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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to this month's episode of on the Spot, where planners talk about brands they've never worked on. We're going to be talking today about British Airways and the campaign from Uncommon in London, which is a British original. And we're also going to be talking about Dr. Pepper. It's a Pepper thing. And the Fansville work, which is fantastic. We're going to be talking about that. Hey, before we get started though, we're at Speaking of Fansville, because this is work actually done by Deutsch in Los Angeles. We're going to be at Deutsch this coming Thursday. It's Thursday, October 23rd. We are nearly sold out. So this episode is dropping on Monday, I think, whatever that would be, what, the 19th or whatever. So you've got a couple of days to get those final tickets. You can get those tickets on our website@onstrategyshowcase.com under the Live tour tab. We've got a great show lined up in Deutsch and then we head to London next month. We're going to be there for the EFFIE Awards gala, recording actual interviews with winners live on the EFFIE Gala's evening and the day before that, we're gonna do a special event and we're not gonna do an event like last year where we had a full audience. We did it, I think, at Uncommon last year we did a full audience. We're doing a different sort of a. Sort of a salon type of an event. So there'll be more information out there. We will not have a crowd. So it's gonna be a smaller intimate gathering, but we'll share more once we get finished with the Los Angele. One last point I think would be regarding the FES. If you are in the US, the 2026 FES are open for entries. In fact, there's only a couple of weeks left. The final deadline is November 3rd. So if you are trying to polish your final case, maybe speed up that polishing because you don't have a lot of time left. And if you want to learn more about getting your case in, go to effie.org it's the 2026 USFIs. Good luck to everybody who enters. OK to today, this is a conversation with a couple of special guests. This is on the spot, Dr. Pepper and the terrific work, in my opinion, of British Airways for Uncommon London. Enjoy. Great to have Dan Ng here. He is chief Strategy Officer at the great agency Johannes Leonardo in New York City. Pleasure to be here. And we have Steve Walls. You used to refer Yourself as CSO type. I don't know if that's changed now, Steve, but you've been on the show before, so you're in Zurich and great to have you back, man.
- [02:44]
B
Thank you.
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A
And we have our usual misfits is our good friends from System one. We have Vanessa Chen.
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C
Hello.
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A
And we have Matt from Tracksuit who we always enjoy having on. Matt Herbert.
- [03:00]
D
We're back.
- [03:01]
C
Hello.
- [03:02]
A
We are back. And I did a silly thing yesterday. I believe I actually to the drugstore and they convinced me to get shots. I got a flu shot and a Covid booster. And today I feel like shit. So I'm gonna be. You'll probably hear it in my voice, but I think I've woken up with COVID and the flu combined in one. So I don't know what happened there, but we'll figure it all out as we go through this. So if I fall on the ground, you'll know exactly what happened. So let's start off by talking about the first brand. We picked two. We've picked British Airways and Dr. Pepper. We had Dr. Pepper at our Live from episode a couple of weeks ago. Derek Dabrowski came on and he was talking about the Dr. Pepper work. And I'm constantly fascinated with that stuff because I love the Fansville work. The Fansville campaign. I just think it's super easy. It's on its eighth year and so a lot of great work coming out of that. We'll talk about. But we're gonna start off first with British Airways. And it's a tough category. I've thought about my own behavior in terms of I make choices for certain airlines. And for example, we're here in Chicago. We've got United Airlines, you've got Delta, we've got American Airlines. Very large presence here. But if I ask myself why I truly pick United Airlines, it's because they have clear. Yeah. So that's the only reason I choose United. And I think that if without clear, it would be just schedule and price, it just seems that that has become the kind of the curr of airlines. And certainly post Covid, things have become even more difficult for airlines to make sort of a distinctive mark in terms of their brands. And I think it's kind of like if you go back to the principles of Ehrenberg Bass, you talk about having mental and physical availability. It's like you're a lock. If you're an airline, you've got a terminal, you've got gates. It's hard to break in. It's not easy in that category. But I will say this. When I first saw the British Airways war coming out of Uncommon, I was like, this is great shit. It felt really fresh and different. Now, going back to my bubble thing, I don't know whether just because I'm in the industry and I'm like, that looks fresh and unique. But this reasons to travel, Steve, just sort of struck me as a really interesting campaign out of Uncommon. What are your thoughts on it?
