A lot of chatter has been going on about Pepsi and their DEWmocracy campaign that they’ve been working on for the last few years, bringing out new flavors of Mountain Dew and involving consumers along every step
in the process. Mashable has a good round up of what the company is doing for the Mountain Dew brand during this round of DEWmocracy, and the news is made even more interesting by the fact that the beverage giant is not going to be taking part in any Super Bowl ads this year.
Most are touting this whole crowd-sourcing business as a major win for Pepsi- including the consumer somewhat in R&D, market testing, product naming, etc… But I can’t help but think this smacks of desperation to “be cool” in the social media space- the dorky kid asking out the hot girl to the prom, even though he’s wearing a tuxedo-shirt and didn’t even remember to bring a corsage.
According to Mashable, the DEWmocracy site attracted almost half a million votes in early 2009 during the creation of the Voltage flavor of MD. That’s cool and all… but where is Voltage now? Where will any of these flavors be in a few years?
Instead of crowdsourcing to come up with totally brand new ideas that probably don’t have that great a success rate, how about pulling a Dominos and improving on what you already have? The most successful campaign in my point of view from Pepsi lately has been the Throwback series of beverages- Besides the comforting sight of nostalgic packaging and *thank goodness* no HFCS- it’s a nice step back into a territory where the consumers are already familiar with the product and not expected to take an uninsured leap into the proverbial unknown.
I’m big on simplicity. I’m big on focusing on your core strengths and showing those off and constantly improving those to the fullest extent. Coming up with ridiculous off shoots of secondary brands just doesn’t seem like it makes a whole lot of sense when it comes to making a lasting impact with your consumers. (Also, I guess I should point out I just really hate the taste of Mountain Dew.)
Its not that I don’t love social media. I do. I really do. It just seems to me like big brands are taking giant steps too early, and pouring tons of dinero into something that may not really put the R in ROI. What do you think?
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