Mountain Dew apologizes with merchandise and new bottle design
MARQUETTE– Tons of people lined up outside Upper Peninsula Supply Company in order to get their free merchandise from Mountain Dew, who made a terrible mistake in their “Dewnited States” campaign.
“We accidentally included the U.P. as part of Wisconsin in one of our stylized maps,” said Nicole Portwood, VP of marketing at Mountain Dew. “The people of the U.P. being as proud as they are and there awesome place called us out on it. It was an honest mistake but it was a mistake none the less.”
“So about a month ago I sent out the first tweet to send this whole thing viral,” said Bugsy Sailor, Owner and Founder of Upper Peninsula Supply Co. “Little by little that number of retweets and likes kept popping up pretty fast and it was incredible to watch.”
“We engaged with them (UP Supply Co.) to design a custom Upper Peninsula Dewnited label,” said Portwood. “We made those bottles and were here today to give them away and thank the people of the Upper Peninsula for being so awesome.”
“I thought it was really cool how they recognized that they made the mistake. It seems like that happens pretty often that the UP is forgotten,” said Travis Ryan, Assistant Pastor at NorthIron Church. “But they owned up to it, they came up here, they made some pretty cool stuff and gave that away to people so i thought it was pretty cool that they did that.”
“It’s no secret to us that we are left off the map frequently or associated with Wisconsin or Canada,” said Sailor. “So it’s awesome to see Mountain Dew participate in a fun way to give back to the community. (Mountain Dew) Actually came here, send some executives here as well. So it’s a really fun opportunity and our role through the shop has always been finding new ways to celebrate the U.P.”
Even the young Yoopers came out to show their support.
“My name is John and I love the UP,” said John Cassidy Laffata, local UP resident.
Mountain Dew has also offered certain attendees apology gifts who were unable to get a gift bag.