Dive Brief:
- Mtn Dew, part of PepsiCo's Mountain Dew soft drink brand, is expanding its premium Label Series with two new flavors — Green and White — according to a company press release. The release of Mtn Dew Black Label last year was one of the brand's most successful ever.
- As part of the new products' launch, Mtn Dew will take over the Musicland Hotel in Palm Springs, Calif. for a free, two-day music festival called "Label Motel," running April 15-16. The rollout also coincides with the Coachella Music Festival.
- Other components of the campaign include a hotel room virtual reality (VR) experience that puts participants in a "classy" lounge party with a beat drop that actually drops out of a plane, as well as a merchandise collaboration with the New York-based social media firm Vfiles called 92264, featuring branded Hawaiian shirts, beach towels and bandanas.
Dive Insight:
Lining up marketing with a major event like Coachella potentially draws in Mountain Dew's target audience of engergized, party-going millennials, and the "Label Motel" experience shows how big-name brands with budgets to spare are focusing on curating massive, live product launches catered toward their most dedicated consumers. Such experiences not only act as potential revenue sources but also promote continued loyalty and, if successful, can take on a life of their own.
Putting a VR experience in the mix additionally provides some innovative, on-brand messaging opportunities, and the merchandise collaboration adds a fun, branded commerce element that's gaining more traction with marketers.
The VR "lounge" might appeal to the festival-going crowd for its tech novelty, but the merchandise element is interesting because it has an e-commerce component, being available, not just on-site, but with retailers and on Vfiles.com. Cheetos is another consumer brand dabbling in e-commerce marketing efforts, launching a luxury line around the holidays and, following the success of that, crowd-funding a spring collection with the help of Betabrand.
