The Allen & Gerritsen crew returned (late!) Tuesday night from our annual expedition to Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. It’s this festival that every year seems to kick off the next big things in emerging technology — previous years saw the explosion of Twitter, foursquare, and last year, group texting platforms like GroupMe — all of which eventually work their way into social strategy, which is what I go there to figure out on behalf of our clients.I’m biased, of course, but the “big thing at SXSW” for me this year was less about a technology and more about an idea: co-creation — brands and fans working together to create experiences, content…even shaping the brands themselves. It wasn’t a “big idea” that people were actively putting out there as the thing we were told was the big idea. No, it struck me as the big idea simply because it kept coming up in session after session, regardless of topic.

Content co-creation

The thread started at the “Top Chef: How Transmedia is Changing TV” panel. I’ll admit that I went to the session because I love Top Chef and was completely sucked in by this season’s addition of the web-only “Last Chance Kitchen,” in which departing chefs battled each other for a chance to get back into the finals. The show was an astounding success, exceeding Bravo’s goals by a factor of eight, but what was most interesting to me was not just how well they integrated broadcast, social, and web-based content (which they did amazingly well), but how they were already taking those lessons and applying them to other shows. Next up: an opportunity for fans of the Real Housewives franchise to play a game that actually creates content with the cast in real-time. That’s an astounding concept, and one that breaks, perhaps for good, the mold of broadcast as a one-way medium.

Almost immediately after was Baratunde Thurston’s keynote, “How to Read the World,” where he spoke on how comedy, disseminated through technology, can and is changing the world. Here, too, were examples of a brand’s audience (in this case, fans of satirical news source The Onion, where Thurston works) extending, on their own, a fictional story about Planned Parenthood into additional online spaces, keeping The Onion’s voice and the platform (Yelp) norms intact, in a brilliant co-created piece of politically charged satire. The takeaway? Strong brands create strong fans, who can add depth and context to your efforts…and put you in places you hadn’t even thought of.

Experience co-creation

I was honored and pleased to host a new format for SXSW sessions this year, the smaller, and more intimate Meet Up. My topic: SoLoMo(Co) the integration of Social, Local and Mobile (with or without Commerce). A group of about 10 of us, representing agencies, clients, and mobile developers talked through the challenges and opportunities in the field. All three of the folks with mobile products and apps (reps from broadcastr.com, tapmesh and their MoJo app, and from Spain, Ciudad2020) had tools that provided an often-missing intersection between the experience a brand wants its customers to have, and the experience their customers want to have.

Brand co-creation

Perhaps most unexpected of all was the final panel I attended at SXSW, “Juggalos: Rabid Branding, A Case Study,” (you can see the NSFW slides here). Presented by Jenny Bento, a librarian by day but a scholar of propaganda and “weird things,” Jenny used the highly successful independent band Insane Clown Posse and their rabid fans, called the Juggalos, as a basis for drawing lessons for brands. I summarized the lessons as I tweeted from the session as:

1. Stand for something specific, something obvious by looking at you.
2. Stand for something that’s not for everyone. (I.e., find your niche.)
3. Find an enemy. (Another shade of standing for something, be clear about what you don’t stand for.)
4. Community before product. (Think of your customers wants and needs first.)
5. Don’t bust your community, help them. (Accept the community you have, and reward their passion.)
6. Give your community places to meet. Give them a reason to gather and build the community further. (This applies to both physical and digital spaces.)
7. Be fans of your fans. Be one of them. (Realize you and your community have an equal role in shaping your brand.)
8. Let your fans run your community. (If not literally, then shape your efforts around what your fans are already doing.)
9. Have a mythology. (Articulate how your brand came to stand for what it does.)
10. Find in-brand co-branding partners. (Realize that “brand halos” work both ways.)
11. Have physical cues (a la “The Jeep Wave” or limited edition merchandise).
12. Do the work. Understand that you have to work for the love of your community.

Starting at lesson 4, the “co-creation” SXSW circle of life started to complete. Regardless of how you may feel about the Insane Clown Posse and their fans, they are a successful example of what can happen when a brand actively embraces and supports the community they have (not just the community they want). Indeed the presence of such a passionate community has in many ways shaped the brand of ICP itself — the brand has become inseparable from its community, and vice versa. One could say the same of Harley-Davidson and its fans, or Jimmy Buffet and his fans, so this idea of brand co-creation isn’t exclusive to the ICP and the Juggalos — quite the opposite.

They all work together

The thing is, all three of these work together, and inextricably. Want a strong brand? Have a strong, shareable content. What strong, shareable content? Give your fans strong experiences. What strong experiences? Have a strong community to engage with. Want a strong community? Have a strong brand…and so on. Any of them can be an entry point, of course, but the clear winners are those brands who not only have all three, but engage their fans at every stage.