Marketing Splat #1 – Mountain Dew

[greeneagle]

Marketing Splat #1 – Mountain Dew

This is the first in a series of reviews on Marketing Campaigns launched by companies in quest of something different.

Mountain Dew (Soft Drink Beverage) has launched a new campaign where this crazed white guy with a 60s red afro is spending 90 days in the dark, in his home. He has covered his house with a tarp to block out all light, removed all light fixtures and stocked up on supplies.

In the video heavy site, without light from anything but the glare from his computer, he is all “pumped” about it!

About what? The message really doesn’t come through from the start!

Does anyone really want to try and pick out someone throughout a dark house in different rooms on video, for 90 days?

From the introductory video I viewed, the only relationship I can imagine is that maybe Mountain Dew has an overdose of caffeine!

It may develop a fan club, which is yet to be seen and if it became successful at all, it would be for the same dark reasons that…. No I can’t even go there… at least the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” had some cultural appeal at some level at the time.

It’s a good idea to “break out” from the rest of the crowd… but this one gets a big:

TWO THUMBS DOWN!

www.pitchblackexperiment.com

Ken

[JKomp]

Hmmm it appeals to the Dynamite fans and those types. I guess the obvious link is the whole pitch black thing, i dont think gimmicks require any stronger a link than that.
It could work. But then again, i dont think anything could ever convince me to drink that stuff.

[Tubby]

O.K. ............... So I get a good picture of their target market. (I am in not in it)

[nottheusual1]

Ken - I don't thinnk they care if we buy it. They are suffering from generational loss - the guys who've bought this stuff for the past 8 years have outgrown it and it's one of Pepsi's cash cows and its sales are flat. Here's the market share info just released for last year

http://www.beverage-digest.com/pdf/top-10_2005.pdf

This must be how to hook the next group?? It missed on me, too, but I don't drink the stuff, either. My 14yo son thought it was "pretty rad". Go figure.

This type of viral marketing, focused on narrower and narrower groups, has been made much easier by the Web - I'm sure we'll see more bizarro things, at least to us anyway, before the X-mas season is upon us.

[greeneagle]

nothteusual1,

Interesting report.

I wouldn't have thought that diet brands would be the only outperformers.

I wonder if that is influenced by the nation wide drive to move soft drinks out of the schools.

Ken

[nottheusual1]

From what I've read, beyond the simple sugar issue, the push in the schools has been towards non-carbonated beverages. I don't think the parents who got their shorts in a knot are paying much attention - the stuff they are sub'ing (and are the biggest sellers - like sports drinks) aren't all that much "healthier" for the kids, anyway - same sugars, just different names, and higher sodium, etc.

Good news (in a relative sort of way) for the school systems is that they are still getting the big sponsorship (read exclusivity) dollars - the distributors are the same for either product group and have a continued vested interest in keeping their machines/products in the hallways and cafeterias.

Caffeine doesn't belong in any school, IMHO, but the other non-carbonated / juice products don't engender the same brand loyalties. Juice tends to be juice.

Here's an article that explains more of the reasons we saw the numbers in that last link I posted:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...73/ai_n6362179

The analysis is pretty enlightening.

[JKomp]

"pretty rad" - 14 year olds still say that? ;p

[nottheusual1]

I had the same question.........

He might just have decided to speak, for a small second, something I could readily interpret.

Most of the time it sounds like Klingon to me.