Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines, rich with customer engagement offering an insight that companies wouldn’t normally have. Companies like Pepsi have been going to great lengths to adopt this kind of collaboration with fans, and the rewards have been worth it.

Pepsi’s Mountain Dew division is several stages into its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavour with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process. The aim being to integrate consumers more closely with the brand.

The first DEWmocracy campaign, which launched in 2007, allowed consumers to choose Mountain Dew’s new flavour, colour, name and graphics, and resulted in more than 470,000 people voting and an overall 1 million people taking part in some phase of the process.

In July 2009, when the second DEWmocracy campaign was launched, die-hard Mountain Dew fans had to narrow decide on a new flavour to become a permanent part of the Mountain Dew family, using social media platforms Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Every part of the campaign involves the fans and the public — from picking flavour names, to voting on the best user-submitted ad campaign. Pepsi needed their customers to be involved throughout.

This type of marketing is less about crowd sourcing and more about collaboration. Pepsi recognises that DEWmocracy has been driven by word of mouth and this way doing business, rather than an ad campaign, recognises the passion consumers feel for Mountain Dew.

Pepsi is now looking at social media as the best way to directly communicate with their fans and we think giving your customer ownership of your brand is a fantastic idea.