flexistuff

It’s the 1st of July here and we’re celebrating Canada Day. So, I decided to bake a cake - not a particularly Canadian cake though. It was banana cake with chocolate chips and pecans.

That got me thinking about the banana that I mashed up and put into my cake – you know, the one with the little yellow and blue sticker that is instantly recognizable as a Chiquita banana. You have to give the company credit for being able to brand a simple piece of fruit. After all, has any company been able replicate the same brand recognition with apples, pears, or grapes. Exactly my point!

I was quite intrigued then when I heard that Chiquita Brands is inviting consumers to visit www.EatAChiquita.com to put their own spin on the company’s iconic brand image as part of the Chiquita Banana Sticker Design Contest. Eighteen winners will in the end have their winning design featured on millions of Chiquita bananas.

Not a graphic designer you say? Not a problem. Because even those of us who are not artistically inclined can participate in the fun by creating our own sticker, then take it to the Zazzle store where we can create our own custom gear featuring our design.

Curious, I just had to check it out…

Ya, I knew that would get your attention! No, I’m not going to tell you how you can create your own man, with a rock hard six-pack. Instead, I’m going to tell you how Heiniken has jumped on the personalization band wagon to offer users a way to design their own six pack, with a custom label: Your bottle. Your Design. Your Heineken.

For the first step in the process you choose your bottle from one 8 categories which includes: party, sport, triumph, summer, celebration, just to say and colour. And under those categories you have sub-themes. For example when I picked party, additional options included: music, stag party, boys’ night, champion, housewarming, speakers. I chose “nightlife” because obviously that was the least testosterone inspired theme.

In step 2, of the process you can personalize both the front and back labels. For the front, you can add some text, so I added “Party with Anita”. For the back it gets a little more interesting because you can upload a photo and/or some text. When I tried it the first time and chose the “star” as a photo frame, I wanted to remove it. The interface was a little wonky and wouldn’t allow me to do it, so I had to start over. Aargh!

Before the final step was complete…

Last year I wrote an article explaining how Burger King is considered a pioneer in mass customization. Back in 1954 they came up with the idea to allow customers to customize their hamburger.

McDonald’s celebrates sameness and uniformity with their jingle – two all beef patties, special sauce lettuce cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun. In contrast, Burger King’s value proposition dating back to 1973, is Have it Your Way and has also been immortalized in a catchy song. Remember these lyrics: Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, Special orders don’t upset us, All we ask is that you let us serve it your way.

Burger King in Brazil has taken personalization to the next level. While customers were placing their orders, a hidden camera took a picture of their face, which was then instantly printed on a wrapper, and then served to them. Your Whopper, Your Face, Whopper Face. You’ll have to watch the video to see delighted and stunned reactions of the recipients!

Burger King offers a fabulous example of mass customization brought to food packaging. However, I have written about other custom packaging initiatives...

Back in January, I told you about my business passion for writing about mass customization, personalization and one-to-one marketing. On the personal side, I also love chocolate. What could be better than combining my two passions to get customized chocolate, right!?

So I wrote about Chocri, a German based company, and recently expanded into the US, that allows you to create your own chocolate - and placed an order on the site. I concocted (and named) the following 3 bars:

• Tropical Dreams by Anita: milk chocolate with papaya cubes, cinnamon, organic flax seeds, coconut shavings and nougat
• Sweet Heat in Winter: milk chocolate with ginger, ground chilli, macadamia nuts, toffee and orange
• Anita’s Dark Decadence: dark chocolate with cappuccino chocolate drops, coffee, toasted hazelnuts, bourbon vanilla and raspberry

When I recently received my package, I couldn’t wait to dig in and taste my chocolate creations. What was my verdict?

OK guys, this blog post is for you, so listen up. If you want to step up your game and show your sweetie just how special she is, give her a gift for Valentine’s that’s personalized just for her. Here are my Top 5 personalized Valentine’s Day gift picks that will show your darling that she is one of a kind. You’ll actually be surprised when I tell you that two of my suggestions are actually (almost) FREE.

