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Though the classic citrus flavor was brought over, PepsiCo made a few minor changes to the average in order to sell it in the Chinese market. 2 It’ll Tickle your Innards, and the History of How. In the early essays two brothers, Ally and Barney Hartman, created a lemon-lime soda that would be used as a mixer for hard-liquor. Called Mountain Dew after the Tennessee Moonshine, the brothers bottled and sold the beverage themselves till the middle of the sass’s when Try-Cities Beverage of Johnson City, TN, who had been interested in the drink since the middle of the sass’s.
Ally Hartman sells the first franchise of the drink to Charles Gordon in 1954, and Mountain Dew becomes commercially available the next year. That same year, Ally works out a deal with the Pepsi bottling plant in Fayetteville, NC where Mountain Dew beings to be bottled as well as Pepsi notices the potential of the small beverage. In late 1957, Ally helps buy the Tip Corporation, and 3 months later the single brother sells the brand to his new company.
Bill Bright, the new plant manager of Trim-Cities Beverage, begins to work with Bill Jones, the president of Tip Corporation, in 1959 to come up with a new flavor that will be called Trim-Cycles Lemonade, this flavor gets put into the Mountain Dew bottles In 1960 and replaces the 7-up flavor. The TIP Corporation follows this Idea In 1962, In an attempt to compete against a local brand, sunders cola. In May of that same year, Pepsi-Cola is granted its first franchise of the changed Mountain Dew flavor.
Two years later Pepsi buys the Tip Corporation, and with it the recipe for Mountain Dew. Pepsi starts to rebound the little drink that has over 174 different names. “Yahoo Mountain Dew… Ltd tickle your innards” becomes Pepsin’s ad campaign for Mountain Dew, featuring a hillbilly’s and his Klan. This logo and ad Is used until the sass’s, where the logo we know today of Mountain Dew was Introduced. The popular Do the Dew” slogan was added in 1993, when PepsiCo started the extreme advertising message with Mountain Dew.
In ’95 Mountain Dew begins to sponsor the X-Games, an extreme sports competition. The Mountain Dew brand extensions had only Just begun, since 2000 Mountain Dew has teamed up with Taco Bell, Microsoft Oxbow, 7-11, World of Warrant, Halo, . PepsiCo decided market Mountain Dew to males in the 18-30 range who are wanting to do the extreme, and though the drink only makes up 20% of Pepsin’s US beverage sales as of 2010 it made up 80% of the citrus soft drink market, including Sunders and Coke’s Mellon Yellow or Vault .
According to Jeff Mirrors, the exec UP- managing director for BAD Worldwide “If you trace every aspect of that brand over the last 25 years, what you’ll find is its positioning, its packaging, its formula have all been true to form. They haven’t deviated a lot. The image … Has been a real tight link with . Thirst-quenching … And with teens having an outrageous time with the brand outdoors. “. Extreme. That is the basis of Mountain Dew’s brand, if you are going to jump out of an airplane, drink a Mountain Dew. Need the energy to play your game or get that trick on your skateboard right, Drink Mountain Dew. This is the message
Pepsi has places with Mountain Dew since 1993, by sponsoring the ESP. X-Games and Dew Tour. In the last few years the brand has begun to place itself with gamers and computer users, in doing this specialty flavors of the product have come and gone on the market. Most recently this was called Mountain Dew Game Fuel. Game Fuel had a little more caffeine than original Mountain Dew. A different flavor was created for each new game that was sponsored, Halo 3 and 4, World of Warrant, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, and League of Legends The brand’s extension with x- Games, Dew Tour, and video games has grown over the years.
Recently brand ambassadors have been brought in to help grow the soft drink giant. In 2012, the ad campaign “this is how I dew’ featuring Oil Wayne, Jason Alden, Mac Miller, Dale Reinhardt Jar, Paul Rodriguez, Thesis Basely, and Danny Davis, went over well, but in 2012 Dew dropped Oil Wayne as a brand ambassador after a failed commercial with Tyler the Creator that played into racial stereotypes, this commercial also featured the goat from another popular commercial . The Oversea Effect Pepsi took Mountain Dew to China in 2009, taking with it the “extreme” marketing ideas with it. Its first plan was to use the same technique that Pepsi used when it first came into China. Mountain Dew created a contest where the winner becomes a star, this street dance contest combined western culture and Chinese heritage in a mix of sports, martial art, and urban and modern dance. Aimed at the same age group Mountain Dew had successfully targeted in the United States, males ages 18-24.
The starting slogan for the brand in China was “Live life on your own terms”. To further the marketing message, Pepsin’s interactive media marketing head, Mimi Von, had said the company would push its communications boundaries in China using street rural, extreme sports, and online games. In 2009 the brand also sponsored the Aka X-Games Asia and revealed a “Dew Mural” created by a local Chinese magazine that “blended popular Chinese graphics and characters with U. S. Street styles”.
The marketing for Mountain Dew China is handled by BAD Worldwide, Shanghai and Noncom Group, the marketing company used TV, Print, outdoor, and point of sale media. The first campaign in China was the “didn’t do the DeW’ campaign. Featuring seniors who are dressed as and doing the activities of the target audience, if gives an age, name, followed with “didn’t do the DeW’. Each ad was named after the character much as it had done with the U. S. Market with Halo, World of Warrant, and others. Only this time it was a Chinese based web game called Crossfire.
