The Brief

Mountain Dew, the fastest growing soft-drink brand in India, commands extreme loyalty and highest per-capita consumption amongst young Indian males. It sources more than 80% of its volumes from Northern India – a highly seasonal beverage market. Unfavorable winter (November – December) sale in North nosedives, dragging down Mountain Dew’s growth rate and market share with it. The objective was to ensure continuous sales and growth in winter by incentivizing brand loyalists to continue consumption despite adverse weather conditions.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

To give young males a compelling reason to buy, we sought a platform that is an Indian passion point – Bollywood. The opportunity arose with the impending release of Dhoom 3- an iconic movie franchise equivalent to “Fast and Furious” of Hollywood. The skip-a-heartbeat bike stunts in the movie converged neatly with the brand’s proposition of “Conquest of Fear”. A special edition Mountain Dew bottle rode on the movie plot of heist-chase-recovery to entice consumers to drink more, to recover stolen movie merchandise where one consumer with highest consumption would ride away with the BMW superbike featured in the movie.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

In the 4 weeks of the promo, the Mountain Dew consumer cum movie fan had guzzled a whopping 11 million special edition bottles of the product ensuring that brand Mountain Dew - • Beat the category growth rate by 1.3X over the previous year in Q4 2013. • Grew 8% faster during the promo period versus full year growth. • Increased market share in the category by a whopping 10% in Q4 2013. • The campaign trended twice on twitter in the activity months. • Total association derived a value of 2Mn USD with an ROI of more than 120%.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The Mountain Dew consumer is an avid gamer. His life revolves around challenging and winning amongst his friends. He lives out the brand philosophy of - adrenalin rush and the conquest of fear is what separates boys from men - in the virtual world everyday. We had to drive repeated consumption amongst loyalist in winter and hence we rode on this consumer insight to gamify the consumer promotion strongly linked to repeated consumption through the winter months.