Case Study - No fear is too small

Executive Summary

This is the story of a hugely successful brand that had the guts to move away from its two-decades-old winning communication formula and tread on a hitherto-untrodden path. For 20 years, Mountain Dew communication featured celluloid heroes performing death-and-physics-defying stunts to bring alive the brand’s ‘courage to win’ credo. Communication that had helped Mountain Dew to become India’s 3rd largest Carbonated Soft Drinks (CSD) brand.

However, the brand’s overcoming-unreal-odds narrative was not resonating as well with urban India. To drive relevance with the urban TG, Mountain Dew questioned the conventional codes of heroism and tapped onto the emerging ethos of courage in a post-pandemic world. The brand realized that in an increasingly authentic world, vulnerable is the new strong. And thereby engineered a strategic and communication shift from death-defying stunts of reel-heroes to life-affirming vulnerabilities of real people. It was a bold departure, one that clearly demonstrated that the brand did not just talk about courage, but was fearless enough to live its own brand credo.

The digital-first campaign garnered a staggering 11 billion views across platforms and ensured a stupendous 34% increase in YOY sales. Most importantly, it helped the brand to strengthen its connect with urban India without diluting it’s phenomenal hinterland equity.

Marketing Challenge & Objectives

The Urban Angst

Mountain Dew enjoys iconic stature in India and stands unequivocally for courage. For over two decades, it’s communication successfully showcased larger-than-life celebrity action heroes taking on ever-bigger, fear-inducing challenges and coming out victorious in the end. The brand’s sign-off line ‘Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai’ (“Beyond fear lies victory”) is a part of Indian pop culture, and was even famously used as a catch-line for a Bollywood movie.

There was only one glitch in this otherwise successful brand story. Urban India was the clear category driver accounting for a huge 60% of CSD sales in India. It was also a segment that was key to sustaining an aspirational brand in India. To drive future brand growth, Mountain Dew needed to increase both its sales and market share in urban India which was somehow not relating very well with the brand’s physical-daredevilry-based communication template,

The key ask for the brand therefore was to delicately glide through the strategic tightrope of strengthening the connect with urban India without diluting the pop-culture-worthy equity it already enjoyed in hinterland India.

Insight & Strategic Thinking

Vulnerable is the new Strong

Within India lies the ‘Twindia’ of Urban, Affluent ‘Achiever’ India of the metros and cities, and the Hinterland, ‘Striver’ India of the small towns and villages. While the ‘achievers’ of urban India are busy chasing wealth and status, ‘striver’ hinterland India has to battle life’s challenges to build a better future. Mountain Dew’s larger-than-life heroism of movie-stars appealed to this second group of people. However, that same willing-suspension-of-disbelief-inducing communication construct was falling short with urban audiences – who were both the category and imagery drivers.

While for 20 years, Mountain Dew ads had been saying “Darr sab ko lagta hai” (everyone feels fear), the fears we had been showcasing, however, were not everyone’s fears. Those were the fears of our brand endorsers, who were super-human movie-stars known in ‘reel life’ to nonchalantly pull off anything, anywhere, anyway. Mountain Dew’s fear narrative till now therefore, reflected only the fears of the few. For the average man on the street, those were ‘distant fears’, because not all of us jump down mountains and dive across skies. And the human truth about fear is that you feel it most, when it is closest to you.

Fear therefore had to be brought closer to all for it to be feared by all and relevant to all.

From death-defying stunts of reel-heroes to life-affirming vulnerabilities of real people was the tectonic strategic shift that we engineered in Mountain Dew’s storytelling. It was a significant shift because it helped us to broaden the brand conversation to accommodate both Indias while staying sharp on the brand’s core promise.

Creative Implementation

Fear is the Key

Does fear come only in one size? Does heroism have to be necessarily larger than life? Is XXL the only size that fear should wear to be considered as fearsome? Does courage only entail physical derring-do? Does heroism come under the sole purview of the hero?

Mountain Dew challenged these conventional notions of bravery and in a gutsy departure from its own communication template, shifted the creative conversation from ‘No fear is too big’ to ‘No fear is too small’. And with that one switcheroo, we democratised courage in the world’s largest democracy.

Our campaign broke online with a powerful motivational video showcasing real people overcoming everyday fears. Fear not only on the edge-of-the-cliff that a few people invite upon themselves, but real, everyday fears that all of us face. Fear not only of daredevil movie stars, but fears of the common people. In short, it was fear that was relatable to both urban India and hinterland India.

We went Digital First because it has a large urban skew, with urban India being our key focus for this campaign. 900+ micro and macro influencers were roped in to candidly speak about conquering their deepest fears. 5000+ content creators competed online by creating videos on the subject. Even in traditional media, we focused on HD channels which are more viewed in Urban India. An extensive OOH campaign was also activated in key Urban markets.

Mountain Dew did not stop at creating only a communication idea. In fact, it created engagement platforms across Instagram, IFP and MOJ, where consumers across India were given opportunities to talk about their vulnerabilities and share their personal stories of courage.

Real-Time Breakthrough 3D Holographic Tech:

We created a first-of-its-kind experience zone for our target audience. This on-ground initiative was conducted in Delhi, a key urban market for us. We invited people to share their own fears and their personal stories of how they overcame those fears. And as different people shared their individual stories of courage, cutting-edge 3D Holographic Tech was used to create 25 feet high holographic statues of them real-time! In the land of 100-feet cut-outs where we like to put our heroes on a pedestal, Mountain Dew both celebrated and amplified the hero inside all of us! Over 1,00,000 people opened up their hearts and participated in this extra-ordinary experience, as we brought our ‘No fear too small’ creative idea, quite literally to life. In order to reach out to a wider audience with this localized on-ground experience, we disseminated this story on social media.

Impact

Democratising Courage In The World’s Largest Democracy:

From an idea, ‘No fear is too small’ transformed into a movement to wrest the narrative of courage from the conventional stronghold of heroes, and ensured that courage belongs to everyone in the world’s largest democracy. The campaign ran for 20 weeks, breaking category and industry records.

Reach & Engagement:

Record breaking 11 billion views of all our digital communication assets across social media. Out of these 11 billion views, a staggering 65% came from urban India, our focus market.
Our motivational film itself garnered 334 million views with a category-busting VTR (view-through-rate) of 30% which is double that of the industry average of 15%.
32000 thousand content pieces generated by content creators which reached 40 million viewers.
8 million interactions on the MOJ platform with more than 2.5 million user-generated- content pieces.
The free PR coverage generated by this campaign itself had a reach of 20 Million.

Sales Results:

The campaign saw a 34% YOY same-time-period sales growth
Mountain Dew sales in urban India grew exponentially, growing by 59%. This is almost 100% higher than the 30% growth in urban sales that we targeted.

Brand Scores:

Research found the new campaign ranked higher on ‘Believability’ and ‘Relevance’. It not only helped Mountain Dew retain high scores on existing brand codes of ‘Youth’ and ‘Daring’, but also helped it acquire new imagery codes of ‘Buzz’ and ‘Trendsetting’ for the first time.
The Digital Ad effectiveness research done for the activities which ran on the MOJ platform showed that intention to purchase Mountain Dew increased by 18% and brand recommendation scores went up by 24%.

What makes this even more remarkable is that there were no other significant marketing interventions in the campaign time period, like boosting up retail presence etc to drive either sales or imagery.