Hyper Users, Creative Consumers, Particpant Marketing

Trendwatching this month have produced a superbly researched newsletter devoted to what they call ‘Customer-Made’.
The article is crammed with amazing articles, thanks partly to their
Springspotter network, and highlights a trend that PSFK has been
monitoring where hyperactive self producers, or ‘Hyper Users’, use the
tools available to them to create new evolved variations on companies’
products, services and even brand communications.

Some of the examples worth checking out include Joseph Jaffe’s Tiger Woods Ad, 6 Pack TV’s Design Your Own Ad, Converse Gallery, Ruffles Chips Ad, Core 77 Timex Winners, KTF Design A Phone Contest, Ikea’s fiffigafolket contest, Jones Soda, Kaiser Beer, Sumo Salad Baby Recipe Contest  , JPG Magazine and Wikipedia.

The guys over at Influx have also a good piece on what they are calling the ‘Creative Consumer’ with links to examples like MLB and thought pieces in the New Yorker and Economist.

PSFK does offer two words of warning about how people interpret
TrendWatching’s ‘Customer Made’. Firstly, consumerism hasn’t changed.
It’s important to remember that our needs, wants and desires haven’t
all-of-a-sudden changed to make us all Hyper Users. The tools around us
have. We’ve been customizing and making brands our own for centuries.
Think Harley Davidson, think school uniform.

Modern technology allows Hyper Users to blend new creative
techniques with PSP, WiFi, VoIP, web, SMS and MMS, to name but a few,
to create new offerings, some of these are just amazing in their
simplicity (e.g. Google Maps/Craigslist Mash Up).

Secondly, for every yin there’s a yang, and for every person who
tools themselves up to become a ‘Hyper User’, PSFK suggests, there’s a
person who are astounded by all the options, want to back off and pay
someone else to do it for them. And which ones do you think will be the
more attractive market for the brand owners then?

TrendWatching Newsletter
Influx Article On The Creative Consumer (Part 1)