One Day One Idea: Lacoste co-creates with customers

The idea in a nutshell

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Lacoste polo shirt by René Lacoste, the French brand (which was recently sold to a Swiss group) launched an initiative to co-create with its customers. It asked them to connect to a dedicated website (www.lacoste-future.com) to design the shirt of the future.

To discover more about it, have a look a the movie which was created on this occasion.

Advice #1 for your marketing strategy

Cocreation has become a overused and under-understood term for 2 years. Yet, when you read the original litterature and the original ideas that gave birth to that concept, you may find there is still very much inspiration to find there. We recommend you read (or re-read) our articles dedicated to co-creation and get inspiration from a masterpiece of research by Von Hippel and Herstatt. Those guys paved the way to better collaborate with customers when creating new products. They invented the lead-users concept.

Advice #2 for your market research and your business plan (be it in Brussels, Belgium or elsewhere)

Cocreation is not reserved to large firms. We’ve seen SME as well as would-be entrepreneurs using this approach to image new products and new services. One important advice for your market research is therefore that you consider cocreating with future customers rather than just asking their feedback on something that you’ve imagined yourself.