• by Karl Greenberg , June 30, 2010

Pepsi's Mountain Dew unit is extending its Green Label Art program with a new campaign using skateboard star Paul Rodriguez and skate artist Don Pendleton. The Green Label Art: Shop Series is a contest in which 35 skate shops across America are competing to have their designs featured on limited-edition, nationally distributed packaging of Mountain Dew. The winner also gets $10,000 (half for the shop; half for the artist).

The effort began on June 25 when the shops and their designs were posted on GreenLabelArt.com. Consumers can view the art and vote on their favorite for a chance to get skate gear and a trip to attend the five-stop Dew Tour's Skate Open.

The Pepsi unit is promoting the campaign with a skate-themed TV and Web spot featuring Rodriguez and Pendleton, via TraceyLocke and L.A. production house Shilo. The ad directing viewers to vote at GreenLabelArt.com is being screened at all stops of the 2010 Dew Tour's Skate Open, and International Skateboarding Federation (ISF) Skateboarding World Championships.

The ad shows Rodriguez skating the streets of Los Angeles, and talking about his collaboration with Pendleton. Wherever he skates in the spot, he leaves a graphic trail of the art adorning his signature Mountain Dew can. On voiceover, Rodriguez talks about skating, his collaboration with Pendleton and Mountain Dew.

Hudson Sullivan, brand manager at Mountain Dew, says when the company launched the first volume of limited-edition bottles in 2007 it was all about contemporary artists. The company tapped six artists to design six different 16-ounce cans that were sold as limited-edition collectibles. "We found consumers loved it, loved the nature of the program, and loved the art," he says. "Since then, we manage to do it each year, but this year the platform moved away from 16-ounce bottles and toward 16-ounce straight-wall cans."

Hudson, who says this is also the first year the campaign switched modus operandus and theme, adds that the effort is similar to Mountain Dew's DEWmocracy program, where consumers designed and chose three flavors, and then designed the national grassroots tours to promote them.

"There's definitely a consistency between the DEWmocracy and Green Label efforts -- it's definitely about engaging consumers, bringing them in and making them part of the process," he says. "We have had a lot of success creating a dialogue between the brand and consumer; when they see they are impacting the business we found they also become a lot more emotionally invested in the product."

Mountain Dew will support the Green Label program with social media as it did DEWmocracy with regular posts about the program, for instance, on a Green Label Art Twitter page and on Facebook, per Hudson -- who adds that unlike DEWmocracy, there isn't so much of a secondary goal around driving volume.

"I think with DEWmocracy it's easier to measure the impact of program on our business because you can see obvious spikes in sales volume -- when we put three new flavors out there fans go crazy, obviously," says Hudson. "But Green Label is really less about driving volume and more about driving cultural relevance: how does Mountain Dew continue to build equity with limited-edition art and through relationships and through skateboarding? It's about showing our support for a community and of local skate shops around the country."

The Summer Dew tour, in its fourth year, will visit Chicago in July, then Portland, Ore. in August, Salt Lake City, and then Las Vegas in the fall.