Mountain Dew: SKATE PINBALL

Credits & Description:

Category: Exhibitions & Live Events

Advertiser: FRUCOR BEVERAGES

Product/Service: MOUNTAIN DEW

Agency: COLENSO BBDO

Creative Chairman: Nick Worthington (Colenso BBDO)

Digital Creative Director: Dan Wright (Colenso BBDO)

Art Director: Victoria Daltrey (Colenso BBDO)

Copywriter: Will Bingham (Colenso BBDO)

Director/Editor: Jae Morrison (Colenso BBDO)

Group Account Director: Angela Watson (Colenso BBDO)

Senior Account Director: Tim Ellis (Colenso BBDO)

Agency Producer: Paul Courtney (Colenso BBDO)

Agency Producer: Rob Linkhorn (Colenso BBDO)

Account Manager: Sam Wallace (Colenso BBDO)

Account Executive: Eileen Cosgrove-Moloney (Colenso BBDO)

Planner: Hayley Pardoe (Colenso BBDO)

Director/Editor/Director Of Photography/Cinematographer: Warren Green (Satin And Lace)

Digital Producer: James McMullan (Colenso BBDO)

Senior Digital Designer: Pablo Dunovits (Colenso BBDO)

Producer: Simon Pound (Satin And Lace)

Sounds FX: James Hayday (Images And Sound)

Designer: Phila Lagaluga (Colenso BBDO)

Graphics: Mike Hammond (Colenso BBDO)

Illustrator: Mark Ward

Media placement: Experiential - Skate Park - A Warehouse, Auckland, NZ - 4 June 2011



Describe the brief from the client

Despite Mountain Dew being a big international brand, in New Zealand the brand has a small presence and little kudos amongst its core target - teenagers. Our brief was to launch three new electric themed flavours and make Mountain Dew as a brand famous amongst New Zealand teens. If we achieved this, they would seek out our products and trial them.



Describe the challenges and key objectives

When you’re in the soft drinks business and no one knows who you are - you’ve got a problem. With low brand awareness, consideration and sales, we needed to create an unforgettable brand experience that ‘walked the talk’.



So we created a campaign that 'showed' consumers what the brand stands for and let them experience it for themselves.



Describe how you arrived at the final design

Inspired by 3 new electric flavours and Mountain Dew’s affiliation with extreme sports, we mixed electricity with skateboarding and built a 600m2, fully-functioning pinball machine you could ride.



The machine featured a 13m high backboard, bumpers, flippers, tunnels, and a plunger to launch you in. We wired in sensors, sounds and lights throughout to score your run just like a pinball game.



Enlisting 3 sports pros to help design it, we made sure the machine had the right flow and appealed to all levels of skaters.



The result was an 'electric' design that was distinctly pinball, yet unmistakably Mountain Dew.



Give some indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

Results for Skate Pinball were phenomenal:

- Sales grew 106% (YOY), vs an objective of 20%

- Market share grew 123%, making the brand the fastest growing soft drink in New Zealand

- Mountain Dew became the no.1 selling fruit soft drink in convenience channels

- Over $500,000 in earned media was generated in New Zealand alone, while more than 100 international news channels also picked up the campaign.

- Teenagers queued for over 5 hours on opening day to get in.