Mountain Dew is returning to the mountains with a revamped visual identity, in response to information shared with Marketing Dive. A new logo includes the brand’s eponymous topography, together with a retro, three-dimensional font that spells out the soft drink’s full name moderately than the abbreviated “Mtn Dew” moniker that has been in use for greater than a decade.
The overhaul goals to tap into Mountain Dew’s citrus-flavored refreshment while celebrating the nice outdoors and good times with friends. The look will roll out within the U.S. starting next summer across all brand touchpoints, including packaging, equipment, advertisements and experiences.
“Nothing is more powerful than the way you show up on shelf and the way you talk concerning the brand from a logo and iconography system,” said JP Bittencourt, vp of marketing at Mountain Dew. “As we took stock of where we were, we actually felt it was essential to do a refresh and make a meaningful change on our visual identity system.”
The move follows recent marketing efforts that reinvigorated Mountain Dew’s iconic tagline (“Do The Dew”), introduced a new brand character (the Mountain Dude) and claimed the Mountain Time Zone as the corporate’s own. Mountain Dew is enacting a larger shift away from an individualistic, extreme positioning toward a more ownable space around “energizing refreshment,” in response to Bittencourt.
“As our consumers evolve, we wish to evolve with them,” the manager said in emailed comments. “Mountain Dew is an iconic brand that folks associate with memories of having fun with friends, so it’s essential to make certain our feel and appear resonates with our fans and that we proceed to drive this message home.”
Leveraging an in-house team
Designed by the in-house PepsiCo Design & Innovation team, Mountain Dew’s new logo has soft angles and citrus-inspired yellow hues that connect the soda’s color to sunshine. It also includes the 12 months the brand was established, 1948, and adds a citrus leaf icon over the “i” within the spelled-out “Mountain.” The typography is reminiscent of the fonts utilized in the ‘80s and ‘90s, in a nod to the brand’s heritage, said Mauro Porcini, senior vp and chief design officer at PepsiCo.
“We’re celebrating essentially the most authentic expression of the brand, but then attempting to project this brand also towards the longer term,” Porcini said. “It’s a brand that lives in the current that should be relevant in the longer term for our consumers.”
The color palette also includes “energetic” greens and red. Each flavor and limited-edition offering of Mountain Dew will feature its own outdoor landscape and palette because the branding becomes “a wonderful canvas for storytelling,” Porcini explained.
Mountain Dew’s logos through the years
Courtesy of Mountain Dew
“Every time we design any brand, we don’t consider just the sweetness and functionality of the design on a static piece of packaging,” Porcini said. “We at all times take into consideration how that piece of packaging could be the catalyst of storytelling that transcends packaging completely and touches every touchpoint of the brand, each physical and digital.”
PepsiCo’s in-house team includes a mix of veterans and newcomers to each the brand and industry, allowing the group to tap into each historical knowledge and fresh perspectives. In that way, PepsiCo works to side step the pitfalls sometimes related to in-housing.
“The in-house cross-functional team has a profound understanding of our brands, consumers, business model, and culture, built over years of practice and projects, including missteps and successes,” Porcini said in emailed comments. “When we work on a project we leverage and unleash all that expertise, driving higher quality with greater agility and effectiveness.”
Mountain Dew’s makeover follows a similar rebrand for Pepsi last 12 months that moved the soda away from minimalism to embrace a more colourful, maximalist design scheme.
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