Experiential Marketing

To promote the launch of its three new flavors, Mountain Dew created an extreme, first-of-its-kind experience at a film studio in New Zealand. Skate park designer Corban Walls was commissioned to design a giant, fully functioning, pinball machine skate park. In this 600-square foot life-size pinball machine, the skater is the ball, propelled from a platform by a giant plunger. Skaters earned points by doing tricks on tunnels, ramps, flippers and bumpers, triggering sensors to generate flashing lights and arcade sounds. Scores and times are displayed on a backboard to complete the picture.

The program is ingenious for grabbing the attention of the brand’s young, irreverent fans and simultaneously seducing older Gen Y and Gen X consumers with the retro-nostalgic pinball twist. People far past the age of interest and/or ability to skate have been delighted by this whimsical program that revisits (in a life-sized way) the comfort and nostalgia of their childhoods.