Modern Marketing Techniques

As I was browsing through the articles under my required blogs I came across a few I felt were very interesting. One article under Modern Marketing called Upping the Hackability presented an innovative marketing concept that I was unaware had been done. It talked about how two different companies invented products that instead of the same old boring marketing techniques used a different witty approach to get their message across to consumers, in order to promote open source software. The Open-Cola company invented a can of soda that wasn't Coke or Pepsi, but a generic cola that people could alter and change and make into their own soda. There were recipes online and the only guidelines were that if you changed the recipe or ingredients you needed to update it online using the open source software. Another company introduced a product called Free Beer with the same idea of getting more people involved in the open source technique on the web. People could find the ingredients and process of how to make beer online as long as they contributed their views and any changes they wanted to make to the website. Both of these products have nothing to do with soda or beer, instead they are being used as underlying tactics to promote open sourcing. I thought that in a world where marketing is key to any business this was a new and unique way to get the open sourcing idea spread.