Mountain Dew Voltage recharges its fans

The strategy: Migrate from a community creative effort (collaborating with other Dew drinkers to design the next Dew flavor) to a singular brand immersion experience.

The goal: Inspire trial while rewarding consumers for interactions.

The Dew target is the true multimedia consumer engaging with content and utilities across a diverse digital footprint. The value proposition from Mountain Dew ties into target truths that are inherent to this digital lifestyle -- quick engagements, esoteric casual games, adoption of the brand into their digital spaces (personal pages & blogs).

This is an experience-based website where users earn points that they may use to enter a variety of brand sweepstakes; each point is an entry, and points can be banked. We wanted to leverage the consumer's high interest in casual game play and -- by way of various communities, social networks, and virtual worlds -- the appeal of earning the ability to gain (in this case, more opportunities to win).

The challenge is delivering a set of experiences that connect with the Dew consumers where they are. Yes, they are online (websites), but they are also on instant messenger, across the social web, on the mobile phone, playing flash games, and using email.

Yet ultimately, the challenge becomes about sustaining the experience. How and what do you deliver to various digital touchpoints; how and where do you integrate all of them, and at what frequency? The answer: Embrace the fact that the consumer is bouncing around from IM, to website, to Facebook, to email. A continuum sustained by all of those digital touchpoints, with the addition of reward for interaction, is a fresh take and a rewarding program.
-- Christian Dietrich, director, Pepsi business, Tribal DDB Worldwide

There is a plethora of digital checkboxes (uploading from webcam, message boards, a Facebook page, wallpapers, etc.) that in most cases seem to be there just to be there. I'm not sure how many people will add the badges to their Facebook page or embed them in their blog -- they basically are banner ads from Mountain Dew that ask people to "Earn points. You could win cool stuff." I do like the upload from your webcam that makes you look like you are being "electrified."

There are many games on the site to play -- yet given that Mountain Dew's target demographic is into the Xbox, Wii, Playstation 3, etc., the competition is stiff, hence the point system to win prizes the more you interact and share. The prizes do create a reason to come and play at this microsite. However, I do believe that the true reward for coming to a Mountain Dew microsite to play games would be a more rich and immersive experience. I saw that the thinking was to approach teens where they already are, but in the end, these simple games would be better utilized in the banner space than on a microsite.
-- Bob Pullum, creative director, AKQA

I'm a big advocate of experiential flash sites to drive marketing initiatives (to the appropriate target market, of course). I think the Mountain Dew Voltage campaign is a good example of not only what can be done using the "latest and greatest," but also how easy it can be to fall prey to common design pitfalls.

The basic premise of the site is relatively solid -- users can explore and interact with the Voltage brand via a series of games and activities that engage the user in a fun and friendly way. The overall design of the site is pretty literal, playing off the "electricity" theme to moderately successful effect. The graphical execution, however, is less polished. Some of the compression artifacts and glows come off a bit heavy-handed, and the faux 3D elements are, well, just that -- faux. The Flash wrapper is neat but is, in the end, rather pointless -- except to make the page/movie take longer to load.

The site structure itself is simple, but serves its purpose. Navigation is in the right place and everything seems to be laid out in a "fold conscience" manner. From a branding perspective, though, the site suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. The new Voltage logo and bottle aren't really as "in your face" as I think they should be (especially since the sole purpose of the site is to launch a totally new property). The prizes, which are designed to entice users to sign up, are cool, but aren't presented in a compelling way.

Although I already have a Yahoo ID, I went through the full registration process on the site to gauge "barrier to entry" for the average user, and found it to be frustrating, cumbersome and jarring from start to finish. It seemed to be slapped together with no regard to UX or design. Not to mention that signing up for Yahoo is a far cry from just registering to play with a site and maybe win some stuff. The bottom line is that I almost gave up during this process -- and I do this for a living.

The games and activities are a mishmash of clever and silly concepts, but they never really engaged me past the level of "playing around." Again, they weren't bad per se, but they didn't have me blasting them out to my friends either.

From a social media perspective, the site creators had the right idea. They used Facebook, discussion forums, etc. to further engage users and expand the site's lifecycle, but overall it had a very "been there, done that" feeling to me. Admittedly, I do this every single day, but still, the innovation factor was missing for me.

Overall, the Mountain Dew Voltage site was a great idea with middle-of-the-road execution. I think some fans will enjoy it, but I don't think it will make a lasting impression. Mountain Dew has a great product with tons of potential. I look forward to seeing the creators turn up the juice on their next project.
-- Jim McArthur, creative director, Digitaria