SPRITE vs.

MOUNTAIN DEW
Advertisement Analysis

Neha Mishra
Roll no: 051422
SIMC Bangalore
INTRODUCTION
Soft drink market size for year 2009 was around 270 million cases (6480mn bottles). The
market witnessed 5- 6% growth in the early‘90s. Presently the market growth has growth rate of
7- 8% per annum compared to 22% growth rate in the previous year. The market preference is
highly regional based. While cola drinks have main markets in metro cities and northern states of
UP, Punjab, Haryana etc. Orange flavored drinks are popular in southern states. Sodas too are
sold largely in southern states besides sale through bars. Western markets have preference
towards mango flavored drinks. Coke presently constitutes just 0.7% of the total carbonated
beverage market.

Between2001 and 2007, total soft drink volume rose by about 2.5 billion gallons, with nearly 860
million gallons- a full third - being Sprite and Mountain Dew. The citrus category has been
growing among teens since the 90's, and both companies have recognized that attraction and
capitalized on it. Mountain Dew made its national push this decade by linking itself with the
budding "extreme sports" trend. While Mountain Dew played on the "in-your-face" aspect of
teendom, Sprite tugged the other end of the chain as part of a two-pronged repositioning of the
brand in 2004. Sprite took an empowerment approach with a new positioning around teens lack
of confidence in making decisions. Sprite's latest strategy is the "image is nothing, taste is
everything, obey your thirst" campaign. Both companies have also found another trend, hip hop -
marketing to the urban Indian market.

In the subsequent paragraphs I intend to analyze the advertising strategies of both Mountain Dew
and Sprite with special reference to their campaign strategy followed in 2003. In this period
Mountain Dew was running its DO the Dew campaign to counter the : “ Bujaye only pyas, Baki
All Bakwas” campaign of Sprite. Both these campaigns were very focused towards their target
group and are still remembered by people.
MOUNTAIN DEW
Mountain Dew is a drink distributed and manufactured by PepsiCo. As of 2007, Mountain Dew
was the fourth-best-selling carbonated soft drink in the United States,
behind only Coca-Cola Classic, Pepsi-Cola, and Diet Coke. Diet
Mountain Dew ranked ninth in sales in the same year. It was
launched in India in the year 2003. PepsiCo set to roll out an
innovative ground communication package through exciting outdoor
presence and merchandising to generate awareness about Mountain Dew in all major cities and
towns in the country. In October 2008, it was announced that Pepsi would be redesigning their
logo and re-branding many of their products.

POSITIONING

Mountain Dew was positioned as an ‘energy and exhilaration' drink – same as across the world.
Pepsi started with two JWT India-created television commercials that attempted to capture the
brand's spunk and attitude.

MOUNTAIN DEW- ADVERTISING STRATEGY

Right from its entry into the Indian market in 2003, Mountain Dew has constantly sought to
associate itself with adventure sports to promote and popularize the brand. Remember the ads
featuring the ‘Dew dudes’? And the ones where a guy takes on a cheetah and the one with a wild
ram? All of them were meant to connect with the youth and to establish a high-energy, high-
intensity image for the brand. The initial commercials were instant hits and were successful in
grabbing customer attention. And Mountain Dew went on to capture up to 5% of the market
share within the first 3 months of its launch in 2003.
 This phase also saw events featuring BMX bike riders and
skateboarders being held across a number of major cities in the
country. This trend continued and in 2005, a stunt biking event was
held in Bangalore. Mountain Dew continued to be associated with
‘youth’ brands and the thrust was on using adventure sports to
capture and cultivate youth following for the brand.  This was in
keeping with Mountain Dew’s image and promotion across the world.

MOUNTAIN DEW: DO THE DEW CAMPAIGN

The basic theme all of advertising by mountain dew these years has been high-adrenaline
adventure’. This is a campaign and has around two to three different commercials. The common
thing in all these commercials is the group of boys out on a safari. They are generally roaming
around, shouting- Do the Dew! This campaign was rolled out in the year 2003 targeting the
young and adventurous youth.

The first ad featured four ‘Dew Dudes’ being asked (by a voice over) whether they'd visited
some famous tourist attractions around the world. On being asked ‘Big Ben dekha?', the ads
show shots of the boys bungee jumping off the Big Ben. ‘Jump maara,' one of them answers,
‘Baja diya baarah,' says another, ‘Par boring thaa saara,' a
third shrugs. The ad continues in this vain till the voice
over asks ‘Sab kuchh toh kiya, but have you done the
dew?' The boys vouch for the drink as soon as they taste it.

The second ad became a cult hit. It featured a Dew Dude

on a bike chasing a cheetah in a Savannah, catching up with it, leaping and wrestling it into
submission before pulling a can of Mountain Dew from its throat! ‘Cheetah bhi peeta hai'
remarked another Dew Dude.

