiring 45 minutes compilation of footage of the rise of Kanye West. It is mostly about the journey of the making of Yeezy album.
e. Daft Punk’s Fan-Made Viral Video
27 years old Italian animator, Matteo Shezmen together with 17 years old Australian 3D artist, Israel James successfully made an unofficial music video for Dart Punk’s “Give Life Back to Music” and racked up for over 200.000 viewers.
30 Prosumer Marketing
Prosumer is basically consumer who becomes involved in the design and manufacture of products and services so it can be made to individual specification
a. Jason Deluro : Dndefeated
Jason Deluro’s fan helped him to make the lyric of the song Ündefeated”. Every single week fans have been sending lyrics, then Jason pick the top 3 among all, and let one of the three to be the official lyric of the song.
b. The Best Yeezy Graffiti for “Yeezus”Album Cover
With Yeezy Graffutu, fans can create their own cover design for the album Yeezy and submit it to yeezygravity.com. The first post on YeezyGraffiti gained over 200 reblogs. In two weeks, YeezyGraffiti has been shared to over 3.5 million people with over 10.000 page views a day. With the release of Kanye’s newest album Yeezus, today, the site is expected to continue grooving in popularity and helping artists get their work recognized.
c. Maroon 5 sings with fans
The daylight video is part of the playing for change music project series which brings together the fans of Maroon 5. All the performers were recorded and filmed on a musical journey that takes the audiences from the streets to the stage to hearts of people.
d. RHCP Fans made the entire video clip
In the video, the fans first introduce their selves and what did they think when they first selected to make this video. Along with the video, all of the fans can
31 act as creative as they could to impersonate Red Hot Chili Paper, with the original song as the background.
e. Gabby Young and Other Animals
British pop band Gabby Young and Other Animals had offered fans the opportunity to actually attend rehearsals and song-writing sessions and contribute to the writing of songs.
Second, 3 respondents of each of the cases of the typography is going to be found using netnography as the preliminary approach. Netnography is a new qualitative method devised specifically to investigate the consumer behavior of cultures and communities present on the Internet (Kozinets, 1998). These respondents will be chosen by investigating audience engagement in three selected platforms which are Spotify, Youtube and Billboard.com. Here, the sample is becoming larger into 75. (3 times 25 of the examples of the typology). Each of the respondent might know more than one example of the typography, so the sample might be lower than 75.
b. Interview
Next, after conducting Netnography to find fans of each cases of the typology, each of the fans are being interviewed. The questions of the interview are about how aware they are of the creational effort, the relation between audience willingness to co-create and the co-creation program itself, and how far are they are willing to co-co-create within certain frame of control from the producer. The survey is consisting of 3 open ended questions and 1 rating question as following:
32 1. Are you aware of the marketing effort behind the promotion of this song?
How much do you know?
2. Would you have been willing to join the campaign and help the artist to market the song? Why?
3. In the scale 1-10 how attractive is this campaign to you? What is the most attractive part of this campaign?
2. Analytic Technique
To analyze the data taken from interview, pattern-matching logic is used to compare the empirically based pattern with a prediction. If the pattern coincides, the internal validity will be strengthened. Pattern such as nonequivalent dependent variables and rival explanations will be drawn and will be clustered in to categories (Miles & Hubberman, 1994). Then a table is created to provide a new way of arranged thinking and more textually embedded data.
After that, analyzed data are being refined and evidence is built to measure the constructs in each cases. This can be done by constantly comparing data and the construct so that accumulating evidence from diverse sources converges to a well-defined construct (Eisenhardt, 1989).
33 IV. Result and Discussion
In this chapter, key result as found in the data from interviews will be presented. The difference of influence between each typology will be presented generated from the experience and the opinion of the interviewees when it comes to co-creational marketing in the music industry. The breakdown of the main influence of co-creational marketing was found in the last part of the data analysis.
45 respondents are being interviewed with composition of 22 female and 23 male. Some of the respondents answer more than 1 case because several artists are repeated in more than one typology. Respondents are student between the ages of 21-25 and live in the Netherlands with various nationalities. Education levels are bachelor and master student and all of the respondents seem to be active in media music platforms. The data represents the opinion of bachelor and master student who study in the Netherlands about each typology of co-creational marketing in music industry. The small and centralized sample (only around Amsterdam) might affect the reliability of the result. Different pattern might be found if this research is done in another place.
