Vitamin Water’s bold contest

J. Darius Bikoff was brilliant. He was a random guy in New York City, who enjoyed being active and one day combining water and some vitamic C gave him what would turn out to be a brilliant idea, Vitamin Water! Vitamin water is now sold under the glacéau vitaminwater® mostly known as Vitamin Water. It is sold in over 20 countries and new products and flavours are developed often.

Glacier Vitamin Water had an active facebook page, some say ” The vitamin water Facebook Page is one of the most actively managed brand pages on all of Facebook” [1] and they decided to put together a contest to give “fans” an opportunity to design a Vitamin Water flavour. There were over 2 MILLION people that participated in the opportunity to design the flavour, the bottle and the name. The winner, Sarah from Illinois was awarded the grand prize of $5,000.

Vitamin Water was already popular before this contest, however their ability to draw feedback from their “fans” enabled them to add a new ingredient “caffeine” to the water and also to understand who their main customer base was by reviewing the big data as a result of the participants.

Lessons for Others

I think it is always captivating to see an organization or a brand be a trail blazer in an attempt at something new. I am sure we can all remember staple brands of potato chips and ice creams asking fans for the next big flavour. But in 2010, Vitamin water took a big leap in allowing (and narrowing) their over a million participants and fans to find a reasonable (both in taste and selling ability) product to them market. Connect water is the result of that effort.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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