Winning Gen-Xtreme

If you graduated from high school before 1999, and then went on to get a marketing degree, you are faced with a serious challenge: How does a typical Gen-Xer market a brand to Gen-Y teens and tweens without looking like a poser?

If you think sports tie-ins may be the answer, keep going. But if baseball is still your idea of The Great American Pastime, or that a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl will win over all those young guys, STOP!

Think shredding, think extreme, think of all those sports your mother warned you would win a quick ticket to the emergency room. Think of all those 14- to 24-year-olds (call them Gen-Xtreme) who love skateboarding, BMX biking and motocross. Better yet, take a look at what Pepsi’s Mountain Dew and a savvy cadre of like-minded brand partners have lined up for the summer of 2005 via the Dew Action Sports Tour.

Even before there were organized competitions for extreme sports, Mountain Dew was there. Before Dogtown was a sports Mecca, Dew was signing partnerships with action sports athletes. Via these alliances, teens and tweens saw it not as a bright-yellow caffeine-infused soft drink, but as a member of the action-sports community.

“As a mainstream brand, it can be challenging to break into action sports and be seen as credible,” says Jaime Weinstein, Pepsi-Cola North America’s marketing manager for action sports. “It’s important to support it in the right way — taking care of the competition, the competitors and the fans.”

A founding partner of ESPN’s X-Games in 1994, Mountain Dew raised the bar this year with the June 9 kickoff of the Dew Action Sports Tour (DAST) in Louisville, KY. The five-event series is co-owned by NBC Sports and the motorsports division of Clear Channel Entertainment. Dew sets the tone for a lineup of other veteran and newbie brands that have come on board as founding sponsors, associates and marketing partners.

“Our research shows that there are more kids participating in action sports in the U.S. than there are playing Little League Baseball,” says Ethan Green, DAST’s senior director of marketing. “Tweens are attracted to action sports because of the individuality factor, which is very important to kids.”

Get beyond the dirt bikes and skateboards: Extreme sports are also about a non-conforming lifestyle, from the clothes to the music.

“Tweens are making independent buying decisions,” Green says. “Friends may not share the same interest in music as they do skateboarding, but they could go to the tour because there is something for both of them.”

Given that independent thinking, how will the young fans respond to brands in the arena?

“Kids are smart, they go to these action sports events expecting a sponsor to be there,” says Mike Musachio, executive VP and creative director for TracyLocke (Wilton), which is AOR for Dew’s parent Pepsi. “But they also know when a brand is authentic. They know when a sponsor wants to become a part of a community and when a sponsor is just tagging on.”

At each tour site, TracyLocke constructs The House of Dew, which is all about the action sports lifestyle. Sponsored skateboarders Shaun White and Paul Rodriguez hang out at the House to interact with fans, who can also hit the Napster lounge and download tunes from their favorite athlete’s play lists. They can go into the PlayStation2 room and play video games, or the tattoo parlor for a temporary air brushed design of their favorite athlete’s name. And they can go to the product sampling kitchen for, of course, some Dew.

Off-site, Dew is activating with promotion exclusive to retailer Wal-Mart. More than 25 million 14 oz. cans of Mountain Dew will feature DAST athletes. The collectible cans hit shelves last month.

“Getting action sports on the Wal-Mart shelves and out there to teens is tremendous,” Tracy Locke’s Jay Verna says. “That kind of exposure is a huge win for DAST and all action sports.”

Leveraging another winning tactic, Pepsi has rolled out an under-the-cap offer tied to DAST. Winners of the Go Pro! Contest can attend a World Series game or a DAST Dew event, or qualify for caps, T-shirts and keychains. Fans enter the codes at Pepsigopro. com or Dewgopro.com, or text to a Yahoo Mobile account.

Recognizing that Dew has the street creds with the target audience, several other brands are riding along. Panasonic signed as sponsor of the first leg of the tour, the Panasonic Open. Other founding sponsors title the remaining events: the Right Guard Open in Denver (July), Vans Invitational in Portland, OR (August), Toyota Challenge, San Jose (September) and PlayStation Pro, Orlando (October).

In addition, Oxy Acne Solutions, Peanut Chews and Pacific Cycle have jumped on board as associate sponsors, while Transworld Media, Napster and MAD Magazine are promotional sponsors.

New to the culture, these brands are learning fast. They’re activating at tour stops, tying DAST into retail and online properties, running sweepstakes and cross-promoting with fellow tour sponsors.

Right Guard, for example, is also activating at Wal-Mart. Since March, it has aired TV spots featuring the athletes it sponsors; these run in a two-hour loop on Wal-Mart’s in-store TVnetwork.

Sport shoe maker Vans, which has an extreme sports legacy even older than Mountain Dew’s, brings that heritage on-site with the Vans RV, says Spokesperson Chris Overholser. The brand turns 40 next year, and the RV features a mural depicting its history. Like the House of Dew, it’s also a place where fans can meet athletes like skateboarder Bucky Lasek, who Vans sponsors.

The RV houses an Internet kiosk, where fans can design a custom pair of Vans sports shoes. They then receive a coded printout of the show agenda, which they can enter on the Vans Customs Web site if they choose to purchase the footwear.

Vans distributes about 130 general admission tickets to events to its retail partners and their staff. Further sweetening the deal for retailers, the company brings in Lasek for autograph signings at Vans retail stores in DAST markets. In-store promotions give consumers a chance to win a pair of Bucky Lasik 2 shoes.