After data from the interview is collected, each answer is coded according to Verleye’s (2014) framework of customer role of readiness and expected co-creation benefits. Ten codes are chosen to reflect fans opinion of each typology. Taken from the expected benefits of co-creation; hedonic is the intrinsic playful task while cognitive is the opportunity to keep up with new ideas and develop skills. Social is more into the aim to connect with likeminded people and self-efficacy is about recognition and personal benefit. Pragmatic is more about personal selfish reason and economics is all about monetary reason. In the role side, Readiness indicates fans ability to fulfil the role as co-creator. Some additional code that are concluded from most mentioned reasons are appreciation (appreciation to the work of art of the artist), publicity (image of the artist),
34 and originality of the content). The result of the coding will be explained later on the typology sections. After data being coded, Attractiveness rank is drawn and reasons are being clustered per typology. All of the code can be positive manner (without brackets) and negative manner (with brackets) according to how the interviewees categorize it.
Table 1. Result of overall typologies and cases in terms of attractiveness
Type Cases Attractiveness mean Attractiveness mean
per case
Viral Marketing Lily Allen 7.34 6.67
OK GO 7
Oppa Gangnam Style 7.67
Kanye West 7.67 Daft Punk 7.67 Sponsored UGB OK GO 6.9 7 Disclosure 7 Jess Glynne 6.83 Sondre Lerche 6 Taylor swift 7.67
UGB Ellie Goudling 6.63 7.3
Frank Ocean 5.6
OK GO 7.3
Pink Floyd 6
Nicki Minaj 6.83
35 Artic Monkey’s unofficial Merchandise 8 Morissey bootleg 8.67
Kanye West Footage 9.16
Daft Punk Video 8.67
Prosumer Jason Derulo 8.86 9
Kanye West album Cover
8.3
Maroon 5 9
Red Hot Chili Paper 9.67
Gabby Young 8.3
As seen in table 1, Prosumer is the most appealing marketing effort chosen by the interviewees, followed by vigilante, viral marketing, sponsored UGB, and UGC as the least preferred. It is also found that the opinion of each typology differs per cases, especially in UGC and viral marketing. The difference of the strategies itself might be the underlying reason behind this. Different strategy gives different arousal to each fan. I will discuss about it further more.
Prosumer as the Most Preferable Typology
Prosumer is a consumer who is involved in the design and manufacture of products and services in order to make a specific or even personalized product (Konczal, 2008). This is also called mass customization in which everybody acts as a member of a niche market. In this practice, consumer involvement does not go further than the
36 manufacture stage so marketers maintain a level of control over the final product and price (Gamble and Gilmore, 2013).
Table 2. Prosumer Marketing Cases
Cases Respondent fully aware of the concept respondents willing to contribute
Reasons Attractive part & less attractive part
Jason Derulo - Undeafeted
1 out of 3 3 out of 3 Self-Efficacy Publicity
Kanye West Album cover
1 out of 3 3 out of 3 Self-Efficacy Self-Efficacy, Hedonic, (Social)
Maron 5 – Daylight Video
2 out of 3 3 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, (Self-Efficacy), (Readiness) Hedonic, (Originality) RHCP music video
37 Gabby young invites fans to the rehearsal
0 out of 3 3 out of 3 Self-Efficacy Publicity
From 5 cases of the prosumers, two of them are about the co-creation in the making of the song content. Two others are about the making of the video clip and the last one is about the physical product which is the album cover. As expected, prosumer marketing is the most favorable practice of all; it is rated 8.9 out of 9 taken from the interview conducted for this thesis (Table 1). As seen in table 2, the most favorable case is the video clip of Red Hot Chili Papers with its fans acting freely as the background of the clip. From the survey, fans indicate that they can contribute in the end product together with the artist (Self-Effacacy). The second favorite case is the video of Maroon five with a quite similar reason. However, it requires skill to perform well in the video, so most of the fans are not willing to try because they do not think that they possess enough skill to be on a frame of their favorite artist (negative readiness).
