Vitaminwater Gets Facebookers Brainstorming on a New Flavor

Vitaminwater ventured into the world of crowdsourcing Tuesday with the launch of a new a Facebook application in which users compete to create the energy drink’s newest flavor, even down to the bottle design, to the tune of a $5,000 prize.

Vitamin Water's New FaceBook application

The new “flavor creator” app features a cartoon of a lab-coat-clad woman who instructs users to vote on their favorite flavor or combination of flavors, based on the most buzz-worthy results culled from online sources like Google News and the food photography blog Foodgawker. Ginger, for example, takes the top slot for generating buzz online.

Users can play games and take quizzes about their fitness levels to determine which kinds of vitamins and minerals should be part of their new concoction, and can also team up with other Facebookers to design a bottle for the new drink. “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.”

The winning flavor will be selected by country singer Carrie Underwood and rapper 50 Cent, and will hit store shelves in March of 2010. The rapper, also an investor in Vitaminwater, has already co-created his own grape flavor, “Formula 50,” and allegedly raked in some $400 million when Coca-Cola acquired Vitaminwater’s parent company, Glaceau, for $4.1 billion in 2007.

Vitaminwater is far from the first brand to seek online fan participation. The online T-shirt company Threadless paved the way for companies to benefit from the idea of consumer-as-designer, scoring big with its crowdsourcing business model of rewarding the top user-submitted T-shirt designs.

And this isn’t the first time Vitaminwater has used a social-networking presence to gain fans. It launched its Facebook page in February and has more than 400,000 fans. During the NCAA basketball tournament in March, it devoted television airtime to plugging the page. In May, Vitaminwater worked with MySpace Music to offer a free song download with the purchase of a bottle of its new Sync flavor.

The Vitaminwater line markets itself to health-conscious consumers, with its emphasis on vitamin and mineral combinations for specific benefits like “focus” and “endurance.” Earlier this year, the Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a class-action lawsuit against Coca-Cola on the grounds that Vitaminwater made deceptive claims about the drink’s health benefits.

Next Industrial Revolution Has Begun

There’s a revolution brewing. We’re rethinking about the manufacture of consumer products and packaging.

The first Industrial Revolution featured a burst of creativity, ingenuity and inventiveness, enabling goods to be mass-produced. The next Industrial Revolution will utilize those very assets, along with the latest technological advances. By becoming better stewards of our energy, natural resources and the environment, we can make products and packaging better than we have in the past.

Environmentally friendly packaging is gaining impetus daily, thanks to companies like Wal-Mart. The retailer signaled a major trend with its Sustainable Packaging Scorecard in 2006 for its 65,000+ suppliers with the ultimate goal of becoming “packaging neutral” by 2025. Translation: having all packaging that flows through its distribution chain recyclable, reusable, compostable or recoverable for future use by 2025.

Wal-Mart’s purchasing power sent ripples throughout all consumer product sectors. Its ambitious agenda pushed product companies to adopt sustainable packaging measures. While still a brave new world for business, measures can be implemented, one at a time, making a positive environmental impact, while being economical. However, to be effective, companies must have a sustainable mindset from the top down, in every aspect of their businesses.

Environmentally friendly packaging reduces, reuses, recycles, removes, renews. Reducing excess packaging is the most sustainable of steps to take. By cutting down on overall packaging footprints and extraneous materials inside of packaging, there are substantive savings. Many companies are steadily doing just that.

As a result, more products can be packed into shipping cartons and more cartons onto pallets. Fewer truckloads reduce energy costs and harmful emissions into the environment. The “reduce” concept has many ramifications, all of which can add substantially to profits.

Reusing packaging is the next most sustainable step. This actually used to be more widespread than it is today. In the past, old-fashioned milk bottles were reused by local dairy producers. Today, the return deposits on soda cans enable manufacturers to collect, clean and reuse them. Reusable convenient food packaging helps eliminate waste, especially when repurposed.

And how about developing packaging that is literally part of the product? Hasbro Sigma 6 GI Joe Action figures packaging turns into carrying cases that hold the figures and their accessories.

In their book, Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart make the case that products and packaging can and should be reconfigured using a closed-loop process. It’s the ultimate recycling.

Since the Industrial Revolution, a “cradle to grave” system has been in place; products and packaging ending up in landfills at the end of their useful life cycles. In a “cradle to cradle” system, materials are perpetually circulated and reused in “closed loops.” This extracts maximum value from materials already in use without ending up in landfills, virtually eliminating the heavy waste streams we have today.