- [05:40]
B
Yeah, it's one of those weird ones, isn't it? I'm gonna go back a bit, because everybody thinks that British Airlines is a real poison chalice. I think everybody in advertising of a certain age, by which I mean old people just remember the face ad, and the world's favorite airline, and it's a super premium brand, and everybody wanted to work on it. But that was 1989. And ever since then, they've managed to kind of convince agencies that this is something that they should chase. But before this work happens, I was thinking about it because I was like, why do I like this work? And what did it do? And you go, okay, BA's lost its premium shine. It's got wedged between Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Premium Airlines up here, and budget airlines here. And because it does short haul and long haul, it doesn't know where to go. So it's cut food, it's cut services. The planes have got old. It's not a premium offer anymore. And you go, okay, so they've lost their shine. The fleet's getting really old. Nothing's being refurbished. So you can't show the inside of a plane. So that's gotta be part of the brief. It's like, whatever you do, don't show the inside of a plane.
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A
How much of that permeated consumer culture, though, consumer awareness?
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B
I think it was everywhere in the uk Cause it was this one big brand that you could feel great about that all of a sudden represented everything that had gone wrong with Britain. So you kind of go, remember when we were great? And now it's just British, it doesn't work. It's broken Britain.
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C
It's all of that stuff.
- [07:17]
B
So when I was thinking about it, you've got this brief, which is kind of interesting because you go, okay, we gotta drive frequency of travel. Because actually, domestic UK domestic travel was the slowest to come back post Covid. It bounced everywhere, but UK didn't. So they go, we gotta get people to travel more often. So excellent. We gotta increase our passenger load factor because we're below 85%. The planes are flying Empty. But actually we've got to restore a sense of premium and kind of evoke a sense of calm. Can we have a headline that doesn't have crisis in it? So you look at the work and.
- [07:58]
A
You go, gee, I didn't know any of this. To me over here, I still look at BA as being a premium carrier and every time I have flown ba I've had nothing but a great experience. So this is what you're saying I wasn't even aware of at all.
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B
Yeah, I got on a BA, I went 20 years between BA flights and I think I had the same plane and the same crew as they desperately.
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A
In other words. So it's just like any other airline because I feel the same way about American Airlines. Not just American Airlines. The brand, but the quality of the experience has become consistently bad across airlines. And I don't know, Dan, from your point of view here in the us, what's your impression of the brand?
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C
I mean, I'm a little biased. I spent some time in the UK as well and it has had that premium position for a long time. BBH had that long running campaign upgrade to ba. And you know what, having left and then come back, it's, you know, to this camp, to this brand, I just have this feeling that they spent a lot of time trying to find the Britishness and the empathy in there because I think it's all wonderful. It's wonderful flying on Emirates, it's wonderful flying Singapore Air. But there's something about an airline that serves a full English for breakfast or you know, someone who will be rude to you on the way into the plane but is actually quite kind, there's something about getting you and understanding you. And so when There are over 500 executions and out of home and they speak, they're speaking your language, understanding you and they're almost replaying that Heathrow scene from Love actually on billboards. There is not just a feeling of national pride. I think there's a feeling, oh, actually this is the airline that'll get me when I get on board. There is a level of empathy inside of it. So the creative was, I think if.
- [10:04]
A
You'Re British, it's there. If you're British, what do you mean?
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C
Or Anglophile, that's all right too. And there's a lot of us, not just those of us who have lived in the UK, but also those of us who watch BritBox and BBC America. And I mean the brand Britain is still very, very current globally and the best of British carries through in that work and Reminds you there's something brilliant about flying ba.
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A
Matt, how does it look from a tracksuit point of view in terms of data? Are these issues that Steve is bringing up, those reputational challenges, are they coming through in the data still? Are they?
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D
I'm liking Steve's hot takes here because when we look at British Airways across the US and the uk, very, very different strength of brand. When we look at the uk, one and two Brits prefer British Airways. So still one in two Brits are preferring British Airways as their most preferred airline.
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A
That's a huge factor because it's not as busy, there's not as many airline options in the UK that are.
