Over the past five years, the brand has built a reputation for releasing new flavors of Dr Pepper, whether they were permanent like Dr Pepper & Cream Soda or a limited-time flavor like Dr Pepper Dark Berry released in 2019 (and 2022). Fast-forward to the summer of 2024, when Dr Pepper was gearing up to release its newest limited-time flavor: Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut.
The objective of this campaign was no different than the brand’s priority for the full year: Build consideration of Dr Pepper with new users and drive incremental category growth through bringing new drinkers into the brand and increasing the frequency among current consumers. The release of new flavors has historically been a surefire way to hit those objectives, and the last LTO release (Dr Pepper Dark Berry) was no different. The flavor drove an additional +14% increase in frequency due to the cultlike fandom surrounding it (we still get comments on every social post to bring it back)—so we had quite a task at hand to try and lap its success.
For this campaign, our primary media buy was focused on a platform that the brand not only had been seeing success on, but one that was a key social network for an audience that was growing to love the brand: TikTok and Gen Z.
Knowing that we could focus on one primary platform, we began to determine how best to approach the creative idea and how it could relate to this new, coconut-flavored beverage. For a social-first campaign, we took to social to determine where we could carve out a strategic way in to help announce that Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut is here and you need to try it.
What we found was simple: coconut was taking over everything. Skincare products, other wellness-focused beverages and snacks, and, lest we forget, the dirty soda trend that showed up in all of our For You pages. In fact, coconut-flavored beverages were a $1B business and were up +20.97% in volume vs. the yearly average.
This combination of the rise of coconut products and focus on TikTok led us to our creative idea to personify the takeover of the flavor on our social feeds. Thus, the Creamy Coconut Head Takeover was born.
The creative of this campaign was simple in execution, but strategically grounded. We created two “spokes-coconuts” (fitted with coconut heads) to tell viewers about the new limited-time flavor by taking over TikTok trends. We created versions of some of the biggest trends seen on TikTok, starting with the “We’re best friends, of course we…” trend, cleverly replacing “best friends” with “Creamy Coconuts” and explaining their love for new Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut. We also had the Coconut Heads show off the “Things That Just Make Sense” with their summer cabana, film a classic “In the Car Taste Test” to give their reviews of the new product, show us their “GRWM” routine, and lastly give “Thirst Trap” a whole new meaning.
The Creamy Coconut Heads did indeed take over TikTok and created a campaign that was a resounding success both from a performance and a business perspective. We saw 43M total impressions with a 41% higher video view rate than the average :06 ad on TikTok, netting us +18.6% above the benchmark—a huge win for such a skippable platform. More than that, our campaign had a +20.2% ad recall vs the 6.6% Kantar norm and increased brand awareness by 8.8%.
When we look at the impact to the business, we brought in 4M new drinkers, saw 30% repeat purchases, and were crowned the #1 most consumed summer CSD innovation. In fact, it was so popular that it became the best-selling limited-time flavor for Dr Pepper ever.
