As Walmart battles the damage to its reputation in the wake of the Mexico bribery scandal, in the United States there's still nothing as golden for small vendors as getting a go on the shelves of Walmart stores across the country. With one deal, personal fortunes are made and entrepreneurial success stories are written.

That's why the sky is now the limit for a trio of startup brands that won valuable shelf-space via Walmart's first "Get on the Shelf" crowdsourcing contest: HumanKind Water, Plate Topper and SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit.

More than 4,000 inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses entered the contest with video submissions for products ranging from household wares and children's toys to organic food and green items, Walmart said in a press release. The winners' products will be carried on Walmart.com and at Walmart stores in the United States.Continue reading...

Domino’s has gone public — not in the IPO sense, but by crowdsourcing ideas to improve the brand via a Facebook-based customer feedback intiatives it's calling Think Oven.

It's all part of the brand's two-year-old initiative to become more relevant and increase loyalty (and business) by engaging consumers (customers and non-customers) in its reinvention.Continue reading...

For a small manufacturer, a spot on the shelves of Walmart or a pixel packet on Walmart.com can be transformational. That's why there is practically a cottage industry around Bentonville, Ark., just serving the needs of the thousands of would-be vendors who trek to Wal-Mart headquarters there every year in an attempt to lure or cajole one of the company's buyers into taking a flyer on the "next great product."

Now, Walmart wants to make it easier for some of these innovations to make their way onto its product list as well as, perhaps, land some hit merchandise that might never have made it through all the hoops before. So the company's @WalmartLabs R&D unit is launching an initiative to open its doors to great product ideas: Get on the Shelf, a program inviting would-be suppliers small and large to submit product ideas along with supporting videos in a campaign that unfolds in phases through April.

Consumers are invited to vote online on which products they'd like to see Walmart pick up, and the company will end up selling three of them online plus feature a grand prize winner on its home page and in some stores. Entrants will be free to get votes however they want — and, in the process, will demonstrate their marketing savvy to Walmart.Continue reading...

Wrigley’s Orbit gum has jumped on the crowdsourcing bandwagon, inviting the public to engage with the brand from a design and customization perspective, via packpage designs on a Facebook app. Live through February, the app pulls data from a user’s profile and generates a custom gum pack design for every participant, “essentially making each person’s Facebook life a work of art.”

The contest leverages infographics technology and the design skillz of EVB (Evolution Bureau) digital artist Joshua Davis, known for building algorithmic systems, although anyone can now audition to be a digitally crowdsourced artist. Facebookers can solicit votes for their package designs and the winner could even hit store shelves in 2012.Continue reading...

Volkswagen Canada wants your name in lights – as co-creator of the next spot for its "Drive Until" campaign promoting the Volkswagen Golf, in a bid to create "the People's ad" for the "People's car."

The first two ads ("chapters") in the Drive Until campaign are already on-air (watch below), showing a thirty-something man embarking on two major milestones: a marriage proposal ("Courage") and getting to the church on time — for his wedding, as shown in "Time."

The third ad in the storyline is up for grabs, and fans of the brand are being invited to participate in the script, cast, music – and receive onscreen credit, of course.Continue reading...

The US Interior Department is under fire from graphic artists for crowdsourcing a creative brief for a new logo.

The contest, with partner Crowdspring, ends June 15th, and the winning design will adorn official hats, t-shirts and jackets. The prizes: $1,000 to the winner, $1000; $250 each to the 2nd and 3rd place winners.

The Interior Department is looking for a logo design that communicates "stewardship of the land," "conservation of our natural resources," and "goodness of purpose."

Sounds straightforward enough. So what's all the fuss?Continue reading...

FarmVille got you itchy to call the shots on a real farm? Then MyFarm could be for you.

It may not boast motorcycle-riding sheep, but Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire, England, is a bucolic (and real) farm looking for 10,000 good (online) farmers.

The public is being invited in to take over stewardship of the estate's 2,500-acre farm, collectively making all the decisions about what crops to grow, livestock to breed, and broader issues of environmental interaction.

Farm manger Richard Morris will curate the community and provide MyFarmers with options they can vote on monthly, following community discussion and sharing of blogs and videos with additional information.Continue reading...

Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Launched in the mid-Seventies, it was a blind taste test, heavily used in Pepsi's TV advertising, in which participants invariably would pick Pepsi over Coke as the better-tasting cola. It spoke directly to relevant brand equities that helped Pepsi-Cola mount a rising challenge to Coca-Cola over subsequent decades.

Well, there’s a new Pepsi Challenge in town. But it has nothing to do with taste-testing, cola or even Pepsi per se. As part of PepsiCo’s ever-expansive Pepsi Refresh community-revitalization project, Pepsi Challenge is now the name of an online activity that encourages users to submit ideas and weigh in with solutions.Continue reading...