I came across a very interesting company today and then ended up reading a lot of stuff on this company. Jones Soda - it is. The company sells soda in United States - something that most companies would not even think of doing in presence of the giants Coke and Pepsi.
Jones Soda tries a very interesting contrast approach to sell its soda in American market:
1. It provides a personalization experience by labeling its bottles with pictures that are selected from those submitted by people on its website.
2. It also sells a kind of souvenir-personalized version where it makes bottles with pictures that you submit and order them to be on bottles sent back to you - again, part of the personalization feel.
3. It doesn’t use typical advertising approaches, probably since it realizes that it would never be able to win customers this way since both Coke and Pepsi put ample of money to obsess people through this approach.
4. It does funny things like April fool’s news of the company being acquired by a tractor company - free publicity.
5. It comes out with novel flavors that taste so bad that no one can actually drink. They know and agree to this - but they say its part of publicity or being talked about factor.
I also read an interesting interview of Jones Soda’s founder at http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/92/open_jones-extra.html. The interview is dated March 2005 and these folks appear to have started somewhere in 90’s. Considering the approach for marketing that they took right from the beginning (over a decade ago), the approach appears more relevant today. Their approach agrees to Seth Godin’s theory that no one likes being forced to see the adverts - one needs to be novel or "Purple Cow" to grow in modern market. And for them, it certainly appears as so far, so good.
A quick glance at their income statement (http://finance.google.com/finance?fstype=bi&q=JSDA) certainly shows that they are growing and growing well.
While I am certainly impressed by their approach, especially considering the fact that they started attempting this in late 90’s, I wonder - why soda? Can’t all the above "coolness factors" be associated with other products that may have a larger differentiation aspect on the product itself as well? In that case, wouldn’t it be easier to gain market share quicker? That’s because Coke and Pepsi have dominated this arena so much that a thought of soda probably reminds most of us taste of one of our favorite Coke or Pepsi product (for me - Coke Classic). At the same time, I remember what GM was once for the car markets or what Hotmail was for user emails - perhaps that’s why I am not the founder of Toyota or Yahoo Mail! 