- [11:16]
D
Oh, there's plenty. There are plenty. And I think that goes to that. Is it short haul, is it long haul, is it domestic? But if we are looking at international flights, they are by far the category leader still here in the uk. And so key takeaway, one in two Brits, most preferred airline, British Airways, when you take that over to the US, preference drops down to 14%. And so I think when you look at the campaigns that rolled out last year, there was the push into the us, has it done much? Potentially. Not that we're seeing in the data right now, but when we look at the uk, what we can see is these positive increases across the board for especially 18 to 34 year olds. And so if we have a look at conversion awareness to consideration of 7 percentage points, also down to preference, it's up 4, 5 percentage points. And I think when you look at the type of content that they came out with or the campaign, and it was, it's not you, London, it's me. And there were those, you know, there were these little, there was humor and there was relevance. And we know that one of the most important things in driving, brand health and conversion is relevance. Do people feel like this brand is for people like me? And I think British Airways did a fantastic job last year, especially with that humor, the funny, the poking fun at the British and it's come through really, really strongly.
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A
So the word clouds that come out of some of the work you guys do, what are people surfacing?
- [12:53]
D
There's still the traditional, there's still the premium and there is a cost perspective that's coming in. And I think that's probably, if there's one, watch out, it's the cost perceptions of ba. And as Steve was saying, you know, in the uk, for example, you can fly to, you can fly to Athens for 50 quid on Ryanair, or, you know, there is budget, there's super budget. There's also, you know, Virgin coming at more of that. Are we the new national carrier? So there is the heritage. Absolutely. That's still coming through. But there is this, you know, there is the squeeze around perceptions of cost and. And is it premium, is it not? Where does it fit? I think is a relevant call out from Steve that we're also kind of seeing in the reflections of attributes and perceptions.
- [13:40]
A
So, Dan, before I go to Vanessa, Dan, what do you think of this idea of a British original?
- [13:46]
C
Well, it's just that this relevance, that it is actually an airline for me, and that there is a cultural set of cultural codes on board once you, you know, once you're on the flight that is unmistakably British. And the way that they treat you in, it might rub some. Some other nationalities the wrong way. But it's per.
- [14:07]
D
It's.
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C
It's perfect. If you understand British culture, it is there, there's a theater to everything from the, you know, the, the uniforms being, you know, navy blue down to the food that's being served to the demeanor and the slip upper lip of the service. There is everything. I think you can fall in love with a brand pretty quickly if you love the uk. Hey, Dan, they're trying to bring back.
- [14:35]
D
Can I jump in here? As an objective New Zealander who lives in the UK now, when. Dan, when you say the Britishness might rub some people up the wrong way. I'd love to hear what you mean. And I'd also love to hear Steve's take around what did the American rubs you up the wrong way.
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C
It might not be warm, let's put it that way, when you're first bored. But everything is done with a very high level of professionalism. And eventually some act of kindness might accidentally, accidentally leak out. They might give you an extra fist.
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A
That is wild to me, man, because I've had the completely opposite feel. I think there's the formality of it, but there's sort of something nice in that formality versus somebody throwing you a biscuit. They actually hand it to you. I mean, the American experience is, you want a goddamn biscuit? Yes or no.
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C
But then say, hey, don't tell anyone. Here's an extra pack of biscuits. It's like, don't let anyone else know I'm being kind. There's a little bit of that.
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A
So there's the aloofness of the British character you feel is present.
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C
Yeah. And I think there's something about not with the humor, with the tone of the work that it's trying not to be saccharine. It's 500 executions. And maintaining that tone must have been crazy. But you can see that they don't want to be syrupy. There's a little bit of sarcasm, there's.
- [16:12]
B
A little bit of wit, and it's.
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C
Just putting a little bit of a barrier between you and sincerity. But underneath it, there's a kindness and an empathy and an understanding of what you really need when you travel.
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A
So, Vanessa, tell us about. Because I'm super interested in how a British audience is reacting to this work when we compare it to the American audience. Because the American audience, my understanding, did not get the reasons to travel, work the out of home. Maybe I'm wrong on that, Vanessa. I think we just got a different campaign more recently.