A drive on the wild side

While teens and tweens won’t be driving off in Toyota Tacomas pick-up trucks, the automaker is using the DAST as an entrée back into action sports. The automaker was part of the Gravity Games when they were created in 1999, but dropped out after the 2001 season.

“Action sports have grown in popularity even since we exited the Gravity Games,” says Doug Frisbie, Toyota event marketing administrator. “(DATS) approached us about sponsoring the tour and we…decided it would be a great fit.”

Though Toyota is targeting consumers 18 and older (think parents of the teens and tweens, or second-generation action sports fans), Frisbie says creating brand equity among younger fans doesn’t hurt.

Toyota is taking an edgy approach to its DATS activation. A Tacoma customized by motocross bike and helmet maker Troy Lee is the centerpiece of its on-site and online activations. The truck, displayed at tour stops, will be given away as the grand prize of an online sweeps. In addition, daily prizes include Yamaha dirt bikes, DVDs, skateboards and gift cards from Target.

Toyota also collects leads from consumers who ask for info about its vehicles, as well as text messages about other on-site events, athlete interaction opportunities and chances for prizes while they are at DAST.

Like Toyota and Mountain Dew, Panasonic doesn’t target teens and tweens exclusively. Gene Kelsey, VP of Panasonic’s brand strategy group, says there is a connection between the products and action sports.

“We’ve done our research, and when kids aren’t on their skateboards and dirt bikes, they are making videos of them or watching action sports DVDs,” Kelsey says.

On tour, the company is offering hands-on technology clinics. Off-site, Panasonic’s activation includes TV spots of action sports being filmed with its digital camcorders. The ads, which appear during DAST TV coverage, steer consumers to comeonover.com, a Panasonic microsite, which features the series of ads, as well as segments on how the footage was captured.

“[Teens] use these products as much as their parents do, and we want to show action sports fans how our products are a part of the activity and lifestyle,” Kelsey says.

That multi-generational appeal applies even to DC Comics’ MAD Magazine, which says its anti-authority rep is a perfect fit for action sports.

“People go absolutely nuts when they see us at an action-sports event,” says MAD associate publisher David McKillips. “We’re one of those rare brands that kids easily identify with and that parents still think is cool.”

In addition to board stickers and free magazines, MAD brings its artists on the tour to draw caricatures, while promoting its Back To School Ultimate Road Trip sweeps, which gives consumers a chance on wardrobes, video game systems and a trip to DAST. PlayStation Pro event.

Not every brand can play the cross-generational card. DAST associate sponsors, Oxy Acne Solutions and Peanut Chews, each have specific youth appeal. Both were recently sold to new parent companies and both are being rebranded.

Via an endorsement deal with BMX star Dave Mirra and previous exposure as a national brand, Oxy’s mission of attaching itself to action sports is a little easier.

“We’re rebranding and repositioning Oxy to target the active teen, and we’re skewing male,” says John Cimperman, principal at East Aurora, NY-based Cenergy Sports, Oxy’s AOR. The brand, which was bought in December by Buffalo-based pharma company Mentholatum, is getting positioned as a lifestyle brand rather than a medicine. DAST is the only property Oxy is investing in under its new strategy.

“DAST gives us the opportunity to get on the ground floor of something that we think will have longevity,” Cimperman said.

On tour, Oxy targets teens and tweens, as well as the purseholders — their parents. “We’re giving coupons to the adults, who will make the purchase, and samples to the kids, who make the buying decisions,” Cimperman says.

While Oxy had a national following before its re-branding, the Peanut Chews brand is new to anyone who wasn’t raised between Philadelphia and Boston, and parts of Florida. The 87-year old candy was sold by Goldenberg to Just Born in 2003. Its new parent sees action sports as its entree to a national market.

“We have a very good product and we saw an opportunity to make it a bigger brand,” says Just Born marketing director John Kerr. DAST is the largest investment the company has ever made in a sponsorship.

Relaunched in April, Peanut Chews are being pitched as a portable energy source to teens and tweens. On the tour, Peanut Chews is showing that it knows skateboarding, and wants action sports fans, in turn, to learn about it. The brand has rolled out a museum of different boards to show it’s knowledge of both skate and surf. In addition to product sampling, consumers can also have their photo taken so it looks like they are doing stunts on BMX bikes, and will build a database by allowing fans to retrieve the pics online.

“Our target audience is 18-24 with a slightly male skew, but we’re hoping our sampling will have a halo effect,” Kerr says. “People of all ages love candy, and we want this sampling to build brand awareness.”

Kerr says the brand will roll out a consumer promotion down the road, though plans have not been announced. The brand will also tie sampling into Mountain Dew’s Free Flow Tour, an amateur skateboarding event, to additionally raise brand awareness.

Playing Nice

Despite competing on- and off-site for brand awareness, Ethan Green, Dew Action Sports Tour senior director of marketing, says the Tour’s sponsors have no problem working together. He likens DAST to NASCAR, where sponsors compete with multiple brands even at the team level, each with separate branding messages. In fact, he says, the Dew Tour has less of a problem with brands overlapping with each athlete’s sponsors.

“Sponsors are telling us that they feel they have an ownership stake in this by coming in at the ground level,” Green says. “They really do feel like it’s their baby. I’m not sure they’d look at it in the same way if this was a 10 or 15-year-old tour, but it may be one of the benefits of starting something new.”