Many companies purchase packaging made from post-consumer waste. Recycled packaging and packaging made from renewable sources are a way of life for natural-product companies that have practiced sustainability for decades. For example, Kashi cereals and Tom’s of Maine oral and personal care products use recycled packaging. Widespread distribution has made mainstream consumers and mass market product manufacturers more aware of recycled packaging.

There was a time when packaging was meant to deliver products intact, retain integrity; to keep them safe for consumers. Now, packaging itself has to become safer and healthier for society. It must deliver the usual benefits, while minimizing negative effects on the environment.

Let the next revolution begin so we can start eliminating million tons of product and packaging waste from worldwide landfills. We’ll all be able to breathe a little bit easier.

Bottled Water Demand Falls – Price War Fires Up!!

Bottled-water makers have stepped up a months-long price war this summer to win back customers who have turned on the tap to save money and reduce environmental waste.

This month, PepsiCo Inc.’s Aquafina brand sold at some grocery stores for as little as $2.99 for a 24-pack of half-liter bottles — less than a penny an ounce and about half of its typical price. Still, that wasn’t as cheap as the private-label brand at supermarket chain Kroger Co., on sale for $2.49.

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“It used to be $6.99 for a 24-pack, then $5.99,” said Michael Bellas, chief executive of New York consulting firm Beverage Marketing Corp. “But $2.49? That’s the lowest I’ve seen.”

In the first quarter of 2009, bottled-water brands sold for an average of $1.35 a gallon in the U.S., down more than 30% from $1.94 in 2001, according to the consulting firm. It isn’t clear whether beverage and bottling companies make any money on bottled water at these prices, beverage analysts say.

In recent years, water has given the companies a huge lift in their overall volumes sold, an indicator watched closely by Wall Street. But the beverage makers haven’t seen a big jump in earnings, in part because of their sizable investment in the water business, said Bill Pecoriello, CEO of ConsumerEdge Research LLC. The price wars aggravate a continuing problem, Mr. Pecoriello said.

The bottling companies rely on single-serve bottles sold in vending machines and coolers for much of their profit margin on bottled water, but with those sales down, they are also struggling to make water profitable, he said.

Some analysts predict the price of bottled water could fall even further by next summer, as PepsiCo absorbs its two biggest bottlers and makes expected changes to lower its delivery costs. Pepsi declined to comment on its plans.

Bottled-water makers caution that the low prices are promotional and average normal retail prices for their 24-packs haven’t fallen as drastically. Bargains before holidays like Labor Day are common, they say.

The price slashing comes as bottled-water sales are declining after more than a decade of blockbuster growth. For the year ended July 12, U.S. sales of bottled water dropped 6% to $7.6 billion, according to Chicago-based market-research firm Information Resources Inc., whose figures don’t include sales from Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Sales of bottled water have suffered as environmentalists urged boycotts of the product. In 2007, environmental groups intensified campaigns to persuade consumers to reject bottled water as wasteful. Several city governments and restaurants stopped stocking it.

Coca-Cola Co., Pepsi and Nestlé Waters North America Inc., a unit of Swiss food giant Nestlé SA and America’s biggest bottled-water maker, have been reducing the amount of plastic in their bottles in response to public criticism.

Pepsi’s “Eco-Fina” half-liter bottle contains less than half the plastic of its 2002 half-liter bottle. Coke has promised to begin using a bottle made partly of plant-based materials late this year.

Falling prices for plastic bottles have helped offset the price cuts by the beverage companies and other bottled-water suppliers, including Niagara Bottling LLC, which produces private-label brands.

Coke and its bottlers are reluctant to slash prices for Dasani, but have sometimes done so for the Aquarius Spring water brand. Coke’s refusal to lower Dasani prices has come at a cost: The brand’s U.S. sales volume slid nearly 26% in grocery and other stores, excluding Wal-Mart, in the 12 weeks ended Aug. 8, according to a report by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which cited data from Nielsen Syndicate Market Data.

Aquafina’s sales fell a less-steep 13.8% over the same period, helped by a 5% price cut. Sales of Poland Spring, owned by Nestlé, fell 8.9% while its prices sank 11.3%.

Brandon Leck, director of Coca-Cola North America’s water brands, said the company expects bottled-water sales to improve with the economy.

“As the economy recovers, we’re confident that consumers’ demand for value, convenience, and purity will prevail,” said Pepsi spokesman Bart Casabona.

Timothy F. Brown, head of retail operations for Nestlé, said his company remains bullish on bottled water. While Nestlé has been involved in cutting prices, he said much of the discount pricing was set by retailers eager to drive traffic to their stores.