The people at social media marketing agency Mindjumpers, recently posted about an interesting campaign that really made a very good use of social media and co-creation.
You can read it below.
Soda company Mountain Dew understands that the best promotion comes from your already dedicated fans. With a Facebook Page with over 800,000 people connected to it, they chose to use it for launching the DEWmorcrazy campaign.
Creating ambassadors
The company roamed their social network to find the ultimate Mountain Dew fanatics to be involved in the DEWmocracy campaign: the product development for a new soda was totally crowdsourced to the fans.
50 people were selected to choose the soda’s flavor and they were sent a taste-test kit. They got the task to make a video of their taste-test that included seven potential flavors.
Three favorite soda flavors were elected and the testers were then divided into Flavor Nations; one nation for each flavor, together with participants from a DEW Lab.
Fan-driven marketing
Three new products had come to life but Mountain Dew didn’t stop there. They gave the Nations 100% responsibility to proceed with the launch of their new soda flavor. It included the final product development such as deciding its color, name and design, as well as the marketing and advertising procedure.
When voting for the color of the different sodas, people could attend a live streamed event on the Facebook Page. When someone voted for a certain color, a paint ball in that color was shot at a person shown in the live streamed video. People could see their interaction in action!
The Nations had to come up with a digital advertising plan for their soda. Mountain Dew invited agencies and individuals to do a YouTube pitch of their strategies and advertising skills for each Nation to choose them. Fans were then encouraged to vote for who they thought had the best skills to do a TV ad for the different flavors.
The soda flavors are now for purchase in America and the ads shown on TV. The Nations fight to market their flavor and gather their own community to compete against the others. Each nation has its own Facebook Page and Twitter account, which they use to get their word out and to encourage social media sharing and flavor voting. The most successful flavor will be a permanent product of the Mountain Dew assortment.
A case to learn from
The Mountain Dew campaign began in July 2007 when they let fans choose a taste for the next soda. More than 1 million people participated in the product creation and selection process.
This second updated version takes co-creation to a whole new level. Everything from taste to advertising is fan-approved and generated by consumers.
By letting the most dedicated fans become ambassadors, the company shows care and trust.
Mountain Dew gets passionate people to speak for them in a more trustworthy and creative way. They are likely one of the first companies to let their consumers play an active role in shaping and influencing the paid media planning and buying process.
Post by Sara Hansson, originally published here.
