Mumbai: I have had a stage fright problem ever since my childhood days - have flopped in many of my stage performances, not to mention one where I was literally asked to get off the stage! But what it is like to stand on a stage (again) and see a larger-than-life version of yourself which is ‘you’ being larger than your fear, literally, in every sense - I experienced that on 8 January at DLF Avenue Saket, New Delhi through an on-ground activation by PepsiCo India’s Mountain Dew brand.
Mountain Dew inaugurated the consumer leg of its ‘Conquer with Courage’ campaign at the activation venue. It was India’s first-ever brand activation of this kind, deploying real-time 3D rendering technology to generate never-seen-before holographic imaging in India and hence producing a 25 ft Statue of Courage. It brings to life Mountain Dew’s idea of #DarrKeAageJeetHai by initiating conversations about conquering our everyday fears.
The dynamic on-ground action included several consumer engagement touchpoints, such as a #ConquerwithCourage wall that was designed to encourage people to come forward and share their brave tales. Following that, a larger-than-life hologram of every individual who dared to share their courage story was exhibited at the site.
The activity personified the brand’s positioning of #DarrKeAageJeetHai by bringing a spotlight on consumers and making them real-life Mountain Dew legends. From heart-warming stories of courage to inspirational tales of prowess such as conquering the world’s highest summit of Mt. Everest at the age of sixteen, the captivating activation drew large audiences and left everyone feeling empowered.
The activation was run over a period of 14 days, witnessing over one lakh consumer walk-ins, and inspired thousands of Mountain Dew legends to share their moments of determination, endurance, and valour.
Indiantelevision.com had a chat with PepsiCo India category director Mountain Dew Vineet Sharma about the larger-than-life on-ground activation, the evolution of Mountain Dew as a brand and its communication strategy.
Edited excerpts:
On the evolution of the brand:
Mountain Dew is a brand which has really stood for a very consistent philosophy. In fact, when we started off in 2003, for a brief period of two to three years, we had a philosophy which was around ‘Cheetah bhi Peeta hai’, which is about bold adventure.
But in 2007 and 2008, we pivoted into something called ‘Darr ke Aage Jeet Hai’, which was something we designated to the Indian consumer because we felt there was a purpose to adventure. To say, for the consumer, when they have said in India, it was that each one of us wants to move ahead. But on the path of moving ahead, there are moments when fear holds you back. And in those moments, courage has a very strong role, because courage, that gulp of courage that Dew stands for, really allows you and encourages you to sort of take a step forward and move towards victory. And that has been one sort of philosophy which we have endured over the last 15 years. While we have adapted and changed different situations, and we've gone through cycles of saying, how we really want to bring out different contexts for that, for that philosophy, but that's something which we feel has been consistent.
And in fact, it's one of the very few, I would say, words which have gotten into popular culture. And there are so many examples of that - we see organic mentions of saying that ‘Darre ke aage jeet hai’. In fact, we keep hearing it- somebody said that he was giving an entrance examination, and his brother said to him that ‘Darr ke aage jeet hai’.
So it's something which has resonated, but as a brand, what we have to do is, we have to find a way to bring alive the context in many different ways. So what we've done recently is that for the last few years, we were talking about fear, which was more about saying, even the biggest celebs or even the biggest people feel the fear, and therefore it's ‘Darr sabko lagta hai’. That's what we used to say. And the context we were using was about saying ‘Darr sabko lagta hai, gala sabka sukhta hai’, and it really doesn't matter. And we used to have communication which was based on fears which were pushing the boundaries of humankind.
But then we recently pivoted into a campaign in H2 last year - we pivoted into fears which were about everyday life. And we said, there's no fear, big or small, fear is fear. And as long as you can conquer that fear, you deserve applause. And therefore, we really celebrated the conquering of fear with a ‘Conquer with Courage’ campaign which said, no matter what the type of fear, just conquer it with courage and move ahead. We brought the context, which was very everyday life. In fact, a lot of people told me that they felt goosebumpy when they saw the ad because they felt they could relate to it. Somewhere one of those situations touched that person personally and brought that person back to memory lane to say, I also felt like this that way.
So taking that campaign forward, actually, what we did was we actually continued that by saying, we will ask a lot of influencers to share their stories of how they've conquered their fear. And we've taken this on-ground now to say we wanted to celebrate people who have conquered their fear with courage, no matter what kind of fear. We actually did an activation where we celebrated all the people who came and shared the stories of courage with almost 12 feet of holographic imaging.
