DEWmocracy 2
Jordan Scholefield
07/11/2011
Current Topics & Best Practices
Bernard Gauthier

Mountain Dew and DEWmocracy
Since 1948, Mountain Dew has been selling their special brand of soda pop to the people of the United States and beyond. Known for its green packaging and odd, almost glow-in-the-dark like colour, it is especially popular among today’s youth. The special fusion of citrus flavours was purchased by Pepsi-Cola Corp. from its original creators in
1964, which lead to a major increase in brand awareness and circulation thanks to the resources available by the soda market giant.
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As of 2009, Mountain Dew held the fourth spot in overall market share at 6.7%, while Diet Mountain Dew held the eighth spot at
1.9%.
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While many of the top 10 market share soda brands rely on a brand loyalty approach that is reinforced by snappy advertising to make profits, Mountain Dew has found success in a consumer driven approach that creates brand loyalty through interaction. Their approach relies heavily on consumers actually interacting with the product, through many different mediums, as its main form of advertising. The brands biggest advertising successes are a result of their usages of social media. Mountain Dew is a major user of social media; realizing that they best way to build brand loyalty with their target market is to interact with them instead of advertising at them. This realization has lead to many social media campaigns that have allowed consumers to directly interact with the brand and therefore advertise the product. One of their most successful campaigns, one which is actually running at this very moment, is their Call of Duty campaign.
3 This campaign partners with the popular video game franchise Call of Duty by offering special perks in the game, along with prizes, to those who purchase either
1 http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/16/business/coca-cola-in-direct-attack-on-pepsi-to-introducechallenger-to-mountain-dew.html?src=pm
2 http://www.beverage-digest.com/pdf/top-10_2010.pdf
3 http://www.mountaindew.com/

Mountain Dew or Doritos products. This is a great example not only of how Mountain
Dew is breaking ground by including video games in their marketing tactics, but also about how they use Twitter to promote the campaign. They encourage people to tweet about the campaign and Mountain Dew displays some of the tweets on a scrolling bar across the bottom of their web page.
However, Mountain Dew’s most successful campaign, arguably one of the most successful in the world, is their DEWmocracy campaign. In 2007, the first DEWmocracy campaign began.
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This worked on the premise of choice, as Mountain Dew released three new flavours. Entitled Mountain Dew Supernova, Voltage and Revolution, it was up to the fans to vote for which of these flavours became a part of the Mountain Dew collection. This campaign was a huge success, in which both loyal and new customers participated in the voting process. However, the same could not be said upon the release of the winning flavour. Many consumers wanted more choice and to able to taste the flavours before hand. Mountain Dew clearly listened, as they released DEWmocracy 2.
DEWmocracy 2 was exactly what the consumer was looking for. Now spreading across multiple mediums, including Facebook and Youtube, DEWmocracy 2 allowed consumers to send in videos to 12seconds.tv in hopes of becoming one of fifty consumers picked to taste test seven prototype flavours.
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After narrowing the taste test down to three, Mountain Dew released those flavours into stores and gave them out during special
Dew events, and once again used a voting process to pick the winner. Fans were able to pick the design of the packaging, ad campaign and the name.
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After almost a month of voting, the flavour ‘White Out’ was declared the winner. This campaign was brilliant in
4 http://www.bevreview.com/2010/04/21/mountain-dew-dewmocracy-2-campaign/
5 http://mashable.com/2009/07/18/mountain-dew-crowdsourcing/
6 http://mashable.com/2009/07/18/mountain-dew-crowdsourcing/