Making music together with the artist is also something that every fan could dream of. Jason Derulo asked his chosen fan to write the lyric of the song Undefeated together, and Gabby and her band also do the same thing but only to the extent of brainstorming of the concept. This practices are rated next to the videos as the preferable marketing effort by the fans. The most mentioned reason is again self-efficacy, which account for the intimacy with the artist. All of the respondent said that
38 they are willing to do everything to help out their favorite artist to make music, even none of them mention about their music ability (readiness) just like Red Hot Chilli Papers and Maroon 5s’ had said. This might be caused by the excitement that makes them ignorancet about their ability to perform as the co-creator of the music.
The last product of prosumer marketing in this case is the making of personalized album cover. It is the least favorable among other five because it requires specific skill and the end product is going to be consume by the creator themselves. They do not even have the chance to be closer with the artist by co-creating through this practice (negative self-efficacy). However, the rate is still quite high (8.4 out of 10) because most of people like personalized product. Nine out of fifteen respondents said that they are agree that letting the fans help the artist to make a song or video could be a good publication for the artist. Some respondents say that the artist creates a positive vibe around them, and some said that the artist appears humble (positive publicity).
Thus, H1 is approved. The minimum maximum level of consumer’s control and involvement makes this approach more appealing than other typology. Fans are not limited to certain guideline or being in a distant place with the artist. Maximum level of control and involvement make consumers feel intimate with the artist and it might also result to good publicity.
Vigilante: Only for Loyalist
Vigilante itself is an unpaid advertising and marketing efforts, that involves one or more than one commercially oriented communications, undertaken by brand loyalist on behind of the brand (Ives, 2004). These efforts are categorized as advertising based
39 on several reasons. First, it shows the confirmation of consumers’ perception about the brand and its attributes. Then, vigilantes are intense examples of most compelling marketing message from the perspective of loyalist, in this case, the fans. Lastly, they are increasing in terms of frequency and prominence (Jaffe, 2005). In other words, Ives called it unauthorized campaign created by unauthorized creators. Passionate music fans have dedicated their time and creative efforts to create videos and many other things for the sake of their favorite artist. In this kind of campaign, consumers have complete artistic and logistic control and involvement in the marketing process, and most of the time, without the organizations’ consent. Devotion or loyalty is the baseline of this strategy and the organizational control is limited to embrace and share the campaign, just like what consumer do in viral marketing (Gamble and Gilmore, 2013).
Table 3. Vigilante Marketing Cases
Cases Respondent fully aware of the concept respondents willing to contribute
Reasons Attractive part & less attractive part
Jay Z 0 out of 3 3 out of 3 Hedonic, Self-Efficacy Hedonic, (Readiness) Artic Monkey’s unofficial Merchandise
1 out of 3 3 out of 3 Pragmatic, Self-Efficacy, (originality) Hedonic, Readiness, (Self-Efficacy), (Hedonic)
40 Morissey
bootleg
3 out of 3 3 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, Hedonic,
Hedonic, Social
Kanye West Footage
1 out of 3 0 out of 3 Pragmatic, (Readiness) Hedonic, (Self-Efficacy), (Readiness) Daft Punk Video
2 out of 3 3 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, (hedonic)
Hedonic, (Publicity), (Economic)
In order to analyze the effect of vigilante marketing in music industry, I chose 5 cases that fulfilled the criteria of vigilante marketing. Three out of five are fan made video clips and bootlegs that generate so much viewers and even being noticed by the artists itself. Two others are creation of new side product that supports the main product of the artist. Overall, vigilante marketing is the second most favorable effort, and its attractiveness is rated 8.4 out of 10. Fan made videos are the most favorable case of vigilante marketing, and followed by bootleg unofficial merchandise. Most mentioned reason why fans like it are the attractiveness of the content (Hedonic), and also self-recognition as fans (self-efficacy). One of the respondents that love Morrissey said that he feels like a real fan if he is able to collect all the bootleg collection of
41 Morrissey. Bootleg is something different. It is newly created item, which never existed in the form of official or legitimately released (Fenick, 1982). Bootleggers are those who produce album and tapes of material which is not available through legitimate channels (Castleman and Podrazik, 1975). There are 3 types of bootlegs: recording of live concert, recording of radio/tv appearance or studio stakes (Schultheiss, 1981). If fans happen to be able to provide a bootleg, it can be assured that the fan is a diehard fan, because it takes more than effort to collect a bootleg (self-efficacy and social). For other diehard fans, bootleg is also a precious possession. As indicated in the interview, the attractiveness of bootleg is accounted for 8.7 out of 10 and ranked as the second highest after fan made video.
