#MarketingEventsAwards 2021 highlight: Mountain Dew taps the youth to energise its brand

Mountain Dew might have established itself as a popular drink among gamers, however, the brand still had less recall compared with competitors in the market. 

Hence, parent company PepsiCo decided to activate youth as its “mouthpiece” using social media postings. Partnering with Geek Events, the company launched the PUBG Mobile: Dew Challenge which eventually saw it clinch silver for Best Consumer Event – Esports at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Events Awards 2021.

Challenge 

PepsiCo had been planning for the PUBG Mobile championship which it was playing host to in Singapore and Malaysia. The event came about as a collaboration between Mountain Dew and game developer PUBG Corporation. With the rise of esports, energy drinks have become increasingly prominent in competitive gaming because of their appeal to younger demographics.

To have a successful event, PepsiCo appointed Geek Events which was familiar with the scene in those two countries. While Mountain Dew has cultivated its popularity among gamers, the brand still held relatively less traction in contrast to its competitor drink giants.

Geek Events’ main challenge was to generate a strategy through which it could bring Mountain Dew into the mouths of the youths and hopefully activate their “mouthpiece” with social media postings of the brand among their circle. Its goal was to make use of its agility in the industry and highlight Mountain Dew as the leading energy drink in the esports community. 

The main objective of Geek Events was to generate hype around Mountain Dew using its in-depth esports knowledge as a weapon, specifically among the 13 to 30-year-old demographic. With this demographic being spoiled for choice, it wanted to adopt a strategy that would give PepsiCo more control over the customer experience, and help it build more one-to-one relationships with the esports fan base.

Strategy 

The energy drink industry is a booming business with several key names leading the pack. Mountain Dew is one of the many in this vastly competitive industry. To develop a strategic approach, Geek Events considered various factors – from market size, demographics, social media insights, and industry dynamics to suitability and interest. 

Its team of strategists worked closely with Mountain Dew and PUBG Corporation to determine the best possible approach to make this event a success. 

To begin its planning, Geek Events conducted several rounds of research to ensure optimum participation that would simultaneously drive sales. Through the data in its primary research, the team found that Mountain Dew was relatively less mainstream in its targeted audience, while carbonated energy drinks were a popular choice for the demographic.

Conversely, PUBG Mobile held a leading rank for the most played and watched mobile game in Malaysia and Singapore. Taking all these factors into consideration, brand activation was the best fit as the main strategy. The creative idea behind this strategy was to integrate QR codes into Mountain Dew bottle caps. These codes served as a starting point to register for the event.

The idea was born after intense brainstorming sessions on how Geek Events would be able to seamlessly drive sales and achieve a solid turnout. The next stage of registration would be conducted through a landing page in order for the team to keep track of traffic and interest in the event. For this reason, Geek Events developed a microsite, wherein it would create a landing page for users to register their teams.

To further drive entries and create an incentive to register, it offered perks and goodies to be collected after registration. The next step in the strategy was to get the word out. Geek Events had to come up with a social media strategy that would be suitable for the longevity of this event. For this purpose, Geek Events split the social media strategy into four segments: pre-event hype, ongoing tournament updates, grand finals hype, and post-event posts. 

Furthermore, the team also engaged prominent KOLs and influencers that were revered on the PUBG mobile scene. These influencers were vetted based on their engagement rates, relevance, authenticity, and audience quality. 

Through its intimate understanding of the target audience, and its perception of these respective influencers, the team was able to create an authentic integration of brand and game seamlessly. 

To efficiently and successfully reach a broader community network, Geek Events implemented the use of targeted parameters in its strategy. This was achieved by using Facebook ads, Google ads, and YouTube pre roll-outs, targeting people who had interest in the games, correlated to lookalike audiences which it created through data it collects across its network of websites and social media platforms. 

Last, it included EDM blasts for its strategy. Through its database of past esports event registrants and wait lists, Geek Events sent out email announcements to encourage participation. Furthermore, the team engaged mainstream media and esports media outlets through press release blasts to ensure the team reached out to its target audience through multiple touch-points, repeatedly. 

