24 Aug Mountain Dew: Facebook Fan Page Example in Detail #22
Continuing our 26 Facebook Fan Page Examples in Detail series, we take some time to review the Dew. As far as carbonated beverages go, Mountain Dew ranks fifth in both sales and Facebook Likes for soda brands. After looking at their page one thing’s for sure, you can’t accuse Mountain Dew of being inconsistent. For the past decade, Mountain Dew has stuck with a marketing strategy directed at youth culture, and it has yielded excellent results ever since. The soft drink company has applied the same strategy to Facebook. Has it worked? Read on to find out.
The Wall
How does the Dew do Facebook? Promotions, promotions, promotions! Mountain Dew gives its 7.2 million fans plenty of opportunities to score some swag. From wall-based promotions to custom apps, if the Dew can’t win fans over with its charming personality, they’ll give away free stuff instead. Targeting the 18- to 24-year-old demographic, Mountain Dew’s primary promotions are tie-ins with movies, music, skateboarding, extreme sports and the like. Recently, the brand heavily promoted The Dark Knight Rises.
From June 25 through July 10, eight out of 14 posts were devoted to the brand’s partnership with The Dark Knight Rises. Of the six non-Knight posts, three were dedicated to other partnerships. These included a tie-in with Sunoco offering fans a chance to win a year’s supply of Mountain Dew and Doritos, a chance to win a Mac Miller x Diamond Supply Co. hat through the Dew’s Green Label Sound , and Mountain Dew’s partnership with Lil Wayne to build a skateboard park. Posts tend to be centered around promotions or partnerships and rarely include questions that engage their fan base.
Discover Gold Tab
To help promote their new limited edition Johnson City Gold, Mountain Dew has created a special promotional tab for the malt-based soda. There you’ll find a video with details for a contest, which rewards fans with Johnson City Gold merch in exchange for photos. The promotion hasn’t started yet, but the tab is still lacking some punch. The embedded video explaining the promotion is way too small, especially with all the real estate present. And even though they have the words “Coming Soon,” a countdown clock would be a much better way of creating some excitement.
The DEWeezy Project Tab
Unveiled at SXSW, The DEWeezy Project is a partnership with Mountain Dew and Lil’ Wayne. The yearlong campaign features a series of Lil Wayne commercials and service projects that encourage fans to “Dew you.” For the first project, Mountain Dew built a skate boarding park in Austin, Texas. The latest project pairs the DEWeezy project with non-profit mentoring group, Stoked, to create the new Lil’ Wayne commercial. Through the Facebook app, fans can submit concepts and storyboard ideas for the commercial and will have an opportunity to help produce the commercial.
The DEW Crew
On the Dew Crew tab, fans can become a part of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s NASCAR team. Here, they can go behind the scenes with the stock car racing star, vote on favorite photos, participate in polls and earn points by sharing their activity on their Facebook pages. By joining the crew, fans have a chance to win Earnhardt’s fire suit from Daytona.
From the screenshots above, you might have noticed the scroll bars surrounding the tabs. This is because when they were developing these tabs, they forgot to include a little line of code that hides these bars. It’s a small detail, but one that is definitely noticeable and makes tabs look sloppy. The layout of the Johnson City Gold tab above is much better.
Dew Fan Pride and Dew Art
The remaining tabs are dedicated to Mountain Dew’s fans. On the Dew Fan Pride tab, fans can customize their Facebook profiles to show off their affinity for the brand, while on Dew Art, fans can caption Don Pendleton Mountain Dew illustrations.
Timeline
Unfortunately, there isn’t much to talk about here. Despite being one of the iconic soda brands, Mountain Dew doesn’t make much use of its timeline, limiting it to sponsorships, its founding and the introduction of Diet Mountain Dew in 1988. The soda maker could benefit from developing its timeline with pictures of old ad campaigns and screenshots of old commercials. Showing off some old school Mountain Dew would be a great way to generate engagement.
Fan Engagement Comparison: Mountain Dew vs. Sprite
As far as taste goes, Mountain Dew’s market competitors are Mello Yello and now Sun Drop; however, neither has a significant presence on Facebook. Mello Yello has close to 170,000 Likes, while Sun Drop has steadily grown to 1.8 million Likes in the past two years. Although Mountain Dew sells more soda than Sprite, at 9.2 million Likes, Sprite is more popular on Facebook. Mountain Dew saw its highest fan engagement around the announcement of Phase 1 of the DEWeezy Project with a 0.10% engagement rate, while Sprite’s 0.13% engagement rate surrounded a cosmetically altered Sprite bottle.
Overall, Mountain Dew fans are slightly more engaged than Sprite fans. Unfortunately, Mountain Dew doesn’t take many risks on its Facebook page, instead sticking to the tactics that has kept it among the top five soda brands. As a brand that banks on youth culture, it would be nice to see content that goes beyond the traditional approach and becomes as extreme as the sports Mountain Dew sponsors. All-in-all, they do a great job of speaking to their base. However, polishing up their tabs, creating a more robust timeline, and taking more risks could take their Facebook page to the next level.
Do you do the Dew? What are your thoughts on Mountain Dews Facebook page? Share your comments below.