Mountain Dew pushes new boundaries for advertising

(Marketingmagazine.com.my) – By Malati Siniah

When Mountain Dew rolled out it its ‘First to Dew It’ campaign, the brand wanted to embody the spirit of the campaign – ‘It doesn’t exist until you do it’ when launching its own marketing efforts for the brand campaign.

With its main focus on encouraging consumers to be as unique as their brand, Mountain Dew launched the campaign using various traditional media touchpoints.

A 4-part creative ad series ran on Harian Metro, interestingly enough part of the ads which ran in the newspaper were blank and would only ‘come to life’ once the reader did something with the jacket wrap.

Among the creative executions of the print ads included a blank ad which only appeared when consumers poured water on it and a plastic jacket wrap where readers were encouraged to create a new Mountain Dew logo on it.

Other creative executions include a blank radio ad on HitzFM, encouraging listeners to create their own radio ad for the brand and an empty billboard ad calling for people to be part of the creation of the first graffiti billboard ad.

Another first was the brand using a cement mixer wrapped in the Mountain Dew branding as part of its on-ground product sampling activities.

The campaign which is targeted at youths and young adults will run throughout the month of May untill early June.

Speaking to MARKETING, Santharuban T. Sundaram ,Group Marketing Manager, Permanis Sandilands said that Mountain Dew’s new global platform “it does not exist until you do it” was a perfect opportunity for the brand.

“Not only does it encourage consumers to challenge themselves and create new boundaries, it also challenged us to create new boundaries where ads are concerned.”

“We took some learning from our neon campaign last year and took it a notch up. In almost every platform that we advertised on, we ensured differentiation which would bring about disruption and recall.”

The feedback on the campaign so far has been positive, according to Ruban with customers, consumers and media partners showing support. He shared his hope for the campaign to drive both the sales and shares of Mountain Dew.

Agencies involved in the campaign include Dentsu Malaysia (Creative Agency), DANEmpower (Media Agency), NSTP and Astro Radio (Media Owner)