May 14th, 2010

The Fan Frenzy Revolution

Since the dawning of social media, fuelled by creative outlets such as YouTube and Flickr, user created content has sky rocketed, in both production and it’s consumption.  While the traditional approach to media may disregard these amateur rebel artists’ creations, a few companies are taking note and embracing their fan’s creative abilities into their product’s production.

Getting your fan base involved in your product development may be the smartest investment your business could ever make. Not only could you potentially save thousands in media development costs,   fan following and word of mouth generated from a user created ad campaign could be a priceless return for your company.

Companies such as Pepsi Co. and Doritos are two companies acknowledging their fan base, and have structured completely restructured their products creation model, encouraging an active collaboration with their fans. It seems the old cliché that two head are better than one, takes on new meaning when social media turns those two heads into 2 million heads.

Pepsi Co. and Doritos, truly are star examples fuelling a fan following.  Doritios – Crash the Superbowl was a very novel ad campaign. But, Pepsi Co.’s Mountain Dew DEWmocracy campaign really takes the cake. Using its social media fan base, Mt Dew’s DEWmocracy campaign invites fans to create, brand and market three experimental new flavours hitting the shelves in the United States.

What makes this campaign especially impressive is that Pepsi Co. put 100% of the creative process in the hands of their fans.  Cleverly dividing America by their states these  DEWmocracy “Flavor Nations,” were responsible for flavour naming, label design, colour, selecting an ad agency, approving  storyboards, coming up with a digital advertising plan and all other product launch tasks.  The direction, branding and marketing of their respective flavours, were completely decided upon by Mt. Dew’s fans.

Even if your product doesn’t have a strong fan base yet, running ad campaigns like these could be the start you need to create a fan frenzy revolution of your own. Who knows, your product might even reach Justin Bieber heights of fan fame.

photo by same_same

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