It was a very surreal experience because people suddenly felt so good about the whole piece to say that something it's like a small moment which is there within yourself, but once you share it and you experience it, you feel so good, therefore passing on the essential message is that every moment when we conquer with courage is worth celebrating, and that's what the brand is saying.
On the concept of the experiential activity
We want to celebrate the current stories of everyday people. And we want to pick up a way which has never been done before. I see that as something which is aspirational, and something which is really interesting. So this was something which we actually were able to get various options. This really came up to say 12 feet, an installation of a statue on a 15 feet pedestal and really celebrating it. In fact, one of our team members had said, particularly you have to meet to be celebrated, you need to give your life or you need to be with someone else. That's true. But can we just have a sort of courage statue or courage monument of ordinary people? And therefore, that's where the idea came from, to say, how do you really celebrate courage for everyday people, and which makes people sit up and take notice? That was the intention, and therefore we found this sweet spot for what we wanted and what it was delivering.
On the first time doing an ad with commoners
Yes, we had done something earlier where we had picked something on real heroes and real stories. And most of it was stories of people who had actually done it but we sort of did an ad around it, we got Hrithik Roshan to play the protagonist, etc.
But here, it was actually, people from everyday life who were actually the protagonists in the ad and both males and females, and situations also were very everyday life versus, what it was earlier. So as I said, we built connect and relevance with everyday people.
On having Roshan, Mahesh Babu and commoners, as part of your communication strategy
We’ve had Roshan for nine years. And we are continuing with our association with him. In fact, that's one of the things we also learned was what we felt was in an earlier model, there was always a choice of aspiration versus relatability, to say, should the ad be something which is aspirational and larger than life, which makes people sit up and say wow, or should it be relatable to say oh, this is what I feel.
And therefore this is almost like the brand talking about what I feel in my everyday life or this experience, which I've gone through. And therefore, there was always a balance to say which one we should choose. But what we realised was, as we are going forward with becoming bigger and bigger, it's important to really segment consumers and have a different approach for different kinds of consumers. So, therefore, we said, we will do both going forward. We will have a larger-than-life approach to communication, which is about saying, wow, this is so amazing. This is almost like as I said, it's pushing the boundaries of humankind. We'll also have a more digital forward, conversation forward approach about everyday fears, and how you're a real hero by celebrating those everyday fears.
While one is more TV out, the other is more conversation, to digital into activation. And therefore we'll have both as an approach for the brand going forward. It's not about one or the other. But we will do that for both going forward.
We will have communication, which was largely with Roshan. And we'll be doing stuff like this activation, which would have been a part of it - which is about celebrating people, building a connect and driving conversations around that, versus the earlier approach, which is more of saying an iconic advertising, communication piece of communication.
We also onboarded Mahesh Babu last year, we had a fantastic campaign that came out and we’re going to be coming up with something great this year as well. So stay tuned for that.
On the media mix for the brand – being traditionally led or digitally led
There’s still a very important role in the reach that the traditional media delivers in terms of making sure that the communication reaches the consumers. But what we are doing is from the base reach, which we used to get - we're topping it up with extensive digital communication, as well as conversations in popular culture, which addresses people like cord cutters, as we're not even watching TV back now. And therefore the context of communication and the medium of communication to reach them is very different. So, the entire top-up which is happening is largely happening on newer formats like digital, activations, conversations content, etc. So that's the way we see it and India is growing at a very, very strong pace. So therefore what is happening is for us, at least the top-up that we are doing is more digital forward and more conversation forward while the core reach into the mainline media still holds.
Digital and activation will slowly become a bigger and bigger part of the media mix. We're working on new-age formats.
On the trends and the innovations in the beverage industry, which we can look forward to in 2023, especially for brands like Mountain Dew which position themselves as bold brands
In terms of bold brands, there's an opportunity in terms of innovation. But at the same time, there's a huge opportunity in terms of penetration, which is a well-represented market. We still feel that there's a huge amount of headroom on penetration. And therefore, I would say, there's enough headroom for us to penetrate more and grow purely on the basis of penetration before thinking of adding more frequency. So that's something which we parallelly keep working in tandem. But I will still say that there's a huge opportunity in India, at least on the penetration opportunities as well.
