We’ve got to hand it to Mountain Dew. They’re trying so hard to do social media right—especially when it comes to listening to their customer base and soliciting creative insights from the people who actually love their products. If there was a direct relationship between efforts and results, someone in the Mountain Dew PR team would be getting top honors right about now.
But something’s not working quite right. Mountain Dew was searching for a name for their new green-apple flavored soda. They turned to the masses, and the masses responded—not always a guaranteed thing in this world! Unfortunately, the masses didn’t respond with really brilliant, insightful, sales-generating names for the soon-t0-be-debuted beverage.
Nope. That’s not what they did at all. Product names were generated, but they were names like “Gushing Grannies” and “Granny Squirt.” These names are far more likely to produce general hilarity among the 12-24 year old set than they are to drive sales.
Mountain Dew, a brand that has positioned itself overtly as edgy and irreverent, backed away from the campaign faster than you can get the mental image generated by “Gushing Grannies” out of your mind. Was that the right response? We’ll come back to that. But first things first. Let’s ask the big question first, which is did absolutely nobody at Mountain Dew see this coming?
Putting the Social in Social Media … Again
The very first step to successful engagement on social media is knowing your customer base. Social media is completely different than any other marketing vehicle. The dynamic, two-way nature of communication means that you can learn great things from your customers. But you also have no control over what they’re going to say. That being said, having a significant amount of relevant insight about who your customers are, what motivates them, and the parameters of their thought processes makes it easier to predict what they’re going to say. With that knowledge, you can be much more strategic about the questions you’re going to ask.
In other words, if you know you’re going to be talking to a group that enjoys humor that’s sharp, sarcastic, and bordering on the scatalogical, you might want to choose what products you have the crowds name a little more carefully. It’s not impossible to come up with an obnoxious joke relevant to an orange flavored beverage, but why give them an easy-to-twist concept that includes the word Granny to play with?
Should Mountain Dew have pulled the name-the-product contest? We’re not entirely sure that was the most brilliant approach ever. If you create a setting that invites your base’s humor, you can’t run away from it when you discover what makes them laugh. Who knows? A well timed endorsement from Betty White could have done wonders here, and demonstrated that the brand with the outrageous customers has an outrageous side of its own. This could have strengthened the bond between customer and brand.
What do you think? The urge to crowdsource creativity and solicit great ideas via social media isn’t going to go away anytime soon. What’s the best way to generate enthusiastic participation without coming down with a case of the Granny Squirts?