Pepsi Co. brand Mountain Dew has been using its social media fan base to create, brand and market three experimental new flavors that are hitting shelves across the United States today.
The flavors are out now and the one that performs the best — both online and in the real world — will become a permanent part of the Mountain Dew product line.
What’s more interesting than the new flavors themselves — Distortion, Typhoon and White Out — is the story behind how they came to be and the tenacity of fans on social media platforms to determine the winning flavor.
DEWmocracy 2, as the campaign is referred to, dates back to July 2009 and happens to be one of the most aggressive social media campaigns we’ve seen to date.
The Making of Flavor Nations
In July 2009 Mountain Dew launched a social media-heavy initiative — phase one of DEWmocracy 2 — and put out a call to action to get fans of the brand to use social media to tell Mountain Dew why they should be selected to help the company craft a new flavor. The top 50 applicants were sent home test kits with seven different flavors and were then tasked to create videos of their flavor taste tests.
In phase two, Mountain Dew selected the top three flavors and organized the testers and DEW Labs participants into members of Flavor Nations — one nation for each new flavor. These brand advocates essentially became the Mountain Dew product teams for the flavors and were responsible for everything that goes into a new flavor launch.
Now that the flavors are available for purchase, each Flavor Nation will aggressively fight for their respective flavors and solicit friends, family, fans and followers to vote for their Dew creation. Each nation has its own Facebook Page and Twitter account that they’ll use to help get the word out during the eight week period that these new beverages will be sold for consumption. Members of each nation will also travel cross-country — road trip style — to encourage social media sharing and flavor voting.
Pitch the Nations
The Flavor Nations were responsible for flavor naming, label design, color, selecting an agency, approving creative based on storyboards, coming up with a digital advertising plan and all other product launch tasks.
What’s especially unique about the process is that Mountain Dew put 100% of the power in the hands of each Flavor Nation to control the direction, branding and marketing of their respective flavors. The soda company reached out to their agencies and partner digital sites and directed them to pitch their individual advertising and digital marketing strategies to each flavor community.
Sites like The Onion, CraveOnline and College Humor had to create video proposals and explain why the nations should select their sites to promote their flavor (you can see College Humor’s pitch video above).
Introducing the New Flavors
Without further ado, here are the three new Mountain Dew flavors, information on their supporting nations and the fan-approved/co-created advertisements. The ads already appear online on Dewmocracy.com, but they’ll make their way to your television set beginning April 26.
Mountain Dew Distortion
Flavor: Lime Blasted DEW
Winning Advertising Agency: animaticmedia
Winning Designer: Ben Stone
Winning Color: Deep Green
Mountain Dew White Out
Flavor: Smooth Citrus DEW
Winning Advertising Agency: dewdadew
Winning Designer: Andre Zottolo
Winning Color: White Flash
Mountain Dew Typhoon
Flavor: Punch of Tropical DEW
Winning Advertising Agency: Crashtest productions
Winning Designer: Shanea Wisler
Winning Color: Red Cloud
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Tags: dewmocracy, facebook, MARKETING, mountain dew, social media, twitter
