Soda commercials tend to follow a formula. Hand meets cooler meets bottle meets sweet relief, hitting soda drinkers right in the tastebuds. And as attention spans get shorter and shorter, those product spots are just getting shorter and shorter.

But 2020 was rough. And 2021 didn’t need another 15 second product spot. It needed an escape.

MTN DEW is all about doing. After all, it’s in our name. So rather than force the world to sit through another :15 of a glistening bottle of MTN DEW, we wanted to give the world something it really needed.

What the world needed was Bob Ross – the soothing, soft-spoken TV icon who taught America to paint in the 80s. Though he died in 1995, his show “The Joy Of Painting” is still huge in 2021.

The world just needed a new episode. So we used facial-mapping technology to create “The Joy of Painting MTN DEW” – a 40 minute episode of Bob Ross’ classic TV show. Where he paints some mountains, some snow, and a frosty cold bottle of MTN DEW.

An episode our audience would actually follow along with – painting their own bottles of MTN DEW along with Bob, step by step.

We needed a product spot. The world needed Bob Ross. So we created a product spot people actually wanted. 40 minutes of branded content people would actually stick around for.

After all, how better to show people how refreshing and delicious a drink can be than showing someone paint each individual bead of condensation onto the bottle.

And hearing the dulcet tones of their favorite TV presenter describe how delicious a bottle of MTN DEW can be didn’t hurt, either.

We first launched with the :15 and :30 spot on TV, OLV, and social – bringing Bob back and showing him painting a MTN DEW. These assets ignited excitement on social and in the press, where we told people to tune into the YouTube premiere on Saturday, March 6th - where they could paint along with the full episode.

After the full episode launched, we also put the painting from the episode up for auction, which ended up selling for $1,600 - and the proceeds benefited the Bob Ross exhibit at the Minnetrista museum, where Bob’s original studio was.

Over 70,000 people have tuned in to watch the full episode and paint along on YouTube. The press also took notice as the campaign generated a total of 155 PR placements and garnering over 753.4M+ total impressions.

We also auctioned off the painting from the commercial, which sold for $1,600 and the proceeds went to the Bob Ross Experience.