The ad features a player as they would be in the game appear in a convenience store, look at the cashier, grab a mountain dew, open the bottle like a grenade, drink it, and throw a grenade where it cuts to the game. 5 Future Growth of the Dew Market In China What makes Mountain Dew the number one selling caffeinated beverage in the world has a lot to do with its brand share. Mountain Dew lends its name to many products ND companies. The brand extensions include the following: Specialty Brand Products Taco Bell Baja Blast 7-Eleven Slurries Yum!
Brand Restaurants Pizza Hut KEF Taco Bell Other Fast Food Restaurants Burger King 2 Arabs Long John Silver’s/ A&W (formally with YON! ) Shameful Halos Iceboxes World of Warrant League of Legends Modern Warfare Other Extensions spike TV Auditors X-Games Dew Tour Green Label Sounded AMP Energy The Dark Knight Irises If more of these bands begin to enter the Chinese market perhaps the Mountain Dew brand will being to get more of a foothold into the Asian Market. Recently Burger King and PepsiCo entered a new agreement that allows Pepsi products to be sold in their stores in the Chinese market.
If Taco Bell and 7-Eleven could enter the market in Asia perhaps the brand could become better known in the country. KEF was the first 4,400. Pizza Hut brought western-style dining and pizza to China in 1990, and today there are 900+ in the country. Because Pizza Hut, KEF, and Taco Bell are owned by YON! Brand foods, it is only logical that Taco Bell will be the next of the company’s brands to enter the Chinese market. If that will be a success or failure has yet to be seen. Taco Bell once had three restaurants in China, however they were sit down style, instead of the classic fast food that is in America.
YUM opened a fast food style Taco Bell in China in 2010. For Mountain Dew to hold more of the soft drink market in China something needs to change, and Pepsi sees that. In the last few years Pepsi has left all of its production to franchisees in China, this leave research and development up to Pepsi. The reason China’s growth potential is massive can be easily seen. The average Chinese consumer buys a beverage 230 times yearly, compared to 1,500 in American consumers. Customers in China have not had the years of being raised on products that Americans have.
The customers there see Pepsin’s beverage and snack products as luxury items they only need to buy occasionally. While in the US market these items were sold to the parents and grand- parents of the current target audience. In the 2011 deal with Tingly-Assai, Pepsi sold them the rights to bottle all PepsiCo drink products. In 2010 the market share of China’s drink sector was: Coke 16% Ting’s PepsiCo 5. 5% One reason Coke and Pepsi have grown so slowly in the Chinese market has to do tit government regulation. Coke attempted to buy a Juice company in 2009, but the government rejected the deal because of antitrust concerns.
Meanwhile, in the U. S. Both the number one and two beverage companies are buying up their bottling plants in the U. S. , however they are both looking at franchises to bottle their beverages in China 6 Cultural Diversity The one thing that has worked over and over again for Mountain Dew is its brand extensions. Those with game companies, Taco Bell, 7-Eleven, and the X-Games. In order for Mountain Dew to extend its market share in China the brand needs to find ewe extensions that in China can lend its brand power to the soda.
By taking the idea of brand extensions and shares but creating new ambassadors for the product. The Chinese culture is obviously different that the American. So the games that are popular in the U. S. May not be popular in China, Just as the X-Games may not be extreme enough in China. Mountain Dew cannot force the Chinese culture to change, it instead needs to change itself to be better known in China. The problem that Mountain Dew has above anything else, is not that the Chinese people are afraid of the neon green bottle, but that they don’t know what it is.
On a forum, a user asked “Why do Chinese think Mountain Dew is the same as Sprite? “, then proceeded to tell the story of looking for a Sprite, and a the service person told them that Mountain Dew and Sprite are the same. We know it is not so much a distribution problem in China, as it is a promotion problem. The message that worked in the United States is extensions are not in China. The message that has worked for 20 years in the US doesn’t translate to China. So Mountain DeWs advertising needs a shake-up. 7 A DEW-Majorca China?
For Mountain Dew’s advertising to work in China it doesn’t Just need an advertising hake-up, in needs a new cooperation with products that are in China, products that are established and can lend its essence to help establish Mountain Dew. Extreme. The heart and soul of the soda. Taco Bell and Mountain Dew worked together to help bring the two into a larger market share. Mountain Dew lent its name to Halo, World of Warrant, League of Legends, and Modern Warfare when they each had new games releasing; but in turn those games also lent their name to Mountain Dew to help it break into the gamer market.
What games are popular with Chinese teenagers? What extreme sports or activities? Is there a fast food restaurant that is popular within the country that Mountain Dew can help create a new sub-culture with? The ROI for Mountain Dew would be huge if it could re-create what is has in the United States. However, because the brand is still unknown in the mainland the other company could be venturing into the unknown. 8 Summary Mountain Dew is established in the United States, it knows its consumer base. It has spent 20 years marketing towards them.
China, in all its untapped potential is unknown. Advertising is an American past-time, and in order for Dew to translate globally in needs to understand the Chinese consumer. A good marketing plan in a new market doesn’t Just take what was used in the past and replay it, it doesn’t completely translate. The issues at the heart of Mountain Dew China is not for a lack of trying, it Just needs to re-establish itself. Act as if the last 20 years of marketing in America never happened and find a way to convey itself to consumers in China.