The tried and true Valentine’s Day gifts are roses, chocolate and champagne. Have you thought about considering a personalized version of each? Read on…

“Say it”, Literally - with Roses

Red roses are probably one of the most popular flowers for Valentine’s Day. At the website Speaking Roses, you can have a personalized message, her photo, your photo, or even a corporate logo embossed on rose petals. Unbelievable huh!? Their patented technology process allows for the printing of images, text and just about anything else on rose petals without harming or shortening the life of the flower – making it truly a unique gift. A 3 rose bouquet with “I love you” costs a reasonable $20 while a dozen sells for $75. The set up fee for a unique phrase, photo, logo, or icon costs $25.00 extra.

Customize your Chocolate

I’ve never met a woman who doesn’t like chocolate. So you’ll always be safe with this gift. I present 3 options:

• Hershey’s offers customers the ability to personalize their own chocolate bar wrappers not only for Valentine’s Day, but for birthdays, weddings, and a whole host of other occasions.
• At Chocri, you can go one step further and customize your own chocolate bar. Choose a chocolate base (white, dark or milk chocolate), and then add your favorites out of more than 100 toppings, including a Valentine’s Day message. Name your decadent creation, which will be printed on the package.
• At My M&Ms, you can choose the colour of your candy (white, pink, red, and more), add a personal message, and even upload a photo that will be printed on your candy. How very sweet!

There's more...

I’ve written extensively about custom food and drink products for humans and have provided numerous examples that have included customized chocolate, cereal, muesli, protein bars, drinks, and even food packaging.

Now, thanks to RedMoon Custom Pet Food, you can create your own mix of dog or cat food based on their specific nutritional requirements. Not only that, but you can custom fortify their food with supplements such as an immune/antioxidant booster, hip and joint reviver or a natural skin and coat supplement. As a final touch, you can even have each custom-blended bag named after your beloved furry friend, and soon you’ll be able to have your pet’s photo printed on each bag too. Awww, cute!

The site boasts that the natural ingredients used in RedMoon products are the finest available, and include regionally sourced antibiotic and hormone-free meats, whole raw fruits and vegetables and low glycemic carbohydrate sources such as yellow peas, plus all-natural chelated vitamins and minerals. Each base kibble recipe is slow cooked in small batches to preserve essential nutrients, and all products are gluten, gray, soy, wheat rice and corn free.

With processing facilities in Brainerd, Minnesota and Crossfield, Alberta, Canada, the company ensures they use local ingredients, and ships anywhere in North America too. How much does personalized pet food cost?

In business, my passion is writing about mass customization, personalization and one-to-one marketing. On the personal side, I love chocolate. So what could be better than combining my two passions to get customized chocolate!

I’ve written before about customizable packaging for chocolate, such as Dove and Hershey’s, but I have never before found a place that allows chocolate-lovers to create their own unique chocolate bar!

Founded in 2008 in Germany, and launched in the U.S. earlier this month, Chocri, lets customers create their own chocolate bar by choosing a base, adding toppings and then naming it, which will then be printed on the package. Whether you have conservative or curious tastes, there are over 100 toppings on the site so you can find the right flavour combination that’s just right for you! In addition, Chocri chocolates are all organic and fair trade, with 1% of sales donated to a charitable organization that cares for the needs of the children on the Ivory Coast (where cacao is produced).

The starting price for a bar is $7.90 US with toppings ranging from $0.10 for sea salt to $2.10 for real gold flakes, with a 3 bar minimum – either all the same or different. International shipping costs $6 with deliveries being made from Germany, where your personalized chocolate bar is produced. Orders are shipped within 2 weeks.

Curious, I decided to test drive the site…

I was recently at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (my alma mater) to hear the Dean, Roger Martin speak about his latest book “The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the next competitive advantage.”

The main theme of his book is that innovation is about seeing the world not as it is, but as it could be. It’s about exploring really “wicked problems” whose solutions can’t be found in past experience or proven by data. Martin maintains that the problem with business is that most companies obsess over reliance and predictability, which stifles innovation. Instead, he offers a more intuitive approach, adopting the discipline of “design thinking” a process that accelerates the process from mystery (an unexplainable process) to algorithm (a replicable success formula).

