“Peter van Stolk, the 40-year-old founder of Jones Soda, was quick to learn the rules of the industry and then ignore them. Since he began selling his iconoclastic drinks out of ice chests in snowboarding shops and tattoo parlors in 1996, he’s sold 187 million bottles. In explaining the runaway success of the brand, van Stolk is the first to admit, “The world doesn’t need another soda.” But what young cynical consumers apparently did need was a brand with which they could identify. Unlike the slick Madison Avenue spin of huge competitors, Jones Soda — without any money for advertising — created a cool under-the-radar appeal by urging fans to send in photographs to the website to use as bottle labels. The Seattle company now has over a million submissions and has used 4,372 of the photos.”
— Business Week

Tags: Jones Soda, marketing, van Stolk