Today, Springwise talks about Vitamin Water's new Facebook application, allowing consumers to help create their newest concoction:
'Sorry to pull you away from checking out your ex’s photo gallery, but Vitaminwater needs your help.' Offering an alternative use for Facebook, the beverage company is inviting users to create new flavours and vitamin content.
After adding the FlavorCreator app from Vitaminwater’s Facebook page, users can help influence the flavour, functional benefits and design of the new water. First, they are invited to choose their favourite of ten flavours, picked from the ten most mentioned flavours elsewhere on the web according to the app’s ‘buzz meter’. (Which means the crowds are indirectly and unwittingly contributing, too.) The second step lets users play games and answer quiz questions, helping Vitaminwater understand the most desired nutritional benefits, and which functional ingredients to add to the drinks. The last step lets users name the flavour, and decide the aesthetic and copy to be used on the bottle.
Product development contests aren't new, of course. But Vitaminwater stresses that this isn't just another marketing program: like Coca-Cola’s new Freestyle machine, the app enables the company to get feedback on the tastes du jour, producing products that are more likely to become best-sellers. R&D, product promotion and branding building: not a bad result from customers frittering away time on their lunch breaks ;-)
Examples like these demonstrate that our notion of choice is undergoing great transformation. Whereas we've always enjoyed lots of choice in the marketplace—new colors, new shapes, more interesting flavors, new sizes—our more complex, flexible, global economy ensures more diverse, more authentic and higher quality choices. Who cares about Coke, Tab or Diet 7-UP when you can choose between many hundreds of specialty beverages, many of which have themselves grown out of authentic cultural traditions (e.g., San Pelligrino, Orangina, Jones Soda, Frappucino, etc.).
Though variety is now expected (as Vitamin Water clearly knows), it can often contribute to consumers' sense of time pressures, confusion and stress. Consumers, therefore, are seeking greater connections with the products, brands and retailers they choose. Today, you can no longer differentiate yourself on health benefits alone, but rather you need to provide consumers with an aspirational connection to who they envision themselves to be. It's this kind of empowerment, ownership and investment that breeds brand loyalty. Here, Vitamin Water provides an example of brand loyalty by way of ownership. They are beginning to relinquish some of the control of the brand. We've always said that letting go a great step in new brand engagement.
Remember that your brand is about the sum total of product experiences as understood by your consumer.
Don't be afraid should your consumer transform your product or service in ways you might never have imagined. Encourage customer-led innovation strategies. Keep an open mind when consumers begin playing with or transforming your brand.
"We'll never have complete control over the brand..."
—James McDowell, Vice President at Mini USA
"As consumers wrest control away from brand management control freaks...get over it. Turning your brand over to the consumer is taking control—and in fact, if you do, they'll return it to you in better shape."
—Russ Klein, President, Global Marketing Strategy & Innovation, Burger King
"Today the customer is in charge, and whoever is best at putting the customer in charge makes all the money."
—Stephen F. Quinn, Chief Marketing Officer, Wal-Mart Stores Division
Last weekend we pointed our browsers towards 
Interactive, experience-based advertising takes consumers beyond a free sample or in-store demonstration to a memorable and helpful encounter facilitated by a brand.
IKEA’s colorful train is simply one example of an effective way of building brand presence without inundating consumers with advertising. 
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