The issue of co-creation and its role in advertising is so new to many of us in the trade that we have yet to figure out the elevator speech.  Where it fits and to what degree it plays a role in our work is still undetermined. 

Having terms like Consumer Generated Media vs. Fortified vs. Solicited - of which I wrote about last week - helps differentiate the ways in which we can bring companies and their customers closer together.  These terms also help our clients understand the new role of marketers - that of a facilitator between company and customer.

However, as of Friday I now believe the acronyms CGM, CFM and CSM need to be broadened.

This discovery came when I read the following on CNN Money:

“Publicis Groupe and Dassault Systemes today announced (the creation of) 3dswym…a collaborative web-based platform allowing marketers to connect directly to consumers in order to jointly create and adapt new consumer goods and new retail environments using advanced Web and 3D tools.

The 3dswym venture derives from a shared vision of Maurice Levy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe and Bernard Charles, President and CEO of Dassault Systemes, about the future of marketing. Both men are convinced that successful marketing must permit consumers to enter the product creation process at a much earlier stage, so that products and services are in fact co-generated with them. 3dswym’s online 3D solutions are perfectly adapted to this kind of collaboration and stand to radically change marketing by markedly improving the success rate of new products, giving clients a real competitive advantage.”

3D store layout ready for optimization - available on their website:

Wow.  Essentially, Maurice Levy has placed a bet on the role of the advertising agency changing.  If 3dswym takes off, and I think it will, the role of marketers will be to fine tune media and messaging as well as optimize the products being sold by its roster of clients. 

With a new, dual purpose, marketers and advertisers will need to expand their thinking beyond media; the “M” in CGM, CFM and CSM will only define half of a full-service agency’s skill set.

I then spent the weekend in search of a replacement letter.  Here is/was my logic flow:

Media does embody quite a bit of our everyday lives, but customers will soon ”control” much more than media.  3dswym is case in point: Ad agencies will soon implement 3D tools specifically designed to let customers virtually optimize the products, store layouts, and services they will ultimately purchase/patron in real life.  So what word embodies both the production, exchange, and consumption of a product?  Wikipedia helped me out. 

Per Wikipedia:

“Economy refers to the human activities related with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services.”

I’m not calling for admen and marketers to stop using the acronyms CGM, CSM and CFM.  Co-created media in all three forms will be advertising’s new black for at least another five years.  However, “media” will be forced to take a supporting role when CGE takes center stage.  Virtually, of course.