VIDEO: Tune In to Mountain Dew’s New Channel
NATIONAL REPORT — In a new installment of his video series with Convenience Store News parent company, Stagnito Business Information + Edgell Communications, Phil Lempert discusses Mountain Dew’s launch of its own multichannel network (MCN) with YouTube creators.
Traditionally, MCNs are third-party services that link YouTubers and companies and facilitate marketing partnerships whereby brands can gain access to a digital influencer's social following.
As Mountain Dew recently told Fast Company, its MCN — the first ever to be brand-owned — was created with the goal to partner exclusively with culturally relevant influencers to create YouTube content across key verticals important to Mountain Dew, such as action sports, basketball, art, music, gaming and racing.
Bypassing the traditional MCNs, Mountain Dew sees its own network as a more efficient way to partner with influencers, eliminating third-party management fees, providing a new revenue stream from ad sales and forging a deeper, more authentic relationship with the influencers, allowing the brand access to exclusive content year-round.
Dew's “Green Label” MCN has signed on hip-hop dancer D-trix, basketball influencer the Professor, and skateboarders Josh Katz and Nigel Alexander to star in and create one-of-a-kind content that forms a bond with its existing and potential consumers.
Will it work and sell more Dew in this era of anti-soda sentiment? According to Lempert, this might be a brilliant way to get attention and create ultra-hip videos.
“Some might argue this type of marketing transcends all the good-for-you hype, while others — including us — wonder just what we could achieve if this type of marketing muscle and creativity could be put against healthier offerings,” Lempert remarked.
As CSNews Online previously reported, Lempert and Stagnito + Edgell forged an exclusive strategic alliance that allows Lempert to provide content and programming to multiple CPG retail media brands within the Stagnito + Edgell portfolio, including Convenience Store News and Progressive Grocer.
Lempert is founder of The Lempert Report, a food trends publication, and SupermarketGuru.com, a leading online resource for food safety, products, trends and shopping tips that attracts more than nine million visitors annually.
Click above to watch the video.