Absolut Vodka has been a pioneer in their field not just because they make good vodka, but because they are willing to take chances and get creative. Their first flavored vodka, Absolut Peppar, came out in 1986 and was flavored with roasted jalapenos, green tomato, and dried herbs – a gutsy combination, no doubt. They are also well known for the special, generally limited edition, bottles they’ve been releasing for the past decade. Since 2007, they’ve been running their “Cities” campaign, creating one bottle each year to honor an important U.S. city. Cities that have been immortalized include New Orleans, Los Angeles, Boston, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Miami – and this year, Chicago is up next.
To design their Chicago bottle, Absolut has partnered with Threadless, a pioneer in trendsetting designs based in Chicago. Threadless sells t-shirts and other products designed by an artist community of over 2 million, which makes them a perfect choice to help Absolut get creative.
Threadless is channeling their huge community to submit ideas for the limited edition bottle. Any U.S. resident that is at least 25 years old can enter at www.threadless.com/absolut and once you’ve submitted your design, the Threadless community will score it from 1 to 5. (They can also leave comments, so make sure you have a thick skin before you put your artwork out there.) Threadless will use all of those scores and comments to pick a winner. And what does the winner actually get?
- The grand prize winner gets $10,000 in cash and their design will be printed on all bottles of Absolut Chicago. They also get to attend the Absolut Chicago launch with one guest – that includes round trip airfare from anywhere in the U.S., plus 2 nights in a hotel and $500 spending money.
- One runner up will get $2,000 and their design will be printed on a t-shirt sold by Threadless
If we have any artsy readers, you should definitely enter. Let us know if you do so we can go to Threadless and vote for you. We can barely draw stick figures, so we’re counting on you guys.