how it opened up Mountain Dew to discussion in the social media realm. People would hash tag the flavours on Twitter, create Facebook groups dedicated to certain flavours and publish videos on Youtube relating to the contest. The ability to taste the flavours and discuss them online made Mountain Dew’s brand awareness soar to new heights.
Goals of DEWmocracy 2
In an interview with Beverage World magazine, Mountain Dew’s director of marketing, Brett O’ Brien, discussed what the main goals for DEWmocracy 2 were.
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He first states that they wanted to “engage in a direct dialogue with our consumers”. This clearly shows that they were looking to sell the brand and the lifestyle more than the physical product itself. The second goal of the campaign was to be “as transparent as possible every step of the way as they could”. This shows that they were truly interested in letting the consumer choose the outcome of the campaign.
These goals, combined with Mountain Dew’s handling and execution of the campaign, make it easy to see that their true goal was to build brand awareness and increase overall sales for the brand. By using social media as the main medium in which to communicate with fans, Mountain Dew was able to create a dialogue between the brand and the consumer. But more importantly social media allowed the consumers to interact with each other. This interaction is what drove the brand awareness goal for
Mountain Dew. As consumers discussed the choices and their opinions on Twitter, the hash tags that were created, such as #Whiteout, began trending. This led to the Twitter community picking up on the contest, therefore spreading the Mountain Dew brand. Also, the Facebook groups that were created to promote each flavour were shared all across the
7 http://www.beverageworld.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=37525:dewmocracy-2continues-to-buzz&catid=34

site. This lead to more growth, both for the new flavours and the core brand. Also, the way in which the contest worked played perfectly into increasing sales for the brand. By releasing the three flavours into the market for tasting, this lead to a consumer ideal in which the three flavours must all be purchased and tasted so they can pick a favourite.
This leads to at least a sale for each flavour, with highly possible follow up sales thanks to the tasting of the product. This strategy allows Mountain Dew to drive up sales in the quarter while increasing brand awareness at the same time.
To the general public, the goals of DEWmocracy 2 were to create a contest that would allow their fans to vote for almost anything relating to the new flavours. However, the true main goal of the contest was in fact to increase brand awareness for Mountain
Dew, increase sales and be the ultimate advertising campaign for which ever winner came from the contest.
Target Market
In looking at the advertising campaign for DEWmocracy 2, it is clear that
Mountain Dew focused on a target market between about 16 – 30 years old, mostly in the male demographic. Mountain Dew, as a brand, attaches itself to extreme-sports events like the Dew Tour.
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This ties into all Mountain Dew advertising, there by setting up the brand to appeal to a young adult target market. They have no preference on ethnicity or income, but simply want to appeal to their target demographic by using social media as their main advertising tool.
A clear indicator of this is the usage of the character J.B. Smoove and the advertising campaign that was used to promote the DEWmocracy 2 winner, ‘White Out’.
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8 http://www.allisports.com/dew-tour
9 http://www.mountaindew.com/#/promos/jbsmoove.php

A majority of the people used in the focus group commercials fit the target market described above. The character discusses random scenarios that may or may not directly involve White Out. However, all of them are funny and are written in a way that attempts to get a laugh out of the consumer. Also, the posting of the videos on Youtube play into the age demographic that Mountain Dew is attempting to reach.
The commercial for the DEWmocracy competition shows further evidence of
Mountain Dew’s target market. The “Here’s to the Loud” commercial shows people of the 16-30 age group, as well as those people interacting with extreme sports objects, such as a BMX bike and skateboard.
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Also, the clothing used in the commercial is popular among athletes in extreme sports.
Finally, the usage of social media as one of their main mediums for the
DEWmocracy 2 campaign clearly coincides with the current practices of their target market. By targeting the campaign through social media devices they are able to interact directly with their target market as well as spreading brand awareness though the desired demographic. Social Mediums such as Facebook and Twitter are sites that breed discussion and the sharing of content, therefore making the DEWmocracy message easier to spread among the target demographic. This is a two-fold tactic that was, and is, incredibly effective for Mountain Dew.
Mountain Dew’s target market is clearly seen through out their advertising, sponsorship and medium choices. Advertising for the DEWmocracy campaigns were no different. The usage of clothing, activities and actors that all align with their desired target market and brand identity allow for a clear picture of who their target market is.
10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l657LxHbJB0&feature=related

