MARCH 17, 2021|ADVERTISING
How Mountain Dew Brought Bob Ross Back to Life and (Probably) Why
In recent years, legendary PBS show host and painter Bob Ross has been having a resurgence through old YouTube videos. Tapping into the nostalgia, Mountain Dew partnered with the Bob Ross Company to produce a "lost episode" where Ross paints a landscape with a bottle of Mountain Dew at the center.
Usually this type of brand-as-the-hero advertising falls flat, but something about watching this generated Bob Ross voiced by a good impersonator actually feels real. Yes, it's fake, but it's a good, innocent and watchable fake. And even though after watching I didn't really crave a Mt. Dew (or want to pick up a paintbrush) ... for any marketer that chooses to measure marketing success by "engagement," this was probably a huge success.
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How It All Started
A Short Backstory Of This Blog
This is a blog about non-obvious ideas. Originally launched on the Typepad platform in 2005 as the Influential Marketing blog, the stories at first focused mainly on digital marketing while Rohit worked at Ogilvy Advertising. In 2015 Rohit officially rebranded to the Non-Obvious Insights Blog and published his WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious. For the past twenty one years, this blog has coined new terms, introduced future marketing practices and inspired the next generation of non-obvious thinkers and marketers.
