If Mountain Dew brings up images of your older brothers hunkered down in the basement with said soda and bags of Cool Ranch Doritos, during marathon sessions of Dungeons & Dragons or World of Warcraft, you aren’t the only one. Pepsi acknowledges that their “dew message” isn’t reaching big cities, and is trying to spread the bright green liquid love to “cooler” places than the suburbs.

Bloomberg says Pepsi is going for the young, “urban cool” section of consumerdom in New York, Miami, L.A. and New Orleans, with a new marketing campaign for Mountain Dew, kicking off with ads featuring Lil Wayne and street skateboarder Paul Rodriguez.

“Our biggest opportunities are in those areas with the highest concentration of consumers who probably haven’t heard the dew message as focused as we could have,” said Brett O’Brien, vice president of marketing for Mountain Dew.

Who knew there was a “dew message” in the first place? The ad campaign revolves around that dewy aspect, with “This Is How We Dew” as its tagline.

Mountain Dew has traditionally done well in places like the suburbs of the Plains and Southeast, which makes sense as it has roots in the Tennessee moonshine business. Its inventors made a lemony soda to mix with the liquor, with early bottles showing a “gun-toting hillbilly chasing a federal agent from an outhouse.”

So yes, Lil Wayne will be a departure from that image.

*Thanks for the tip, Matt! You’re a winner.

PepsiCo Aims to Bring Urban Cool to Mountain Dew [Bloomberg]

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