Situation:

College Football is the most popular sport in America. With hundreds of millions of Americans tuning-in religiously week after week, sponsoring College Football was a huge opportunity for the Dr Pepper brand. And, in all honesty, and even bigger task seeing as though Dr Pepper is a soda, not a sports drink. Players don’t drink us, and we don’t have a natural place in the sport.

The Brief:

Make Dr Pepper synonymous with College Football, the most popular sport in America.

Objectives:

Increased consumption and brand awareness amongst its core consumers—people ages 18-34.

While Dr Pepper is a sponsor of College Football (the biggest sport in America), it’s not a sports drink… and soda doesn’t have a natural place on the field.

That’s why we turned our attention to the hundreds of millions of passionate fans that live, breath and religiously watch College Football week after week. Fan’s who don’t want another commercial interrupting their game. So while the other sponsors did that, we chose to entertain fans with content that celebrated them.

Enter, “Fansville” – a dramatic TV Show parody about a town made up entirely of die-hard College Football fans, and whose fandom is fueled by Dr Pepper. The season combined iconic Hollywood TV tropes with real-life fan behaviors, deep College Football insights and quintessential product placement creating a story arc just as dramatic as the sport itself.

But with much more silliness and quotable lines.

We knew to bring our TV show to life we would have to find the most relatable, recognizable fan behaviors amongst the craziest, most dedicated fans. We learned through on-the-ground research at tailgates (pre-game parties) that when it comes to College Football, love trumps logic, there’s absolutely no shame, and fandom = family.

Like Gatorade fuels players, we decided to fuel the fans and their illogical behavior. If Gatorade was for the field (turf), then Dr Pepper would be for the bleachers, parking lots and living rooms.

Episodes would air every few weeks during the commercial breaks of College Football games (August 20 - January 7), and feature comically dramatic fan storylines with Dr Pepper playing a supporting role. We saw Fan Parents finding evidence that their son is secretly interested in OTHER sports, a forbidden romance between rivals, a “season-ending” grilling injury, and even a criminal mystery centered around the College Football National Championship Trophy.

To add scale to Fansville, we casted real dramatic television actors and hired a 10-time Emmy Nominated director. And to win over the College Football audience, we gave the most pivotal roles like the town Doctor, Sheriff and Villain to real-life College Football Legends. Our season-long narrative culminated with a two-part finale that aired during the National Championship Game. And before the final game of the season ended we released a teaser for Fansville Season 2.

The campaign not only outperformed previous year’s campaigns, competitors and benchmarks amongst our audience, it also drove measurable sales impact…

Fansville was the most successful Brand Awareness Campaign in Dr Pepper history.

Tested in the 99th percentile for brand awareness of all ads EVER TESTED by Kantar Millward Brown.

63% of our target (18-34-year-olds) say Fansville makes them love Dr Pepper more (+33pts vs. 2017).

67% of current Dr Pepper drinkers felt Fansville made them want to buy more Dr Pepper (+38pts vs. 2017).

+3.4% lift in dollar sales, outperforming the category.

Over 1 billion impressions.

Over 300,000 mentions of Dr Pepper and Fansville content on Reddit, Twitter and Instagram from campaign launch through February 2019.

The best part? Fans watched and engaged with Fansville like a real TV show, not just commercials during game breaks, allowing them to continue being fans without being pulled out of CFB world.