Fan made video appears as the most favorable case of vigilante marketing because of its convenience. Somehow, video is easier to be made rather than finding bootleg and make unofficial merchandise (Readiness). For the audience, it is alo easier to be found as well. The tendency to be recognized by the artist is also higher, so the motivation is also shifted not only to the self-satisfaction but also to need to be recognized by the artist. Unofficial merchandise is the least favorable cases which is scored 8 out of 10. 2 out of 3 fans mentioned that they prefer the official merchandise because the unofficial one is not exclusively designed by the artists’ art worker (negative originality). They also said that unofficial merchandise is not a good thing for the artist, because the money did not go to the pocket of the artist.
42 Viral marketing: The Marketing Forces
Table 4. Viral Marketing Cases
Cases Respondent fully aware of the concept respondents willing to contribute
Reasons Attractive part
& less
attractive part
Lily Allen 2 out of 3 3 out of 3 Hedonic, Appreciation, readiness
Hedonic, (Readiness)
OK GO 3 out of 3 3 out of 3 Appreciation,
Hedonic, Self-Efficacy Appreciation, (Hedonic), Self-Efficacy Oppa Gangnam Style
2 out of 3 3 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, Appreciation, Social Appreciation, Readiness, (Readiness) Kanye West
2 out of 3 2 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, (Readiness), Social
43 Daft Punk 1 out of 3 1 out of 3
Self-Efficacy,(Readiness), (Hedonic)
Readiness
In viral marketing, the level of involvement from co-creator is very low, and the marketer or the producer has complete control of the message (Gamble and Gilmore, 2013). Fans or co-creators act as “marketing force” that works to generate brand awareness or buzz. I picked up 5 cases to analyze the impact of viral marketing to the popularity of music. Kanye West and Daft Punk use story behind production of the music, PSY and OK GO use trademark and Lily Allen use a tool to generate awareness from the audience. Pattern found in these campaigns is that the rate of willingness to be involved is highest for the campaigns that use story as activation (like what Kanye West and Daft Punk do), and lowest in campaign using tool (Lily Allen’s online game). From the reason provided by the interviewee, expectation is the baseline of their control and involvement.
Even though the involvement is very low, only to the extent to create buzz, it can still fulfill fans’ expectation about the artist. It is mentioned by three fans of Kanye and Daftpunk that the popularity of the artist is important to them. The more the buzz is created, the bigger the probability of the artist going to be on a tour or making a new album (Readiness, in terms of the ability of the campaign to fulfill fans’ expectation). As seen in the detailed table in the index (Figure 1), 33% of the total reason why they
44 are willing to be involved is that they want to be recognize as the fan of that certain artist (self-efficacy and social). It confirms the first type of fan suggested by Rentfrow and Gosling (2007), who wants to reveal information about their preference and identity .
The second most mentioned reason is that it is easy and the artists deserve to be famous (Appreciation). Convenience and content then become important factor of viral marketing (Readiness). It is proven by how fans choose regular buzzing method (like tweeting of posting on Facebook) rather than playing game (Lily Allen’s Escape the Fear). Two out of three fans of OK GO agree that the quality of OK GO themselves is the reason why they are willing to spread the news to their peer groups.
Thus, the second hypothesis is rejected. It is clear that low level of control and involvement does not necessarily lead to a negative impact to the attractiveness of the campaign. If we compare it to chart rank, artists who are successful in implementing viral marketing strategy are the ones who sit in the top of the chart. Nonetheless, in order to get the fans to create buzz around the product, the artist has to promise something to lift up the expectation of the fans. The content and the convenience must be outstanding as well. Viral marketing is an important tool in music industry. No matter what, music is an experience good which must be consumed (or in this case, listened) and loved in order to increase the sales. Creating buzz around the music is a good way to increase popularity at least in the surface.
