Hard Mountain Dew Throws a Rager at a Florida Retirement Village

Scores of Floridians started lining up long before their neighborhood pool opened, and once it did, they quickly got down to the business at hand: dancing to live music, taking group photos, doing the limbo and sampling a new canned cocktail with a citrus kick.

The recent gathering, hosted by Hard Mountain Dew, had all the makings of an epic spring break bash. Because it was—except the guests weren’t millennials in Miami or college students in Daytona Beach.

The attendees were folks of a certain age living in a retirement community in the otherwise sleepy Gulf Coast town of North Port, halfway between Fort Myers and Tampa. The residents helped Hard Mountain Dew launch a new flavor called Livewire, while showing a visiting 34-year-old contest winner how they “Do the Dew.” 

The event proved at least a few points: Rowdy retirees are not an urban legend, and carefully selected participants and a seemingly incongruous location can bring a marketing stunt to glorious life.

‘Really?’

Hard Mountain Dew’s goal was to “tap into the quirky, the unexpected and the downright outrageous—and yeah, maybe hoping we make drinkers think ‘really?’” Erica Taylor, senior brand director, told Adweek. “It’s all in the name of giving our fans once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and experiences.”

The “Definitely Over 21” event, orchestrated by public relations firm Golin, drew more than 300 residents of the 55-and-over Cypress Falls retirement village. They are, admittedly, not the bullseye demo for Hard Mountain Dew.

But a South Carolina man named Brian Anderson does represent the target audience, and he was a key figure at the party after winning the trip from the brand.

“The best part of the day has been meeting all these beautiful people, having all these conversations with wonderful people who know how to party,” Anderson says on the brand’s video, shot on a brilliantly sunny day in mid-March.

Mixing the young guest of honor with senior citizens was part of the stunt’s charm, as was taking it out of a typical nightclub venue and putting it in a place better known for shuffleboard and mahjong. 

The geography made sense because Florida is “synonymous with citrus, spring break and residents a wee bit beyond the legal drinking age,” per the brand. But embedding in a retirement complex, and creating content around it, gave the brand an eye-catching hook for a social media campaign.

“Launching a new alcoholic beverage at a retirement community has never been done before—we checked!—so we had a feeling this was going to be something special,” Taylor said.

Just a number

During the event that spilled over its planned three-hour run time, the OG party monsters consumed “more than 750 cans” of Hard Mountain Dew and tried to tote “branded umbrellas, posters and floats back home with them-–or to send to grandchildren,” Taylor said.

The crowd “did not disappoint and quickly proved that age is just a number,” Taylor said, noting that Hard Mountain Dew may have added some new “passionate brand advocates” among the elderly populace.

While it may sound a tad outlandish, “Definitely Over 21” is perfectly on-brand. Hard Mountain Dew, a collaboration between PepsiCo and the Boston Beer Company, established its over-the-top personality when it debuted in early 2022 in three states. A contest on social media asked consumers what they would be willing to do to get a first taste of the product via the “How Far Would You Go” promo.

“We heard it all, from wrestling a grizzly bear to hugging a cactus,” Taylor said.

A follow-up program borrowed its tagline from a classic schoolyard taunt, saying if fans liked the beverage so much, they should marry it. Someone did—Indiana resident Thomas Rank got hitched to a can of Hard Mountain Dew in a Las Vegas ceremony.

Now available in 11 states, the brand continues its rollout, with other pranks and partnerships in the works.