The new viral campaign shares much in common with the manufacturer’s 2009 “Real Good Chair Experiment,” where 25 GPS-enabled chairs were placed on the streets of New York, free for the taking. This time around, Blu Dot‘s Swap Meet offers members of its online community the chance to trade their own “creative currency” – everything from a pledge to feed the homeless to an offer of a full-size popsicle stick motorcycle – in exchange for Blu Dot’s modern design wares. Individuals can upload their kooky ideas at the Swap Meet website, where others can comment and give thumbs-up to their favourites.
The swap started on February 28, but a number of bids have already been accepted by the Blu Dot team. Among the highlights:
- For a Rook Lamp, Tom Pupo from Hialeah, Florida, will send a themed mix CD to the manufacturer every month for a year.
- Eleanor in Chicago is bringing a group of 20-something-year-olds, a keg of Miller High Life and a DJ to Minneapolis to host an “Epic College Kegger” in the Blu Dot headquarters, in exchange for a Buttercup Chair.
- In exchange for a Real Good Chair, Stephe Kamykowski of Youngstown, Ohio, promised to design 130 ideas for a new version of the classic beer can holder hat, to be exhibited at Eleanor’s kegger.
- Kirk McCall of Minneapolis traded three homemade replicas of 17th-century weather sound effect machines for a Paramount Sectional.
Among the bids still under consideration are art projects, design prototypes, photo shoots, architectural models and a lot of cooking. There’s an offer of an original Blu Dot-inspired beer recipe for a Desk 51; naming rights to the main character in a young adult novel for a Paramount Lounge Chair; and a terrifying shrine to Farrah Fawcett (with 12 vintage doll heads shoved in a display case) for a Son of a Bench.
Blu Dot also produced a video introducing the project starring R&B artist Har Mar Superstar, also on the swap website.
Blu Dot Swap Meet runs until March 11 on swapmeet.bludot.com.