Mountain Dew gives control to fans

PepsiCo's freewheeling Mountain Dew brand has become a platform for collaboration with serious fans. It's in keeping with PepsiCo's willingness to loosen control over its brands, as reflected in allowing consumers to create Super Bowl commercials for Doritos and decide how Pepsi will give away $20 million through the Pepsi Refresh Project.

Coca-Cola, meanwhile, regularly calls for input from its 5 million-plus Facebook fans.

But Mountain Dew may set the pace when it comes to using fans' brainpower.

The 12‐month DEWmocracy 2 project allows fans to guide a marketing campaign from start to finish. Mountain Dew has more than 4,000 "super fans" in what the company calls its Dew Labs. Since last year, competing teams have chosen flavors, voted on names for new drinks, spread the word on Twitter and Facebook, inspected commercials and organized stops for the sampling vehicles.

"It would be a lot simpler to just go to focus groups and decide which flavors to do," said Brett O'Brien, Mountain Dew's marketing director. But "it's a very old model to say that we can sit in our office and work with our agencies and find the best things to do with our products. The new model is, ‘let's do it together.' "

O'Brien said he wasn't surprised at the quality of the ideas coming from the Dew Lab members.

"A lot of people who drink Dew have really good heads on their shoulders," he said.

Since 1990, Mountain Dew's share of the U.S. carbonated soft drinks market rose from 3.9 percent to 6.7 percent, according to Beverage Digest. Diet Mountain Dew climbed from half a percentage point to 1.9 percent.

"Mountain Dew, year in, year out, has been one of the most successfully marketed brands in the U.S.," said John Sicher, editor of Beverage Digest. "Pepsi understands the Mountain Dew brand and the Mountain Dew consumer."