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Lesson #2: Use Your Consumers As Your Secret Ingredient

Article Overview: “The reality is that consumers don’t need our s---,” says van Stolk. “People get fired up about Jones because it’s theirs.”

Lesson #2: Use Your Consumers As Your Secret Ingredient

“The reality is that consumers don’t need our s---,” says van Stolk. “People get fired up about Jones because it’s theirs.”

Companies large and small have, over the years, continued to look to Jones Soda as an example of successful grassroots marketing. For van Stolk, marketing is not something you ‘do’ to people, but is rather a shared process. And, while the company may be nowhere near the sales mark of the likes of Coca-Cola (“The big guys spill more soda in a day than we sell,” jokes van Stolk), Jones Soda has become successful by building their brand from the ground up.

One of the ways van Stolk did that was by working to keep his customers involved in the product, to create an emotional attachment between them and his company. To that end, and with no money for advertising, he made sure that everything from the photos on the bottle labels to the drink flavours came from the customers.

A photographer friend of van Stolk, Victor John Penner, once suggested Jones Soda use his images as labels. “I said 'No, dude, we've got to open it to everyone.' So it just sort of happened like that,” he recalls. “Lots of things in branding are like that.” Today, consumers have sent in over a million photographs to Jones Soda, and they have become so popular that they are even collected and traded in web chat rooms.

“We allowed the labels to be discovered and that gave consumers a sense of ownership. It makes it more relevant to them and provides an emotional connection,” van Stolk explains. “With big soda brands, the 'Britney Spears model' - paying a lot of money to some hot artist to sponsor your beverage - is just so done. The wonderful thing about our competitors is, for all the money they have, they should be thinking more originally but they don't. If they ever do, I'm dead.”

From the very beginning, van Stolk recognized that “the world doesn’t need another soda.” What young consumers did need, however, was a soda that they could identify with, and that they could be involved with. That is exactly what they found in Jones Soda. And, even though he would love to always trust his own instincts, he finds he has no choice but to sometimes listen to his customers.

Take for instance his company’s Blue Bubble Gum Soda. “I hate it. I’ve tried to kill that flavour for like seven years, but they won’t let me,” says van Stolk. “People really like it…I don’t know why. If there is not a daily fight over Blue Bubble Gum, something is wrong.” Although van Stolk joked that, “One day I’m just going to pull the CEO card and cancel it,” he never did. After all, the flavour was the customers’ suggestion and so long as they kept buying it, he would keep making it.

It is for that reason that for everything from flavour suggestions to bottle designs, van Stolk turned to the people who know best. “I believe focus groups are junk. They only justify what you want to believe is true,” he says. “We go in [to talk to kids] with no agenda. You’re so much more successful if you don’t fall in love with your own ideas.”

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Article Tags: big guys, bottle labels, britney spears, chat rooms, coca cola, consumers, emotional attachment, emotional connection, grassroots marketing, images, john penner, jones soda, photographer friend, photographs, photos, soda brands, van stolk, web chat, wit, wonderful thing



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