The Culture of Collaboration

Collaboration and Marketing, Branding and Advertising

Should companies leverage collaboration as a marketing tool? That depends. Too many companies have embraced collaboration as a buzz word or initiative du jour without any real commitment to collaboration. The emperor has no clothes, so to speak. But it makes lots of sense for marketers to use collaboration in branding and corporate image campaigns if the rhetoric is based on something real.

Corporate social responsibility has hit the big time as advertisers discover that consumers and businesses are increasingly likely to buy products they associate with some greater good. The green movement falls under this umbrella. Incidentally, American Public Media’s Jill Barshay reported on this topic Tuesday, December 11 on the “Marketplace” broadcast. You can listen to the story or read a transcript here.

Similarly, collaboration can create a perception of value for consumers and business customers. A collaboration image suggests that the company is innovative, receptive and responsive. There are certainly companies that can make this claim and could really leverage collaboration from a marketing perspective. However, there are still many hierarchical companies that foster competitive cultures in which people live and work in fear and rarely interact outside of their functions, regions or business units. It’s ludicrous and ineffective for such companies to use collaboration as a buzz word or build campaigns around the idea—but it happens!

Currently, I’m researching how collaboration can be used effectively in marketing, branding and advertising. The bottom line is that campaigns must be based on reality rather than me-too marketing.

Collaboration's Sullied Past

I’ve been fielding lots of calls this month from HR people who are working on realigning their organizational cultures around collaboration. Collaboration is suddenly the initiative du jour. Seizing on this trend, many marketers are positioning products as collaboration solutions. These products range from copying machines to furniture.

But collaboration wasn’t always a good word. In The United States during World War II, the word meant conspiring with the Nazis. Edwin Black has written a fascinating investigative series for The Jewish Telegraphic Agency called “Hitler’s Carmaker.” The series (registration required) describes the alleged relationship between General Motors and the Third Reich. The words collaboration, collaborate and collaborator appear repeatedly in the series and in spin-off articles that Black has written, namely the one in the January 7, 2007 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle illustrated with an iron cross with the words “GM: Collaboration with Germany was Pervasive—and Persistent.” Clearly, the connotation of collaboration in these stories is different from the word’s current meaning.

While the skeletons of collaboration’s past periodically fall out of the closet, the new positive consciousness for collaboration is significantly impacting business and society. Manufacturers are slashing time-to-market. Scientists are developing disease cures in record time. And through the use of collaborative processes and tools, we can come together in real time to solve problems and make decisions.