ABSOLUT VODKA goes crowdsourcing—the legendary brand is encouraging U.S. residents to develop the new design for ABSOLUT Chicago, the latest limited-edition bottle in the city series. For the new initiative, the brand has collaborated with the online design community Threadless, which is hosting the competition on its platform. The winner of the art contest will get his or her design featured on the legendary bottle and will walk away with $10,000 and a trip to the ABSOLUT Chicago launch party.

Pic.: ABSOLUT Vodka teams with Threadless to host a design competition, www.beta.threadless.com/absolut

The new bottle will continue the line, which already has celebrated such U.S. cities as New Orleans, Los Angeles, Boston, Brooklyn, San Francisco and Miami (ABSOLUT London, ABSOLUT Istanbul and ABSOLUT Vancouver celebrate cities outside the U.S.). The brand has chosen Threadless as the hub for launching the contest because this art community platform has over 2.1 million members and it gets around 350 art submissions each day, so the contest is sure to receive maximum attention.

“ABSOLUT has a long history of collaborations dating back to Andy Warhol and Herb Ritts, and this latest creative partnership invites the next generation of ABSOLUT Vodka consumers to put their stamp on the brand by creating the design that will appear on the bottle,” commented Maxime Kouchnir, Vice President, Vodkas at Pernod Ricard in the statement.

The competition, which was launched on February 7, will run through March 7—contestants aged 25 and older are invited to submit their artworks for the first three weeks, while the public is invited to vote for the finalists through March 7. The winner will be selected by a panel of jury, and the ABSOLUT Chicago bottle featuring the crowdsourced design will be launched in fall 2013.

All the details on the flavour of the new product and the promotional campaign will be disclosed later this year.