- [16:44]
E
You know, I really. I have test results against the UK audience. I did not test against the US audience, but I want to start by saying that the mark shift, you know, with Uncommon coming on board, it being post Covid, I have to commend the brand for really putting on a show. So, you know, when it comes to the out of Home and the Windows campaign, it was plastered in really iconic, massive placements around the city. One thing that we didn't necessarily test for this discussion, but the. The safety videos, I mean, that's really putting. That's really putting on a show. I mean, it's a spoof off of Jane Eyre. They're bringing, I guess, the Britishness in, but they're maintaining their British heritage, but they're adapting with where they want to go as a brand. They're bringing in humor, obviously, with the British original at a home, they're bringing in the humor, they're bringing in the safety videos, they're showcasing in Windows where someone wants to go. So they're bringing human wanderlust into the work. And it isn't riddled with RTBs. It's pure show, it's pure showmanship. So definitely celebrate all of the work from that standpoint. From a testing standpoint, At a home can be tricky to test. When you're comparing someone who might be testing an at a home board on a small screen versus a massive iconic placement in London, that is tricky. So what we see in the testing is that the British original with the humor, the branding is instantly recognizable and the humor is there. They're getting the cultural references, they're appreciating those, and it's evoking a really strong emotional response and it's exceeding the benchmark for UK at a home. So the UK benchmark for out of home is like 2.5. This is like three plus. With branding up into the 90s, Windows is actually not getting the same brand recognition. It's. It's actually being missed. And that's kind of. That always creates like a trickle effect of if you don't quite know who the brand is, then you're not quite going to get that emotional response. One thing that we also talked about with the team was how people in testing from the north versus south may be reacting to the BA work because BA is more regularly, you know, present in their world, maybe in, in the south area of the country versus north, where they may be more frequently thinking about Ryanair and others.
- [19:21]
A
Interesting. So one thing that's interesting, Steve, actually let me go to Matt. One thing, Matt, is I'd be curious whether that 50% preference has increased over the last 24 or 48 months. Is that something you can look up while I talk to Steve?
- [19:39]
D
Let me have a look at that for sure.
- [19:40]
A
Yeah. So, Steve, what are your thoughts on the actual executions themselves? I mean, do they sor. Bring what they need to be bringing?
- [19:48]
B
The product isn't ready yet. We're refurbishing, we're looking at stuff. We need to get a sense of scale and pride and premium. So to do something where you go, you know what, let's use the branding and let's use white and let's use humor and let's use Britishness is a very good answer to how do you build premium into a brand that doesn't have the product yet? I think it's really smart work that's kind of built off the restrictions because if you're Emirates and you're not paying for the fuel, you can put showers on board, you can carry tons and tons of water and then you can have Jennifer Aniston wander from the marble bar to the shower. You don't have that luxury here. You can't do what the kind of super premium people are doing. So what do you do? You don't show the plane, show the outside of it, show the branding of it, show pieces of it. But actually I just thought, I thought it was a really, really smart answer to how do we get some shine and luster back into a brand that isn't ready yet to go. Ta da. We've solved everything because they're not quite there yet. Matt, you look like you want to jump all over me.
- [21:07]
D
Oh, Steve, this is okay. This is brilliant. So as you've been speaking, I've jumped into the tracksuit Dashboard and our data from the last 12 months and I'm looking at preference and preference in the UK for international airlines. Preference for BA with people age 55 plus is down 7 percentage points from 53% to 46%. So BA is losing preference with 55 plus. When I change that to 18 to 34 year olds, preference has increased 7 percentage points from 60 to 67%. So the younger the age groups of Britain, preference for BA is going up for the older and I say that very carefully, preference is going down and these are the swings and then across the board. Fergus, to your point, preference is kind of plateauing. It's stable. At a nationally representative level, it's stable but you've got to slice and dice it to see where the customer segments and what's actually shifting that.