DEWmocracy 2 and the usage of Social Media
DEWmocracy 2 used social media masterfully during its campaign. Mountain
Dew encouraged the usage of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube so that people who were like minded in their choices could interact.
Facebook was one of the ways in which DEWmocracy was able to get its message out. Facebook’s main purpose during the DEWmocracy campaign was to be the main social media site in which people could get together and discuss their choices and flavours. Each Facebook group that was made had the goal of bringing together fans with like minded goals (ie. Choice of Flavour) in one place, so they could discuss and plan how they would advertise and share their goal. The pages for Mountain Dew White Out are a great example of how people got together to discuss and market the flavour.
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If you look at the Discussion section for the group, you can see a few topics where people participated in discussions that were geared toward winning the contest. Also, you’ll notice that multiple pages were made in support of each product aside from the official pages. This easily increased the ability to share groups among the site, as the diversity of pages made reached entirely different sets of friends.
In fact, the best way to see how successful the DEWmocracy 2 websites were is to look at it in its current state. The ‘White Out’ page is still active, as can be seen by its
65,734 likes and 890 current discussions as of this writing. People are still writing on the walls about currently drinking the drink, as well as Mountain Dew writing on the page thanking fans for their support. There is even a discussion about the possibilities of a
DEWmocracy 3 coming in 2012 and the potential flavours and designs that could be available with the campaign.
11 http://www.facebook.com/MountainDewWhiteOut?sk=info

Facebook made it so that each group supporting their flavours could get together in one place and discuss the way in which they should go about supporting the flavour.
Facebook was the best choice for fans to be able interact with other fans in hopes of furthering their flavour choice.
The DEWmocracy campaign used Youtube as more of a sound board for the flavours rather than an out right marketing tool. While Mountain Dew did post the commercials for the campaign on Youtube in hopes that they would be shared,
DEWmocracy 2 wanted Youtube to be used for drinking the products and posting your opinion of them in video format. Doing this would allow these videos to be uploaded to other media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as create discussion in the comments section of the videos. Typing DEWmocracy 2010 into the Youtube search box, you can see just how many videos were posted that related to this topic.
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The first video that comes up under the most viewed tab has almost 20,000 views. This channel is known as “thecreativeone”, in which the up loader tastes drinks and then gives his opinion on the product. His three videos, tasting each of the DEWmocracy 2 flavours, combine to total over 74,000 views.
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That’s just one person! Subsequent videos under the search each top one thousand views, with many more currently in the hundreds of views.
Looking on Mountain Dew’s Youtube channel shows many of the same results as the Youtube search did. The DEWmocracy commercials each pulled in views in the thousands, which is obviously great for brand exposure.
14 The total views for the
DEWmocracy commercials totalled over 100,000 views! With sharing and discussion
12 http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=dewmocracy+2010&search_sort=vi deo_view_count&suggested_categories=22%2C24%2C19%2C23&uni=3
13 http://www.youtube.com/user/thecreativeone
14 http://www.youtube.com/user/MountainDew#p/c/AD5ECE5B95D9DCA7

through Youtube amongst social media platforms being one of the main goals of the campaign, it was easy to see how successful DEWmocracy 2 was in sharing the message of the fans.
Twitter was arguably the perfect medium for the DEWmocracy 2 campaign.
Twitter gave fans the ability to discuss the flavours, show their support, post content from other sites (Facebook and Youtube) and give updates on the campaign all in one place.
The Twitter feeds for these flavours were created by the fans, not Mountain Dew. While this did lead to less overall followers due to the lack of official company feeds, this allowed fans to create feeds in their own vision. This led to more individuality and creativity from the fans in designing and maintaining the content of their feeds. One of the best feeds was the one created for the flavour White Out (@493WhiteOut), as the fans did a great job of updating the feed with content during the competition.
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This feed was made supporting the name choice for the flavour, showing how the early adopters and trendsetters were active in pushing the flavour into the Twitter community. The feed was created for the name choosing process, as the feed with the most followers was the winner. During the voting process, you can see how the fans used tweets and hash tags like #DEWmocracy to promote the name ‘White Out’. Also, tweets were posted on
Facebook through Twitter updates, therefore expanding the message of the tweets into
Facebook. Upon winning the contest, this lead to the Twitter feed @MtnDewWhiteOut
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, which was the chosen name for the flavour. There advocating for the drink now continued into the new Twitter feed and the fans continued to advocate for this product.
The feed currently has 4,658 followers more than a year after the campaign, but at the
15 https://twitter.com/#!/493WhiteOut
16 https://twitter.com/#!/MtnDewWhiteOut