45 Sponsored User Generated Branding: Control from Sponsor
UGB is sort of similar with UGC, but with branding as it center. All kinds of voluntarily created and publicity distributed brand message made by audience such as comment, reviews, rating, remix, to even full artistic work are included in UGB (Burmann, 2010). Of course, the level of consumer control and involvement should be lower than in UGC but higher than viral marketing since the aim of this campaign is to achieve brand goals. All five cases that I chose for the interview are similar. The artists challenge their fans to take part in the marketing process, but without any concrete incentive.
Table 5. Sponsored UGB Cases
Cases Respondent fully aware of the concept respondents willing to contribute
Reasons Attractive part
& less
attractive part
OK GO 1 out of 3 2 out of 3 Economic, Self-efficacy, (Readiness)
Hedonic, (Readiness), Publicity, Self-Efficacy Disclosure 0 out of 3 0 out of 3 Readiness,
Self-Efficacy, (Readiness) Readiness, Self-Efficacy, (Readiness), (Hedonic), (Publicity)
46 Jess Glynne 1 out of 3 2 out of 3 Readiness,
(Self-Efficacy) Hedonic, (Hedonic), Economics, Readiness Sondre Lerche
1 out of 3 1 out of 3 Hedonics, (Economic) Self-Efficacy, (Self-Efficacy) Taylor
swift
3 out of 3 1 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, (Self-Efficacy)
Hedonic, (Self-Efficacy), (Readiness)
The result shows that 7 out of 15 respondents refuse to make effort to help the artist gain popularity. Most mentioned reason is that they are conscious (negative self-efficacy), they do not want to expose themselves to such activity because they think that they humiliate themselves. Most campaign requires the fans to post something to win the chance to get noticed by the artist. Some of the interviewees said that it is not interesting because there is no monetary incentive (negative economics), and it requires too much effort (negative readiness). There are four types of motivation that trigger the willingness to be involved in co-creational marketing which are in form of economic, social, hedonic or altruistic (Roberts, Hughes and Kertbo, 2014). It is said that behavior is influenced by expectations of achieving desirable outcome. In these
47 cases we can see that fans cannot fulfill their desired future state. There is no monetary incentive, social, or hedonic incentive. All they can wish for is just to be noticed or win the raffle. However, it might look attractive because there is a satisfying experience in the interaction of the process (Abbott, 1955).
The overall rate of sponsored UGB is in the second lowest among all 5 typologies. From the interview, it can be conclude that there is no incentive that can drive the urgency to co-create. Different with viral marketing, there is no monetary incentive either but the buzz will help the artist to generate more income, so the artist can make a tour or even create a new album. However, in sponsored UGB, it is just a marketing tool used to attract other audience, so the result of this campaign will not directly affect the overall production, thus there is no incentive at all. If the fans are not diehard fans, this campaign would not be efficient to increase popularity.
User Generated Content: The Least Favorable Typology
User generated content is media content created by user and intended to be shared with other users (Tang, Fang and Wang, 2014). The power of UGC exists based on its ability to influence other consumers’ attitude and purchase behavior since it is created, shared and consumed by user and from user and it is perceived as trustworthy (Mudambi and Schuff, 2010). There should be a balance between marketing control and communication content ownership, but in this advertising revolution, the tendency is now inclined more toward consumer. Control seems to be liberated from the marketer side, and consumer here acted as the broadcaster (Gamble and Gilmore, 2013). Marketers’ control is to the extent of how they maintain the influence of UGC
48 practice, and enhance this influence by developing online presence in UGC space (Grey, 2007).