- [22:14]
A
We'll be right back. Want Always on Brand Metrics that Deliver Value to Stakeholders this episode is brought to you by Tracksuit, a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps consumer marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working? A not so secret fact is that companies pay $100,000 or more for brand tracking, which is out of the question for many modern brands whose budgets are under pressure. Tracksuit provides enterprise level brand tracking without the big price tag. Their in house research experts do the heavy lifting using best in class practices to craft and launch your survey and get you results fast. Tracksuit is fast becoming the common language for marketers and agencies to measure and communic the value of brand building. Check it out@gotracksuit.com that's gotracksuit.com are celebrities the secret sauce to ad effectiveness? What about music or brand characters? You can predict and improve advertising's commercial impact with System1's test yout ad Platform. Test yout Ad is the creative effectiveness platform that measures consumers emotional responses predicting the sales and growth impacts of advertising. You can test creative for linear and connected tv, digital, outdoor, audio and print channels from early concepts through to finished film plus access System One's Test yout Ad Premium platform with more than 150,000 ads in the database, you get the most accurate view of your category with results and rankings updated daily so create with confidence. To learn more visit systemonegroup.com that's System One group. Now back to the show. So let's switch to our next one. It is Dr. Pepper now. Dr. Pepper. I was surprised by this that Dr. Pepper is the second best selling soda in the United States. That blew my mind. They are ahead of Pepsi they are ahead of Sprite and they're a long way behind Coca Cola Classic. But Coca Cola Classic has roughly a 19% market share where Dr. Pepper is naked and neck with Pepsi, around 8%. But, wow, I had no idea that this is. Because this is a brand with a very specific taste. We'll talk about it in a while. But it kind of reminded me, Steve, of Marmite. You either love it or you hate it. And that brilliant campaign out of Adam and Eve, ddb. But we had, as I mentioned earlier, Derek Dabrowski was on the show in Dallas. He talked about this work for this product. This product came out in 1885. It's been around for an awful long time, and it's very, very popular within the southern part of the US Here. What do we think of this sort of work, Dan? Is this something that you're familiar with because you guys work on Sprite? So just disclaiming that approach.
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C
Yeah, disclaimer. And we won't be referencing that. I mean, interestingly, Dr. Pepper was first. It was before Coke and then before Pepsi. And it's always had a bit of an outsider vibe to it. It fell behind Coke, Coke very early on. It was sort of neck and neck, and then it just fell right off the cliff. And if you remember work from the 70s, I'm a pepper, you're a pepper. Don't you want to be a pepper, too? It's always played on its outsiderness as an image for the user. You know, you have to be a bit different to like Dr. Pepper. It has a sort of spiciness to it. They, you know, they top their 23 flavors right on the can. And maybe luckily or maybe because of their consistency, they've managed to ride a wave of spice forward, palate change in the U.S. flavors, flavors, things like Takis, these are all part of the same trend. Salsa outselling ketchup and all of that. And Dr. Pepper is right there. That said, I think the work is brilliant in that, you know, it takes that outsiderness. Like, I'm a different kind of person because I'm a fan of Dr. Pepper. And transfer that onto their sponsorship, college football. You have to be kind of a different kind of fan.
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B
You're not.
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C
I mean, it's different even from being a pro football fan. As you'll see. I think it was a Season eight, Season seven. Sorry. You have to be a particular kind of. Of crazy person to go every Saturday to either a living room, a friend's house, or a bar to support a college team. And I think finding that level of crazy fandom and then mapping it Back to the Dr. Pepper user identity was like a masterstroke. You have to be a super fan. And so now everyone who drinks this.
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A
This.
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C
Weird outsider drink now feels like they're part of a larger club. And I think they've done a step even further and they've given you a usage occasion. Well, every Saturday when we watch college football as a family, we also drink Dr. Pepper. And it's a little tongue in cheek, but it creates a new usage occasion for what might be something that's just on the periphery of the repertoire of someone who might be regularly a cult classic drinker. So I think just overall, like lots of smart moves. It's been like a seven year journey. And they finally did it. They finally killed Full Fat Pepsi.
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A
Yeah, I mean, it is pretty incredible. Steve. The campaign is in the Fansville campaign, which is the one targeted towards college football, which is a huge thing here in the US that's been around for eight years. And the foundation of that was really the fact that Larry Culpepper, which was a campaign that they did prior to that kind of fell apart and they needed to get a new direction to go in. So Deutsch in LA is the lead creative agency on that new work. And that new work, the way they talk about it is if Gatorade is the voice of for the people on the field, Dr. Pepper is for the people in the stands. So they've sort of, they've used that as a jumping off point to create this fictional small town world that's Fansville for you outside the U.S. what's your impression when you see this work?