This got me thinking about the innovations, or lack thereof, coming from large companies in the mass customization space. Most of the personalized, products, services and innovations that I have written about extensively come not from the major companies, but start-ups, which back-up Martin’s point.

Here is at least one exception from which the larger companies can learn…

In Part I of my post, I provided you with my picks for the best use of personalization in marketing campaigns in the following categories: best use of customer data, best use of technology, best use of social media, best personalized video, and “ahead of the curve”

For Part II of my story, I've listed my choices for the best customized products of the year. This is indeed a difficult task. Over two years ago when I first started writing on the topic, I had to search and scramble to find examples of mass customized products to cover. Now, two years later, I can barely keep up. If there was one category that was dominant for mass customization this past year, it was in home decor followed by fashion and footwear. The customization of food is also a strong category that is an up and coming sector.

Footwear and Fashion: Personalization from Payless. Sometimes you can find examples of personalization in the most unlikely places. On my annual excursion to the southern US, my first stop always includes a visit the mall where I hunt for interesting retail concepts. I was not only delightfully surprised, but downright amazed to find out that Payless Shoes offers custom dyed designer shoes! This footwear line is created by New York-based fashion designer Lela Rose.

You first start off by visiting a Payless store, where you are met with a 4 foot linear display, devoted totally to the Unforgettable Moments shoe collection. There are 13 or so shoe styles displayed, in every size that you can try on to make sure that they fit. Next, you choose from one of 64 colours that are represented by the satin swatch colour selection book. Colours range from the pale – such as taupe shimmer, or apricot - to the downright bold – rich mocha or deep emerald.

The customer’s order is placed and the hand-dyed shoes arrive within 10 business days at the store where you ordered it, or at home, if you ordered online. Here’s the best part - dyeing and shipping are included in the price. And, at $49.99 US or less – it’s well worth it for a custom product, made to your specifications. Apparently Payless is the only nationwide retailer to offer affordable special occasion satin designer shoes that are dyeable.

See my picks for other categories: gifts, home décor, food, and personal care…

Launched in 2008 in Miami, Florida by three friends, Mix My Granola lets you customize your own organic, all natural granola mix from more than 75 ingredients such as fruits, nuts and flavour enhancers. The extensive ingredient list is quite impressive – and good for you too. But, for those of you who are not so hard core healthy, you can sweeten up your granola with organic gummy bears, jelly beans, chocolate espresso beans, candy corn, and peanut butter pretzel bites.

Not up to going through the customization process? No problem. A number of pre-mixes are offered and with such names such, Super Duper Detox, Lower Your Cholesterol, and Runner’s mix, there’s bound to be a mix that’s suited just for you.

The packaging is quite cool, coming in a tall cylinder that holds 16 oz. of granola ingredients, enough for 14 servings. On the site they tell you that a standard supermarket granola usually only contains 12 oz. So you are getting 33% more granola in comparison. The nutrition facts of your custom-made granola mix and its ingredient are also stated on the package so you know what you’re getting. Each label also includes an individual Mix-ID that allows you (or anyone else) to re-order your favourite mix by entering the Mix-ID online.

In terms of the online experience, the website is simply designed, is easy to navigate and has enticing bold images. Here’s how the online ordering process works:

Featured prominently on the Season 2 premiere of the popular CW series Gossip Girl, Vitaminwater is quickly becoming the drink of choice for many — celebrities and plebs alike. Now Vitaminwater is offering its fans the chance to create the next label, the grand prize being $5,000. The winner will be chosen by musicians Carrie Underwood and Fifty-Cent, both of whom are already fans of the beverage. In fact, according to Wall Street Journal blogger Marisa Taylor, Fifty-Cent, also an investor in Vitaminwater, has already co-created his own grape flavor, “Formula 50.”

