Mountain Dew Lets the Internet Name Their Drink

In 2012, Mountain Dew launched 'Dub the Dew' — an online platform inviting fans to submit and vote on a name for their new green apple flavor. The campaign was designed to generate authentic fan engagement and crowdsource naming rights. What the brand team had not modeled was 4chan. Within hours of launch, organized communities on 4chan and Reddit had flooded the platform with submissions including 'Hitler did nothing wrong,' 'Gushing Granny,' 'Diabeetus,' and 'Apple Juice.' These were not random trolls — they were coordinated voting campaigns. By the time Mountain Dew's monitoring team noticed, 'Hitler did nothing wrong' was leading the poll by a significant margin. The campaign was pulled offline within 24 hours, with PepsiCo issuing an apology. The story was covered by The Guardian, BuzzFeed, Gawker, and dozens of major outlets. The flavor was eventually named 'Kickstart.'

There was no strategy for what happened — only a lesson it permanently embedded in marketing playbooks worldwide: any crowdsourced vote on the open internet requires active moderation, entry validation, and a kill switch. The upside of genuine fan engagement is real. So is the catastrophic downside of adversarial participation.

Campaign pulled within 24 hours. Covered by every major media outlet. Became a permanent case study in marketing courses on user-generated content and crowdsourcing failure modes. Ironically generated more awareness for Mountain Dew's green apple flavor than any successful naming campaign could have. The flavor launched as 'Kickstart' and became one of Mountain Dew's most successful sub-brands.