- [28:57]
B
I mean, I love anything episodic. I was talking before. I grew up on ads that worked over decades. I watched the BT family grow up and the OXO family grow up. And I waited to see on Gold Blend whether they'd get together and who'd show up at Nicole's wedding on Renault. So that kind of. I love a soap opera and I love work this up. So I love that. What I like about this is, as you said, you kind of go, I've got a really long standing sports sponsorship and we've been throwing things on the field and we're doing whatever, but we ain't a sports drink. We're 150 calories and 39 grams of sugar. How do you tie those things together? Because we've been there forever. And the idea to kind of go take it away from the athletes and make it all about the People in the stands make it about the people in the polyester shirts that are watching is genius. And then you go, yeah, but what's the link? And I just love that idea of you got just irrational fandom. You know what? There is no rational reason and we're not going to try and make one. Sometimes people just love something thing. And let's just build on that. Who knows why you love Dr. Pepper, who knows why you love college football? But here's something that's a little random and a little quirky and it runs forever. But as you said, you kind of go, fantastic. We'll live in the stands, we'll live in the tailgate. We're not in an athlete's hand. It's just a really. It's a really smart answer to that brief of, you know, but what does tie us? You know, we've been in college football for so long, why it doesn't matter. It ain't a rational thing.
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A
Yeah. And I think the idea, because I asked Derek about, you know, where did this all come from and why all in on college ball? Because the vast majority of their budget goes towards Fanville. And he was talking about the fact that college ball is forever changing the rules of the game. The rules that surround it are always changing. And the amount of time that's dedicated to the college ball in terms of percentage of the year is always widening out. So it's become this huge thing. But in essence, there was this idea that Ryan Lehrer, who's the creative director at Deutsch, he's a huge fan of 80s soap operas, and that's where this fictional town came from. They were thinking, what if this was like a sitcom? And the quirkiness of 80s sitcoms, they would say, like, for example, your neighbor moves in next door and they're kind of weird and you have to interact with them. What if that was the referee? So they created this whole world around this sort of fictional sense of Fansville, which is like pretty amazing stuff, Dan, to be. I mean, and it's gone on for eight years, as you mentioned earlier.
- [32:04]
C
Right. I mean, it's great to have a property, to have created a property, and for that to be the equity, it just gives you just more options to work from. They could have gone back to the jingle. And I think they quickly figured out, hey, maybe we shouldn't be. Just for people who identify themselves as a little offbeat and weird, let's attach ourselves to something that's got a much larger population, college fans. And I think to your point, Point, the beginning of the series started at the same time that they went to a playoff format, like a big playoff format. And so that big change created a big plot point in season one and created a mystery. Yeah, I think overall we talk a lot here at jail about participation and I think there's something about the ritualization of this work. To your point, you're waiting for the next episode. You want part of watching the games on Saturdays is see the next episode of the season play out during the ad break and then for them to implant even further in there. Whenever these characters are watching college football, they're drinking Dr. Pepper. So they've created this ritual behavior around the brand and it goes a long way.
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A
Yeah, I mean, go ahead, sleep. I'll go to Vanessa now next.
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B
It builds on one of my favorite points, which is they've done the thing that modern creators do and no advertising agency does. They've built an audience rather than bought one. So, you know, we're incredibly lazy with our audiences because you go, buy me 5 million people, half a million will watch it and then buy me another 5 million people. And that's not what they've done with this is they've gone, we'll build a property that has people that want to see it. In the same way that if you're on a YouTube, a TikTok, if you're a creator of any kind of, you build your audience, you don't buy it. And that's what this has done. It has built its own fan base and its own audience in a way that advertising doesn't. Advertising is incredibly lazy and takes people for granted. Because we bought you, you'll watch it. Whereas this kind of goes, okay, the next episode needs to be good because we need to get the numbers again. And I love that. I'm all for brands kind of going, you know what, what if we had 10 million people waiting to tune in, waiting for the next thing? Rather than what if the media could track these people around the Internet until finally, at 2:30 in the morning, they click buy. So sorry. Hi, horse. Hi, Horse.
- [34:38]
A
Yeah, Vanessa, One of the great things about this is that it sort of. It deals with the challenge that comes up a lot on this show when we talk about, about this issue, which is branding. I mean, it is it. I think it is really well branded. Would you guys agree with that? With the results?
