When you look at Dr Pepper and try to dissect what sets it apart from the competition, you’ll quickly find it. The one-of-a-kind mantra that has defined the brand for centuries has manifested itself into a one-of-a-kind fandom that is connected by their love of the 23 flavors.
And we’ve built the social presence of Dr Pepper around that brand love. We know how our fans feel about us, we know how they talk about their brand love, and when we see it out in the wild on social—we put it on a pedestal. Whether it’s for our own social content or a larger storytelling moment: the fuel is the brand’s fandom.
Enter Romeo Bingham, a Tacoma-based TikTok creator that had made a name for themselves with a comedic and self-aware personality and knack for storytelling of their own. One day in late December, they posted a short video featuring a jingle they wrote for Dr Pepper. It was unpolished and unfiltered, but the internet knew one thing—the catchiness of the jingle was undeniable. So TikTok did what it always does, jumped on the jingle with engagements, remixing it and making it an earworm that couldn’t be missed by anyone on TikTok, catapulting it into virality quickly (and currently sitting at over 138.9M views).
So what did Dr Pepper do? Responded immediately (of course). And then began working on giving the jingle and the creator a pedestal moment of their own that only Dr Pepper could.
Shortly after the virality of the jingle began taking off, we engaged with the creator’s post in our Dr Pepper-y way and then got moving on the path forward to give the moment an even bigger spotlight. With the speed of how fast things move on social, we knew it was crucial to jump into the conversation with more than a comment as quickly as we could.
And within two days, we had a plan and about a three-week window to pull it all off. Our plan was simple, but it was one that authentically addressed the moment, the creator, and their jingle—not a plan that co-opted it for the brand to own and manipulate.
It started with licensing the sound from Romeo. It was the thing that started it all. People gravitated toward its catchiness and simplicity, so that is where we needed to start. We used the sound in a social asset that made the partnership with Romeo official by creating a friendship bracelet with charms that referenced the iconic sound. This asset restarted the conversation from TikTok users and created a provocative moment in the comment thread with commenters giving props for jumping in, congratulating Romeo and the brand for partnering together, and some casting disappointment that (on the surface) this was all Dr Pepper was doing with the jingle. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
A few days after we posted the initial video, a key time period for Dr Pepper was about to have its tentpole moment: the College Football Playoff National Championship. This year in particular, we knew the matchup was going to cause a lot of people to tune in, so we did what we thought was going to be impossible…create a 15-second spot using the jingle (as a legit jingle) and traffic it in time to air during the game.
Once the jingle aired during the first half of the game, we posted an additional TikTok video using the audio that ranked the best words from the jingle…a simple but effective way to lean into both Dr Pepper fandom and the fandom around the jingle.
And once both of those hit the waves, the jingle was back on everyone’s mind and in everyone’s feeds again, but this time, it was about what Dr Pepper and Romeo did together.
Once Dr Pepper embraced Romeo’s jingle in real time, we took the spark they created and turned it into a culturally unavoidable brand moment while keeping the focus authentic to what the internet latched onto.
Across social, brand content generated 25.5M+ views and over 1.3M engagements, with several social posts outperforming benchmarks. That momentum carried on to our other content, producing a halo effect in views and engagements.
The impact wasn’t limited to social performance. With the National Championship becoming the most-watched CFB game in 11 years, pairing those eyeballs with this cultural moment sparked a second wave of buzz. Shortly after the spot aired, Dr Pepper trended on X and UGC flooded in on TikTok, creating a +1,176% increase in organic search for Dr Pepper during December and January. Creators celebrated the song’s jump from feed to broadcast, broke down the partnership strategy, or created their own speculative jingles in hopes of landing a similar deal. Many of these videos earned millions of views and thousands of engagements on their own.
Within 48 hours, the story continued in feeds and moved to the headlines, earning coverage from the Today Show, TMZ, Fast Company, and 270+ outlets, generating 4.1B earned impressions. By the “end” of the moment, what Romeo and Dr Pepper did together ended up driving the biggest YoY sales growth in the last 52 weeks—cementing this brand action as a case study in speed, relevance, and modern brand participation that drove impact for the brand.
