Vitamin Water crowdsources their next flavor
I’ve commented before at how adept Vitamin Water is with regard to creating social interactions with their customers. Today they turned to their Facebook community to decide the next flavor with the help of a new app called the “Flavor Creator” (image below). The name is a bit misleading in that the app won’t actually let the community ‘create’ the flavor but will let the active Vitamin Water ‘fans’ participate in the rise of flavors for consideration through their social media activities – such as tweets/searches/image posts, etc. Extending the social interaction, they are also allowing their Facebook fans to connect and collaborate on the design of the bottle for the new flavor – right down to the catch phrase describing that flavor.
Clearly Vitamin Water and their parent company, Glaceau, understand their customer and their tendencies extremely well – as noted here:
“We’re basically handing over the control and the lab coat to our fans,” said Eric Berniker, a senior vice president of marketing for Vitaminwater. “It’s one of the hottest brands with youth, and of course, Facebook is a great way to connect with them.” (credit WSJ for this quote).
So let’s recap. Understand who your customer is, give them a modest amount of control over a product they love, and provide an environment where they can connect with others to evangelize your brand. Other companies should take notice of this community connection – it’s working for Vitamin Water.
