Following its birth as an exclusive Taco Bell flavor in 2004, Mountain Dew Baja Blast quickly became one of the restaurant's most in-demand fountain beverages. For years, DEW had heard pleas from fans, begging that Mountain Dew Baja Blast be sold at retail. In 2014, DEW knew it wanted to grant that wish to fans with a limited time offer—but how to do so in a way that would deliver the good news to fans at scale and reward their devotion?
To bring the idea to life, DEW used Twitter's search feature to comb through an archive of more than 30,000 tweets from the past five years for Mountain Dew Baja Blast mentions. The brand then hand-selected the 500 most ardent product requests and responded to these fans individually, incorporating personalized elements from their original requests. Fans proudly shared these interactions across Twitter as badges of pride.
During the campaign Baja Blast trended twice nationally (without a sponsored Twitter trend), with an 83% engagement rate. The "Baja Blast from the Past" activation for fans garnered the most retweets on a piece of content in 2014 and immense gratitude from The DEW Nation.
Mountain Dew Baja Blast was born as a Taco Bell exclusive a decade ago, available only at restaurant fountains. It was an immediate fan favorite, becoming the fastest growing Taco Bell flavor.
The fans, 18-24 year old male zealots who loved the flavor so much that they created bootleg versions in their homes in order to get a fix, had been known to go to Taco Bell with empty gallon jugs to try to fill them so they could enjoy the soda beyond the walls of the restaurant. DEW listened to these loyal fans and for the first time in 2014, Mountain Dew Baja Blast was available in bottles and cans for a limited time.
Over the years, DEW noticed a steady flow of comments on Twitter lamenting the fact that Mountain Dew Baja Blast was available ONLY in Taco Bell fountains. DEW went back and analyzed five years worth of Mountain Dew Baja Blast related tweets. It turned out that more than 30,000 people had expressed similar sentiments over the years. Fans tweeted not only to Mountain Dew, but also to all of their followers, wishing for the product to be available at retail stores. The insight that fans were clamoring for the product over a five year period triggered the big idea that DEW would unearth their requests and respond as part of "Baja Blast from the Past."
Mountain Dew embarked on "Baja Blast From the Past" with specific goals, including reaching a national audience via Twitter to help stimulate product sales, selling out of inventory during the LTO period, and showing Baja Blast fans on Twitter that DEW heard their pleas to bring the product to stores. Last, the brand needed to harness the passion of its super fans and activate them to act as ambassadors.
The "Baja Blast from the Past" campaign set out to engage avid Mountain Dew Baja Blast fans and a national audience - and accomplished both goals. Pre-campaign, DEW aimed to have Baja Blast trend nationally on Twitter once. In fact, during the campaign, Baja Blast trended two separate times, outperforming expectations and competing and winning on a national stage. The campaign garnered more than 5 million impressions during the week preceding Baja Blast's in-store launch, exceeding the KPI goal of 750,000 impressions by 583%.
Eight out of every 105 response tweets were engaged with, exceeding Mountain Dew's overall engagement goal by 73%. Fans were excited about the launch of the product and extremely appreciative that we responded to their tweets from so long ago. Fans retweeted DEW's public responses as well as their personalized one-on-one engagements (i.e. followers of those who received direct responses from DEW retweeted those responses to their own communities). Over the course of the campaign, DEW garnered 8,313 retweets, 152% higher than the original KPI of 5,475.
All of this combined helped contribute to make Mountain Dew Baja Blast one of the biggest LTOs in DEW's history. Baja Blast sold out of all inventory well before the end of the scheduled LTO, with unprecedented sales velocities, and delivered 40% additional sales volume from the original brand KPI.
The "Baja Blast from the Past" campaign was a new approach to releasing a LTO beverage, which harnessed fans' enthusiasm and set the bar for future product launches and new releases. What "Baja Blast from the Past" demonstrated is that DEW had mastered the art of rallying fans to promote the brand with natural delight and enthusiasm--- to the point where they served as brand ambassadors, exciting a larger, broader body of consumers with their unbridled passion for the product and brand.
