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( .. /resources/uploads/case studies/case-study- icon-dewmocracy.jpg) Introduction On December 29, 2008 the soft drink marketing team at PepsiCo Inc. nervously launched a new flavor of their nearly 70-year-old caffeinated soft drink brand, Mountain Dew. The new flavor was called Voltage and it contained ginseng and had an apparently pleasant raspberry-citrus taste. This product line extension was not like any they had done before, because this new flavor was not the result of months of detailed internal research and development, market research, focus groups, market testing. Instead, this flavor was chosen by the brand's fans as part of a crowdsourcing program that PepsiCo had been running since 2007. After over a year the winning flavor had been chosen and was being officially launched into the marketplace. This excited the marketing team, but also made them nervous. On the one hand, why wouldn't this product be successful? After all, the very people who PepsiCo hoped would buy it-the brand's passionate fans-had developed it. On the other hand, this entire crowdsourcing program was a gamble. Never before had PepsiCo entrusted consumers to make key product decisions for one of its major brands (which accounts for approximately 20% of PepsiCo's US beverage sales and has in recent years outperformed Pepsi Cola[1]). After a long, multi-stage crowdsourcing program in which consumers elected new flavors, came up with colors, names, and packaging designs, chose advertisements, and eventually voted on three finalist flavors (Supernova and Revolution were the other two alongside Voltage), the marketing team hoped that their new flavor would sell. They also hoped that this new social approach to product development that openly allowed consumers to participate in decision making that would usually be done internally would pay off with stronger brand loyalty, advocacy, and engagement over time. If these brand-level benefits were achieved then maybe a crowdsourcing approach to product development, particularly for line extensions, could be used again.
Mountain Dew's History and Positioning Mountain Dew is a carbonated soft drink brand owned and produced by PepsiCo. It was invented in 1940 by two brothers in Tennessee, Barney and Allen Hartman, the formula was updated in 1958, and the brand was purchased by the then Pepsi-Cola Company (now PepsiCo Inc.) in 1964. The original drink invented by the Hartman brothers was intended for use as a mixer for hard liquor (Tennessee mountain-made "moonshine" specifically). In 1973 the Pepsi-Cola Company rebranded Mountain Dew and completely overhauled the brand's image. Instead of having a "hillbilly" look and feel they updated it so that it would appeal to a younger and more physically active consumer. Up until 1988 Mountain Dew