time of the campaign was between 8,000-10,000 followers. The new feed focused on advocating for the flavour itself, encouraging people to try the flavour, post pictures of themselves with one and use the hash tag #Whiteout.
Twitter was the most effective piece of social media used thanks to its versatility and the use of the fans to vote through following certain feeds. The way other social media sights were used together was what made the campaign special. Using Facebook to create groups about the flavours and names, which would help fans get together to plan how they would advertise and where they would vote on Twitter was a brilliant move of social media integration. Also, the fans using Youtube to post videos on the other sites helped increase the legitimacy of opinions among the other participating fans as people could physically advocate and explain their choices. Also, the posting of Twitter as statuses allowed for people to advocate the Twitter vote on Facebook as well, making the integration of the sites key in the voting process. All in all, the way in which
DEWmocracy 2 used multiple social media sights to spread its campaign was very effective.
How effective was DEWmocracy 2?
While the number of followers, likes, views and subscribers from the social media sites listed above certainly show that the campaign was successful, the main goal the campaign was to increase brand awareness and sales. Figures released by Pepsi-Corp. state that the campaign pulled in a combined 2 million votes and increased Mountain
Dew’s Facebook fans by a total of 800,000.
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This shows a major increase in brand awareness thanks to the campaign.
17 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/130980/

While there are no metrics released by Pepsi-Corp. that specifically discuss how the DEWmocracy 2 campaign directly attributed to sales, looking at the Quarter 2 numbers for Pepsi Corp. show that the campaign did have an affect on the company.
Pepsi-Corp. reported a 112% increase in revenue in the 2 nd
quarter of 2010, clearly showing a growth in the market from the year before.
18 Considering Mountain Dew’s
DEWmocracy campaign was the main campaign run in that quarter, it can be correlated that the campaign along with other brands under the Pepsi-Corp. label led to a very successful quarter. Both Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew’s market share in 2010 again increased by 0.1 %, from 6.7% to 6.8% and from 1.9% to 2.0%, showing a steady increase from the year before.
19 Any positive movement in the soda market is considered a success as it is incredibly crowded, therefore making it extremely difficult to take away any market share from competing brands. Also impressive is the growth in volume from
2009, as Mountain Dew increased its volume output by 0.5% and Diet Mountain Dew increased its volume output by 5.8%. This shows that while they hadn’t moved to a large distance in market share they did move more products, meaning that there was an increase in brand awareness as well as demand for Mountain Dew.
The DEWmocracy 2 campaign was considered a success by both Pepsi-Corp. and the media alike, with many websites and magazines praising the campaign for its freedom of choice and interactivity among its fans. The campaign was extremely transparent, allowing fans the utmost in choice. However, that could also be its greatest downfall in the future. Considering its usage of nearly all major social media mediums, the ability to grow is hampered by the lack of other social media sites available. One possible way to
18 http://www.pepsico.com/Download/PEP_Q210_Webdeck_FINAL.pdf
19 http://www.beverage-digest.com/pdf/top-10_2011.pdf

freshen up the DEWmocracy campaign would be using social media in much of the same way, but create apps that would appeal to users of tablets and smart phones. With those pieces of hardware being the latest major improvements in the technology market, combining them with current mediums of social media could greatly improve the interactivity of a DEWmocracy 3 campaign.

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