Jones Soda Personalisation

From Tom Fishbourne's blog

"Over Thanksgiving 2003, Jones Soda boldly went where no holiday pack had gone before, with a limited edition Turkey & Gravy soda. Delicious. They produced just 6,000 bottles, only offered it online, and sold out in a couple hours. A few days later, bidding on eBay was up to $63 for a two bottle set. Along the way, they scored a slew of free publicity. Not bad for the cost of 6,000 bottle-run.

They've followed that up every year since, and just announced two Christmukkah packs. Their Chanukah pack features Chocolate Coins, Applesauce, Latke, and Jelly Doughnut sodas. Their Christmas pack features Christmas Ham, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog, and Sugar Plum sodas.

The next time someone tells you your idea is "polarizing", just point them to Jones. To compete in the cola wars, they have to be polarizing. Yes, that means some hate it. But, it also means that some love it rampantly (just look at all of the Jones stuff on eBay). What they can't be is ordinary.

I love seeing ways that Davids successfully compete against Goliaths. Another cool thing Jones does is make all of their labels from random pictures that fans have sent in. They've had 748,578 photos posted by consumers so far, most available on their gallery. And you can bet that when your picture is chosen, you tell everybody you know. Really smart."

Coke Second Life Vending Machine

From 3PointD:

Coca-Cola is taking its first steps in the virtual world of Second Life with a contest in which SL members will be invited to “imagine a virtual vending machine with limitless possibilities.” In concert with new-media marketing firm crayon and virtual-world services outfit Millions of Us, Coke is running “an open contest for Second Life residents and the general population to design a virtual experience machine through its Virtual Thirst competition. . . . This contest is not a search for the virtual version of a real-life vending machine that distributes bottles and cans, but the mission to create a portable device for Second Life’s ‘in-world’ digital society that unleashes a refreshing and attention-grabbing experience, on demand.” The contest is to be announced today in an in-world press conference with Coca-Cola execs.

According to a press release, the winner will be selected by an advisory council of SL residents and then will travel to San Francisco, courtesy of Coca-Cola, to collaborate with Millions of Us in turning the concept into virtual reality. The virtual Coke machine will be unveiled at an in-world party and made available for free to SL residents.

One interesting aspect of the competition is that fact that entries can be submitted »within SL«, via YouTube, or at the Virtual Thirst page on MySpace. The entry deadline is 25 May 2007.

A number of companies have been coming into Second Life lately with similar initiatives, hoping to find the killer entertainment app that residents will either keep coming back to or will carry around with them and use. It’s a nice twist to ask residents themselves to design the device. And definitely a great contract for the crayonistas to have. Looks like we’ll see how refreshing the results are sometime this summer. Should be interesting.

Co Creation is the future

From a fascinating blog called Doing Business in an Expanding Reality:

Second Life: A platform for co-creation

Among the types of studies that may be conducted in Second Life, one area that seems particularly promising to us is that of co-creation: Businesses today are aware that they cannot innovate inside laboratories behind closed doors and that innovation will be successful if it is partly conducted by calling on collective creativity (see the book “Fabriquer le Futur 2” (Creating the Future 2, co-written by Pierre Musso, Laurent Ponthou and Eric Seuillet, who is the president of Fabrique du Futur).

These approaches will develop and are precisely a part of the societal trend of the “Participation generation” described by Thierry Maillet in his latest book “la Génération Participation”. Citizen/consumers are increasingly seeking direct dialogue with the brands and expect them to take into account their proposals.

We believe that Second Life is an ideal platform for this process of co-creation, namely because it allows those who wish to do so to provide their creative input to the brands and to present their designs under the form of 3D prototypes. Prototypes that may then be evaluated by other residents…

To activate this co-creative process, the organisation of a competition is amusing, stimulating and well-adapted to Second Life.

Our first experiments in this direction have been very positive. The first competition we launched, a building competition for a Repères showroom, was initially intended to propose an event for our panellists and to test the principle of competitions. The result is exceptional and I invite you to admire the design, presented in the next two snapshots, by Joshua Culdesac and Piper Pitney on the Repères Second Life island.

You will also find more information on this design and its creators on the Repères Second Life site.

The other competitions we have organised so far, have also been conducted experimentally by our panel, and we have found it more interesting and of greater impact to conduct this work for the benefit of partners who do not necessarily have the means to benefit from our services normally.

We are therefore moving towards two types of co-creation processes in SL:
. Operations for the brands, invoiced according to our usual conditions,
. and, for the purposes of communication and events organisation, joint operations with associations whose projects we support, with a sharing of the costs.