Mountain Dew's breakout sparkling juice drink, Mtn Dew Kickstart, was entering its third year. Although the product had been successful in driving sales for the brand, VaynerMedia needed to quickly build awareness for two new flavors with a new value proposition and packaging. The brand chose to make Super Bowl weekend the focal point of the marketing campaign to take advantage of the event's massive scale.
The digital team's assignment was to raise awareness and increase sales of Mtn Dew Kickstart by conveying a relevant message to millennial males while complimenting a TV commercial, which would air in the Super Bowl pregame slot.
The linchpin to the digital component of the equation was to grab the attention of our target audience (18-25 year old males) during the busiest marketing time of the year. Then, with other marketing messages coming at them from all directions, we needed to keep them interested and engaged long enough to drive brand relevancy and raise awareness of Mtn Dew Kickstart's two new flavors.
Within the last year Snapchat's user base experienced exponential growth. We recognized that millennial males became increasingly familiar with the platform through regular active use. Paying attention to this underused marketing channel, we got a leg up on how real people were behaving and learned that our target audience was screenshotting what they saw on Snapchat in order to share it and talk about it on Twitter.
Capitalizing on this behavior, Mountain Dew came up with a Snapchat activation that specifically catered to this key consumer behavior. We turned the typical passive consumption model of Snapchat stories upside down and created a first of its kind choose-your-adventure Snapchat story that required our audience to help us write the story.
Social media superstars Jerry Purpdrank and David Lopez drove their fans to add Mountain Dew on Snapchat reaching thousands within our demographic in the process. Then, they took over Mountain Dew's Snapchat channel and asked fans to help them throw the ultimate Super Bowl pre-party. The influencers put every aspect of the party in the fans' hands, from the theme, to the decorations, to their mode of transportation. Fans 'directed' the story through voting by screenshotting choices and sharing them on Twitter. Continued conversation on Twitter throughout the activation made the experience interactive for the user and earned Mountain Dew additional distribution along the way.
Then came the difficult part: creating the fan-chosen story quickly enough to keep viewers interested. Thanks to a mix of the improvisational skills of the talent, high-level internal collaboration, and Snapchat's native doodle feature, the story was Mountain Dew's most successful Snapchat activation to date.
Mountain Dew didn't just rely on our influencers for scale - we turned to Facebook and Twitter where robust advertising products allowed us to reach our target audience and drive them to Snapchat. We even tested Snapchat's brand new Snapcode functionality in ads to make the experience simple for our audience.
The story lived for 24 hours on Mountain Dew's Snapchat channel. The campaign was an all-new way of harnessing Snapchat and fan participation in real-time, and the perfect way to kick off Super Bowl weekend.
