Every Monday, the BE Blog posts about some fun marketing idea, online and off. If you have an idea, let me know. You might be featured!
I’m always impressed when a large company can get a lot of people to vote on something. Voter turnout at elections is so small yet Cottonelle can get thousands of people to vote in the ‘over versus under’ toilet paper debate. Really?!
In any case, over the weekend after spending a lot of hours in a car with Chef Dan, I found out that Mountain Dew is having a vote about a new flavor. Dan’s chosen flavor didn’t win a few years ago and this year, he was going to try them all so he could make an informed decision. His boss is doing the same.
The convenience stores we stopped at were selling Mountain Dew 2 bottles for $2. Lowering the price is certainly a good idea to get people to try new things.
Leading up to this, Mountain Dew had a contest for regular people to create commercials related to the ‘Dewmocracy’, allowing fans to interact with the brand. The hope was to ‘harness the collective intelligence of our uber-fans’. Well put, Mountain Dew Marketing Director Brett O’Brien.
Also good idea to make the commercials only 12 seconds. Having to make something too long would have definitely lessened the amount of participation.
So Dew became not only about the collective but about regular people/aspiring artists. And for a global brand to seem like it’s focusing on individuals is just an overall good idea. Certainly not something you’d expect from a big, normally faceless company.
Can smaller companies do something similar? Absolutely. Asking customers what they want in a structured way is not only a good idea but gives them a natural ‘call to action’ (a fancy way of saying something to do) on your company website/social media site.
Dan’s rooting for ‘White Out.’ I guess time will tell which flavor will win…