What You Can Learn From: Mountain Dew

Mountain Dew is known for being an edgy brand, so when Pepsi-Cola was considering live marketing as part of the campaign to relaunch Diet Dew, everyone involved knew it would have to be big.

The company settled on a two-pronged approach. One element was a massive, one-day national sampling effort designed to get the entire Pepsi system energized about the relaunch. Pepsi got its own employees involved, sending more than 400 staffers from corporate and the company’s agency partners to New York City, where they distributed more than 200,000 cans of Diet Dew at 16 Manhattan locations during the morning rush. Pepsi bottlers also got involved in a big way, supporting local sampling efforts all over the country that ultimately distributed 2.3 million units. (An additional 500,000 samples were distributed at Wal-Mart stores, for a grand total of nearly three million cans.) By day’s end, more than 10,000 Pepsi employees had participated in the effort.

The other prong was a high-profile, high-energy nod to Mountain Dew’s strong affinity with action sports: The Diet Dew Rail Jam. The company set up a 30-foot high, 100-foot long snowboarding rail jam at Military Island in Times Square. Throughout the day, two teams of eight snowboarders rode the rails as emcees and djs provided commentary and music. Newly minted Olympic gold medalists Shaun White and Hannah Teter, both Dew endorsers, appeared (although neither performed). The spectacle drew coverage from Good Morning America and ESPN’s Cold Pizza in addition to local New York news outlets.