Execution 

The team started by designing and developing a microsite that served as the starting point to execute the registration stage of the strategy. Geek Events worked with PepsiCo to have the latter’s factory integrate a code into Mountain Dew bottle caps for registration.

It was crucial for Geek Events to run this part of its strategy efficiently because this was the main incentive to drive sales and increase participation. 

By purchasing a Mountain Dew bottle, participants would then have to go onto the microsite to key in the codes found in their bottle caps to register their teams. While the main idea was to integrate QR codes into bottle caps, the manufacturers were unable to insert QR codes into the caps, due to the dimensions of the bottle cap. As a solution, it had to come up with a quick fix, instead deciding to integrate unique combination codes.

Following the manufacturing of the codes in the bottle caps, the Mountain Dew bottles were then sent out to stores across Malaysia and Singapore. The next stage of the strategy included getting the word out, which was when the team conducted the full launch of the event.

During this launch, the team highlighted the prize pool of RM200,000 along with the exclusive opportunity to train at a boot camp alongside the Geek Fam PUBG Mobile team. This acted as a massive inducement to participate in the event since it was the top team on the Malaysia and Singapore scene. 

To enhance PepsiCo’s goal and ensure Geek Events exceeded expectations of participation and sales, it leveraged the use of social media. Its social media strategy was split into four main areas: hype and participation, update and sustenance, anticipation and promotion, and live-stream and post-event. 

To execute, regular channels such as Discord, Facebook, and YouTube were used to develop and promote the social media posts. The content created needed to generate hype and awareness for the challenge while simultaneously being cohesive with Mountain Dew and PUBG Corporation’s aesthetics, and at the same time, appealing to the target audience. 

To achieve a cohesive and effective visual aesthetic, all social media content featured attention-evoking visual overlays, representing the iconic green lighting effects of Mountain Dew. The team then tied this in with PUBG visual elements, which served as the overall visual motif for all content produced. 

Due to Mountain Dew’s brand association with gaming, there was confidence the target audience would be highly familiar with the visual theme. 

The first area of the social media strategy was executed at the launch stage of the event, which included generating buzz for the event and encouraging participation. This strategy worked as the event hit its target participation at breakneck speed, and exceeded PepsiCo’s target by over double the participants. After the event kicked-off, the team also constantly posted social media updates to keep audiences engaged.

A promotional video was then launched during the grand finals. Produced in-house, the video featured prominent PUBG Mobile influencers that were narrowed down after several rounds of intensive vetting in order to best reach the targeted demographics. The video featured influencers, DaddyHood, Gripex, and Agusrianzz. 

From the PR efforts to creating hype and interest for participation, Geek Events said its multi-pronged strategy ensured the esports community’s engagement all the way to the broadcast of the grand finals. To further build on maximum viewership, the team created an incentive in the form of in-game giveaways for fans who watched the Dew Challenge grand finals on live-stream. 

Results 

The campaign’s goal was to drive awareness, increase participation, expand the customer base, drive conversions, and ultimately, make Mountain Dew a prominent brand in its industry. Despite the backdrop of COVID-19 putting restrictions on movement, the team was able to successfully co-ordinate and execute between the Malaysia and Singapore markets. 

The event was an overall success. With teams having to complete their registration with the code, thousands of bottles of Mountain Dew were sold across Malaysia and Singapore. There was also an overwhelming response of more than 10,600 participants registered for the event, surpassing the target of 5,000 participants set by PepsiCo and Geek Events’ internal target of 10,000 participants.

The key objective of creating brand awareness was achieved through a massive increase in website traffic of more than 60,000 page views, along with an increase in social media engagement and significant participation. 

Moreover, throughout the duration of the event, Mountain Dew Malaysia and Singapore managed to garner heavy traffic to their pages. When looking at the total live-stream minutes watched as compared to the total live-stream minutes broadcast, the total time the event’s live-stream was watched hit 528,700 minutes for the eight hours of the broadcast.