Mountain Dew Research Paper

Mountain Dew

Is Mountain Dew's advertising campaign directed at the right market segment, does it differentiate the product from the competition, and does it communicate effectively the product benefits? Explain your answer.

Mountain Dew's latest advertising campaign as defined in the recent BusinessWeek article Mountain Dew Wants Some Street Cred (Stanford, 2012) is directed to the right market segment, who are young adults in the 18- to 24-year-olds. The advertising strategy is attempting to reach multiple new audiences while staying solidified on its primary core target market. This strategy will be challenging to accomplish with only Mountain Dew itself, hence the decision to launch Code Red and LiveWire, two new beverages. With these two new beverages, Mountain Dew has a better chance of accomplishing the goals as defined in their advertising campaign.

The foundation of any effective marketing strategy must begin with the actual product and the value it delivers to the customer. Mountain Dew is moving in the right direction to differentiate itself in a very crowded, competitive and inferring from the article, slow-growth market by concentrating on the unique needs of each new segment they want to sell into. Differentiation will be easily accomplished with Code Red and LiveWire, yet will be more challenging with the core Mountain Dew product which is now decades old.

The benefits of Mountain Dew are being communicated differently to each market segment as well. In the Southeastern U.S., Mountain Dew is known as a substitute for caffeinated beverages, based on personal experiences traveling there. The campaign that the company communicates via the BusinessWeek article shows the core messaging and benefits will stay unchanged in their core market segments, the white consumers in the Plains states and Southeastern U.S. The company is struggling to get the right focus on the young blacks and Latinos located in the more urban areas, singing up rap star Lil Wayne as their spokesperson, in addition to skateboarding champion Paul Rodriguez. The company continues to fuel demand in its core markets in the Plains and Southeastern U.S. By also signing Jason Aldean, a country music singer. Celebrity endorsers can't differentiate a product that lacks relevant benefits for each target market; these celebrities will not be enough to make Mountain View attractive to the diverse markets the company is attempting to move into.….....