Flavor of the Month” takes on new meaning this summer as Pepsi-Cola Co. puts major campaigns behind cherry-flavored soft drinks.
First up is the national launch of Code Red, the first line extension for Mountain Dew since the 1988 introduction of Diet Dew. Code Red hit c-store shelves in May, with TV, radio, P-O-P, and aggressive sampling in 12 to 14 metro markets via decked-out trucks blasting music at hip teen hangouts.
“It’s exactly what you’d expect, in Mountain Dew fashion,” says Mountain Dew director Cie Nicholson. GMR Marketing, New Berlin, WI, and Good Stuff, St. Albans, VT, handle sampling. TLP, Dallas, handles P-O-P, and BBDO Worldwide, New York City, handles ads.
Sister brand Wild Cherry Pepsi follows with its first-ever promotion, a May 14-June 24 blitz tied to Tomb Raider, which opens June 15. A three-way partnership with Paramount Pictures and Sony Computer Entertainment America’s PlayStation centers on a Raid the Pepsi, Search for PlayStation on-pack instant-win sweeps on two-liter and 12- and 24-packs of Pepsi, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi ONE. Prizes are a Sony home entertainment center (including PlayStation), thousands of PlayStation systems and games, and Tomb Raider movie posters. Packs carry $5 coupons for game software. Account-specific overlays award trips to London, Land Rovers, and Ericsson phones.
“We’re sort of relaunching Wild Cherry Pepsi this year,” says Pepsi vp-marketing Frances Britchford. “It’s been successful without much of a marketing push,” growing 17 percent a year since 1998 while rival Cherry Coke grew one percent, Britchford says.
Meanwhile, flagship Pepsi expands The Pepsi Challenge, which relaunched last summer after 17 years on hiatus. The itinerary expands this year as bottlers “really get behind it,” says Britchford. A tie-in with Major League Baseball adds The Baseball Challenge, with a self-liquidating offer for T-shirts bearing Sammy Sosa, Ken Griffey, Jr. (who both starred in Challenge TV spots last summer), or Jason Giambi. A sweeps on single-serve bottles dangles cash and baseball prizes. Local TV and account-specific overlays spruce up the campaign.
Then, PepsiStuff.com returns in October. “Brand Pepsi won’t stand still,” Britchford assures.
Non-carbonated beverages have been working hardest at Pepsi. Total volume sales rose four percent for first-quarter 2001, mostly on the strength of Aqaufina water, Dole juices, and SoBe beverages, as well as growth of diet brands and new Sierra Mist lemon-lime. The quarter’s dollar sales jumped 21 percent over the same period last year to $771 million for North America, Purchase, NY-based PepsiCo reports.
Carbonated soft drinks were flat in 2000, with volume up only one-half percent, says John Rodwan, editorial director for Beverage Marketing Corp., New York City. Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola were each up the same; flavored drinks grew faster. “Colas are still the workhorses, but companies are seeking more growth in the flavored segment,” Rodwan says.
Mountain Dew’s double-digit growth in the mid-‘90s slowed to 1.5 percent last year. “That’s still triple the growth of the segment,” Rodwan notes.
Crafting Croft
Tomb Raider star Lara Croft (played by Angelina Jolie) is the right face for Wild Cherry Pepsi. “Our positioning is about adventure and excitement,” Britchford says. “Lara Croft epitomizes that, and appeals hugely to our audience — mostly younger males. She’s wholly appropriate to lead this brand.”
Pepsi signed on with Paramount a year ago — in time to shoot TV spots on the film’s set in London. “Part of our deal was original footage,” Britchford says. “Movie tie-ins often use clips from the film. Not Pepsi.”
The brand hired Tomb Raider‘s action director Simon Crane to direct two spots. One follows the film’s story, making PlayStation 2 the hero in the end. The second showcases Croft and Wild Cherry Pepsi and will run through summer via BBDO. Jolie-cum-Croft also appears on in-store P-O-P displays via TLP.
Cracking the Code
Pepsi tested flavor ideas, names, and graphics with teen focus groups, but didn’t test-market Code Red at all.
“Because it was such a no-brainer and had very little risk, we went for a national launch right away,” says Nicholson.
The company teased the launch online and with parties and sampling at Dew-sponsored sporting events. It gave Code Red to athletes at the February ESPN Winter X Games and threw an invitation-only party that got spectators buzzing. Pepsi didn’t sample Code Red then because “people would be dying to try it” before distribution began, explains Nicholson.
Dew used its sponsorship of the NCAA Final Four Championship in March to sample Code Red at games in Minneapolis’s Metrodome and at nearby Mall of America. The next weekend, Code Red hit ESPN’s Action Sports and Music Awards in Los Angeles (again under a Dew sponsorship).
A gradual-reveal strategy online started in February with banner ads that said only, “Code Red is coming in May,” then added “MD” and other Dew clues as weeks wore on. A Mission Code Red High Score videogame at mountaindew.com had players recover a hijacked shipment of the new brand. Top 1,000 scorers got 16 bottles delivered to their door in April (with T-shirts for the top 500 and caps for 250). The game hyped Code Red because players “had to have some level of skill to earn it, and then they were first [among friends] to have it,” Nicholson says. Tribal DDB, Dallas, handles the site.
Cherry appeals to Hispanics and African-Americans, but that wasn’t the point. “We were just trying to see where we could expand, to keep consumers in the Mountain Dew fold and bring in new consumers,” Nicholson says. It’s an “ancillary benefit” that ethnic groups over-index on cherry beverages, but the bulk of Code Red’s audience is still general-market, she adds.
Beverage Marketing’s Rodwan sees Pepsi’s motives as more explicit: “I guess they realized that they’ve captured white males, so they might as well go for the rest of the population.”
Cherry is an old standby, says Bob Bauer, executive director of the National Association of Fruits, Flavors and Syrups, Matawan, NJ. “It’s always been popular [and] considered one of the best flavors to have,” he says. Despite past flavor trends — cranberry in the mid-‘90s, and mango the last two years — no one’s predicting new hot flavors. Suppliers are too busy handling new categories such as functional foods to work up new flavors, Bauer explains.
And Pepsi’s next Flavor of the Month? Nicholson will only say that “we’re always looking. Code Red will work hard for us this summer.”
That should keep competitors on alert.
Drawing the Dole
Cherry isn’t the only fruit in Pepsi’s marketing basket this summer.
Dole runs a Cash in a Flash under-the-label sweepstakes through July. Labels on single-serve bottles of the nine-flavor line carry instant-win messages for cash prizes ranging from $2 to $25,000. Odds are one in 12 to score part of the $12 million prize pool. The promo broke mid-May; radio spots airing throughout June support.
Pepsi launched Dole juices in January with an assist from its Tropicana division’s R&D labs. (Flavors are apple, orange, pineapple-citrus, ruby red grapefruit, cranberry juice cocktail, Paradise Blend, cranberry-grape, orange-strawberry-banana, and strawberry-kiwi.) It’s part of Pepsi’s push to move beyond soft drinks, since sales of non-carbonated beverages have being growing more quickly.
Single-serve juices and juice drinks are a $5 billion business, the biggest segment of the non-carb category, Pepsi reports.
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