Table 6. Viral Marketing Cases
Cases Respondent fully aware of the concept respondents willing to contribute
Reasons Attractive part
& less
attractive part
OK GO 1 out of 3 2 out of 3 (Self-Efficacy), (Readiness)
Self-Efficacy, (Readiness), Hedonic, Economic Disclosure 0 out of 3 0 out of 3 Pragmatic,
(Originality)
Hedonic, (Originality), (Readiness)
Jess Glynne 1 out of 3 2 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, (Readiness) Self-Efficacy, (Self-Efficacy), Hedonic Sondre Lerche
1 out of 3 1 out of 3 Pragmatic,
(Originality), Hedonic
Pragmatic, (Originality),
49 Hedonic
Taylor swift
3 out of 3 1 out of 3 Self-Efficacy, Pragmatic, (Originality) Self-Efficacy, Pragmatic, (readiness), (Originality)
Interestingly, UGB is rated as the least typology chosen by the fans. Three out of five cases of this typology are quite similar, that they are made by the fans using the original content, but they edit it the way they want it to. Two others are about consumers or fans opinion on particular product the artist made. Among all five cases, two cases from OK GO and Ellie Goulding are the first and the second on the list in terms of attractiveness for the consumers. Indicated by the reason, fans like it better because of the content (appreciation). Opinion does not change the original content, it just changes the arousal evoking from it (originality). Some interviewees indicate that they like the way the producer took their opinion into account, one point out that it is effortless and brings up intimacy with the artist.
On the other hand, other form of UGC such as covers and mash up do not really work well in the co-creational marketing. Almost all respondent mentioned that even if they do make a cover or mash up and upload it to the internet, it is not for the sake of the artist, but more of the selfish reason (pragmatic). They upload it because they think they are good in singing or producing music. Another thing remarked by most of the respondents is they think the campaign is not attractive enough (negative hedonic).
50 What they expect to see in the video is the artist itself, not some fans who tried to get noticed by the artist. Other than that, the originality of the content is also one of the problems indicated from the interview (negative originality). While the respondents agree on the selfish reasons, they still believe that a non-original content is not supposed to get as much appraisal as the original one.
The use of user generated content is far than perfect to be implemented in music industry, especially if the content changes the originality of the product. Because in music, people search for the content. Opinion, reviews, blog, Q&A might work because these do not change the originality of the product, but mash-up and cover is completely out of line. Not that it is not good, we can see that a lot of covers gain more than millions views on YouTube. It just does not meant to be a marketing tool for music industry. As mentioned by some of the respondent as well, covers and mash-ups are interesting, but it has nothing to do with the artist’ popularity. It confirms the rejection of the second hypothesis; that viral marketing is not the least efficient typology of all, but UGC. It is lacking of attractiveness, mostly because the non-originality of the content.
Several researchers suggested that music plays as badge symbolizing one membership to particular group. From this notion the idea of fans comes (Bryson, 1996; Dolfsma, 1999; Frith, 1981; North and Hargreaves, 1999; Tarrant, et al., 2002). There are two types of information a fan might be communicating through their music preference. The first type ate those who want to reveal information about their personal quality and identity. Second one
51 are those who are expressing their preference by forming information that is communicated through a particular group (Rentfrow and Gosling, 2007). Both types of fans are found during the interview and indicate different pattern. 11% of the total respondents are the ones who emphasize on self-identity. They tend to be indifferent with the marketing effort behind the production of the music and rooting for the quality of the music itself. On the other hand, those who emphasize to the group (89%) are the perfect target of all the co-creational marketing. They are willing to do anything and give their best to help the artist to gain popularity.
This is shown by the fact that almost half of the reason to join the campaign is that the interviewees want to be recognized as the fan. Just like one of the fan of PSY mentioned in the interview, she wants to show people that she likes it. And she wants people to know she listens to it. Most of them mention that they are willing to help on the base of love. According to Melinda (2008), there are three criteria for a brand (in this case artist) to be loved by its fans. First, the fans should have an emotional bond with the artists. Second, the fans must have involuntary response toward the effort of the marketing. Last of all, the artist and the band should have emotional connection that is built from rituals and experiences. So it is natural that fans that already develop love for the artist tend to give their best in supporting the success of their stars.
Co-creation is defined as “a process in which consumers extend or alter the product beyond its original and/ or intended form, use and/ or meaning” (Larson, 2009). It is found that the connection between the creator and the co-creator should be both way, regardless the level of involvement and control, for the campaign to be successful. It seems that fans that help in the base of love would likely to co-create.