According to MediaPost Publications, the idea behind the contest is this: Vitaminwater fans will formulate their variety in three steps via the Facebook “Flavor Creator Lab” app: 1) flavour, 2) functional benefit and 3) the label design. In step one, you can help choose the flavour by logging onto Vitaminwater’s Facebook page and voting for your favourite flavour. In step two, you will play a series of games and answer quiz questions to help Vitaminwater determine what the majority of people really need, which will then help the scientists come up with a new concoction of vitamins and nutrients. Step three is a contest giving you the chance to name the new variety, design the label, and write copy for the bottle, including the name, personality, and look.

That’s all great but…

“Warm delicious cookies, your way in just minutes!” That’s the motto for Toronto-based custom-cookie store Sweet Flour Bake Shop. According to Springwise, over 15,000 cookie options face the customer. Need I say more? Who doesn’t love a freshly baked cookie?

The fact that Sweet Flour now allows you to customize your favourite by choosing your dough (Original, Peanut Butter, or Oatmeal) and from over 20 ingredients of the highest quality (including dried fruits, nuts, varieties of chocolate, candy), and then bakes it for you in 2 minutes? Well, that’s just the lemony icing on my made-to-order blueberry peanut butter cookie. No, really — I could order that if I wanted.

This is yet another example of mass customization in the food industry, a trend that I’ve written about many times before.

As well as offering cookies bedecked with Rolos and pretzels (again, this is actually an option if that’s what you like), Sweet Flour also lets you customize your own breakfast. Muffin tops (original or bran), yogurt parfait, warm granola, or steel-cut oats are all on the menu, and are all customizable with your choice of mix-ins. They also have crispy cookie sandwiches customizable with your choice of spread (salted caramel, chocolate ganache, and raspberry jam, among others).

Don’t have time to sit and enjoy your cookie in their cosy Bloor West shop?

With the recent concerns about banning products made with Bisphenol-A, or BPA, reusable water bottles have become a trend that’s here to stay.

Based out of Colorado, Bottle Wraps allows consumers to design a personalized skin for their reusable water bottle. These skins are made from high-quality vinyl that can withstand daily use. They are said to be scratch and tear resistant, water-proof and dish water safe.

The skins are easily used by peeling and sticking them to your desired water bottle. The site provides useful diagrammed directions on how to use the skins. There is also a helpful tip for removing them. The company recommends users fill the bottle with hot water, wait 15-20 minutes, and then simply peel off.

Here’s how the online process works…

Australian company Brewtopia has come up with a seemingly novel idea: a company “Built by the People for the People.” Seems obvious, right? In order to make the customers happy, give them what they want! In 2002, Brewtopia created their first beer by allowing thousands of people all over the world to vote on every aspect of its development, the result — apart from huge success — was a European-style Lager, custom-branded for each individual consumer.

Since then, Brewtopia has expanded their beer selection to include Pale Ale, and they have branched out with water and wine, offering three each of reds and whites, and two Champagnes. Much of their focus is on the corporate and hospitality sectors. For example, hotels and cafes could carry their own custom brand, or you could order customized beverages branded with your logo for a launch or promotional event. Custom bottles of Champagne would also be a great idea for weddings!

So, how does it work?

Customizable food has long been a feature of my blogs — from candy to protein shakes to breakfast cereal, it has always been a popular choice for people to express their individual tastes (pun intended). Now Coca-Cola has joined the brigade with their new “Freestyle” fountain dispenser, a self-serve machine that offers over 100 different drink options — including varieties of waters, juices, teas and sparkling beverages that up until now have been unavailable in North America.

According to their press release, the Coca-Cola Freestyle dispenser (code named the “Jet”) uses PurePour Technology to make the roughly 120 drinks, but only takes the same amount of space as the current eight-valve machine. Radio-frequency ID (RFID) tags will be incorporated in order to keep track of the syrup the machine uses so that retailers will know when to refill. On top of that, it will also allow Coca-Cola to see which flavours and locations are the most popular, thereby giving them valuable insight into which drinks would be most successful if offered for sale individually in bottles or cans.

Customers will use the touch-screen interface to choose their drink based on calorie content, caffeine level, or brand. However, the drink mix is preset, so experimentation and real customizable content (combining different flavours to create new ones) are not options.

But I can see taking this concept to the next level, offering the mass customization of beverages…