Each weekday morning I wake up to my radio alarm set to some station that I’m not even really familiar with—I just know the reception is clear and it does the trick. So the other day after about my third press of the snooze button, the radio pops back on and in my half-sleep I faintly remember hearing something about a Mountain Dew campaign aimed at consumers to help the company decide its next soda flavor. But when I finally came to and realized I should blog about this! try to remember what I was hearing, the segment was over.
I literally spent the next few days trying to put the pieces together and today, I’ve figured it out: DEWmocracy. The concept behind this awesomely bad name is pretty simple. “The next Dew is all about you.” Essentially, fans of the soda (or people with nothing better to do with their time), helped pick the next potential flavors, the ad campaign the company would execute, as well as the drink’s name and package design. The list was narrowed to three possibilities, which will hit the shelves in the spring, then the public votes on their favorite to become the new permanent Mountain Dew soft drink—very American Idolesque, don’t you think?
Now I realize this whole campaign has been going on for quite some time (I know, where have I been?), but I’m always a big fan of marketing initiatives that really do a good job engaging their audiences and enabling us to affect a company’s product or operations. It makes us feel like they actually care about what we think and that they want to better serve us. And this Mountain Dew effort does exactly that.
Taking advantage of Facebook as a type of home base and ultimately running the campaign through social media was a great way to reach folks who are already prone to engaging in similar promotions and will likely become real cheerleaders (or “fans” in this case) for their flavor favs. Though I was never really a big Mountain Dew drinker (mainly because of that whole Yellow 5 rumor), it’ll be fun to watch this thing unfold.