Yet, Mountain Dew did not live up to all the hype. A survey by Synovate in late 2005 among 16-
20 year old SEC A1 & SEC A2 showed that people preferred Sprite and Limca, with Mountain
Dew performing only a shade better than Frooti. This ‘baffling’ result revealed an insight.
Firstly, the concept of extreme sports is limited to Indian metros, that too among the more
upwardly mobile sections. And even there, awareness does not
necessarily mean appeal. There aren't many ‘outdoorsy types' in
this country - at least not the kind Mountain Dew has in mind.
The ad campaigns itself were found to be over the top and
unrealistic. This survey and the market performance of
Mountain Dew set the stage for a course correction.

SPRITE
Coca-Cola India refreshes millions of consumers throughout the country with
an exciting range of beverages, including Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Thums Up,
Fanta, Limca, Sprite, Maaza, Georgia, Georgia Gold, Kinley and Kinley
Club Soda through a network of more than one million outlets. The company
has invested more than US$ 1 billion in its Indian operations, emerging as
one of the country s top international investors and company s business operations engage
approximately 1, 50,000 people in India. Sprite is manufactured by this company and is a direct
competition to Mountaion Dew.

POSITIONING

Coca Cola was able to successfully position Sprite as an icon blaster. Their tagline “Seedhi baat
no bakwas” was capitalized as its USP which became very popular among the target audience.
SPRITE ADVERTISING STRATEGY

Sprite is one of the fastest growing brands in the 7000 crore carbonated soft
drink (CSD) market in India. Taking the place of the erstwhile Limca, the
brand is positioned as a basic thirst quencher. The brand in India is
competing with Mountain Dew.

Sprite was launched in India in 1999 has caught the attention of Indian consumer by positioning
itself as a plain soft drink. The initial baseline have rightly captured the essence of Sprite as “
Bujaye only pyas, Baki All Bakwas “. The protagonists in the campaigns also have that “cool
“attitude thus breaking clutter of high decibel Cola ads.

They have done a commendable job by being able to maintain the same USP with their new and
refreshing advertisements made it all the more a very effective branding exercise. All the
advertisement of Sprite carried the tag line very well coupled with some very witty and cool
advertisements.

SPRITE: “BUJAYE ONLY PYAS, BAKI ALL BAKWAS”

Sprite may talk straight but its creative team has no option but to think laterally whenever faced
with the client brief. Going by the branding proposition, no drink
resonates and talks ‘seedhi baat’ in a manner like Coca-Cola's clear
lime drink, Sprite. The brand, well known for its no-nonsense
attitude, has taken to its first advertising attempt for 2009.

With the Seedhi Baat, No Bakwaas tagline, the first of the two

television commercials opens on two friends playing Carrom. The
Sprite drinker points out that he is going to lay his hands on the red coin (queen) in the game. His
friend, who catches sight of a young girl walking into the compound with her dog, is very much
sure of the 'queen' stepping in for him.
He thinks of a twisted way of reaching out to the lady - through her dog, named Killer. While she
stops at a nearby store, he runs to pet Killer and impress her indirectly. To his surprise, the Sprite
drinker candidly invites her for a game of Carrom. She is obviously worried about Killer. The
'dog lover' is forced to help in this department. The film closes on a product shot and the tagline.

The second commercial, in a South Indian wedding set-up, has a Sprite and a non-Sprite person
interested in the same girl. The latter finds an indirect of winning the girl's heart – through her
parents. He begins to serve 'sambhar' to the family members one by one. In
the meantime, the Sprite drinker makes it directly to the girl and takes the
seat right next to her. To make things worse, while the non-Sprite friend
sweetly offers 'sambhar' to the girl, she shatters his heart by addressing him
as her younger brother.

The tag line clicked since it was too simple and realistic. A carbonated
beverage is supposed to quench thirst and that’s all, period. This is exactly
what Sprite marketed itself as and I presume it did reasonably well.

The idea here is that the tagline became Sprite’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

THE BATTLE CONTINUES

While Mountain Dew which has a cult status in the west so far did not achieve such a status in
India. Analysts say that the protagonists in Mountain Dew do not have the mass appeal as that of
Sprite.
With the war in this segment is increasing , Dew tried to directly
attack the Sprite by portraying the protagonist as a fool but did not
succeed much.
Sprite changed the baseline of “ Baki all Bakwaas “ to “ No gyan
only Sprite” and tried to further build on the successful positioning.
But some of the ads went too far with the protagonist portraying a larger than life image. Then
again the baseline changed to “ Clear Hai “ .
I feel that the baseline “ Baki all Bakwaas “ was changed too soon because it had immense
potential for further communication and clearly states the brand’s essence. The subsequent
baseline had to be scrapped because it offered limited substance to the creative team to work on.
The latest baseline is also have limited flexibility compared to the Bakwaas baseline.

CONCLUSION
Therefore Mountain Dew and sprite are great threat to each other. Sprite is also coming up as
energy drink now and they are following the same theme as that of Mountain Dew. Sprite’s
target market is almost same of Mountain Dew. They are targeting the young blood, enthusiastic
teenagers, aggressive and fun-loving males.

This battle that has begun is surely going to last for years to come. Both the brands would strive
to gain an edge over the other through all possible means.