- [34:57]
E
Yeah. So with this one, I really needed to look at it. Gen pop versus football fans. I didn't do college football fans. I just did football fans. And one thing that I have to say first is Commend Deutsch and Dr. Pepper for their courage because it's a Pepper thing, is a longstanding campaign. They have generated all of the awards that you get with creative consistency. It is a very strong, high performing campaign to decide to not only do a separate campaign for football fans but also a campaign that what Steve was saying goes against the grain. All the data, whether or not you're in the uk, US or otherwise, will tell you that you're going to get a strong emotional response if you show the game, if you show the athletes, if you really dive into the sport. What they decided to do is dig into the fanaticism of fans, which is a decision that is going against the grain and what on top of that they decided to stick with it for eight years to then again create that consistency and reap the reward. What we see from a testing standpoint is the campaign can in some of the previous years and the orig starting years get kind of average scores from a brand from a strong branding perspective, long term branding perspective, but strong exceptional short term sales of potential. But now I tested the most recent ad and it actually scores like a 4.5amongst football fans. Really strong across all of the scores. Strong long term branding potential, strong short term sales lift, high brand fluency beating out really powerful campaigns of Pepsi and Coke who are diving into the sport. It's really exciting to see. So really commend the courage there.
- [36:56]
A
How about Matt, what's it look like on tracksuit?
- [36:59]
D
Yeah, for a flow on from what Vanessa's saying, one of the, in the soft drinks category, this is in the U.S. one of the biggest drivers of consideration and preference is like no other. And I think that you go back to the late 1800s, early 1900s, especially like Dr. Pepper has been, it's been, it's been, it's been its own thing. It's different, it's weird. It's not trying to be like anything else. I think that now over the last 12 months the strength of consideration and preference and awareness, you know those brand health funnel metrics with younger audiences has kind of plateaued and stabled a little bit. But there's also been a 15 percentage, a 15 percentage point increase in preference from people 55 and older.
- [37:42]
A
Steve, looks like you want to jump in here.
- [37:44]
B
I almost want to jump in, you know that now. I just think there's something, something kind of interesting in that, you know and I'm sure they didn't position it this way. Things just end up this way and Planner, blather, et cetera. If Coca Cola is what the world has in common, Coca Cola is about commonality. From Mean Joe Green all the way through Coca Cola, what we all have in common, share of Coke. Dr. Pepper is what makes us different and not as individuals, but as groups. College football fans are different. Young people are different. This group over here, a badge of Difference, is a really interesting positioning. When the brand leader is a badge of togetherness, it's kind of interesting that ends up there. That's the chart that planner draws about 10 years after the campaign. I think this campaign is great because it never had a planner near it. I apologize if there was, but I think they would have killed it stone dead with logic.
- [38:44]
A
Well, you know, there's an interesting. I'll be very brief here. There's an interesting story about that because there was planners involved with it. And even more disturbing for all of us on this call is the fact and for the cmo, when he talked about it last week, he said that they were spending about 10 months working on purpose for Dr. Pepper and they were just running rings around themselves trying to figure it out. And somebody in the room finally said it was a planner from the Richards group who finally said, doesn't the world just want to have some fun? And the CMO said that was the thing that sent all of this work into hyperdrive. That led to. Because after Larry Culpepper, they had to find a new way to shape the future of that campaign. So that was the fuel for all of that. One of the other things I wanted to mention was Heisman House. So Nissan has been doing Heisman House. And speaking of courage, they're now doing collaborative advertising with Nissan. So the Heisman House guys have now left the house and they're on the road. And Dr. Pepper characters are being inserted into the Nissan Heisman house. So it's this extension of IP and doing a lot of interesting things that are keeping this thing fresh over time. So, I mean, overall. Dan, let me get some of your thoughts on what's your impression overall, and do you think there's any way that they're not hitting the mark for you? No.
- [40:14]
C
I mean, I didn't know about the Heisman house. I mean, the fact that they're extending the Pepperverse into some other spaces is incredible.
- [40:23]
A
And they're doing something with Goodyear too, is planned to come out.
- [40:25]
C
That's. I mean, this shows the power of what they've built. I think when you talk about brands and the universe that we're working within we have to do something more to pull them into it. I think it's more than just brand preference. Maybe it's more brand love in this. You know, I think in this. In this current environment, sometimes, you know, think of this quote from Matt Groening. We succeed when we give fans something worthy of their devotion. And if you don't do that, you're just gonna maybe get a little bit of awareness and a little bit of attention, and then you'll just drift off versus this identification that people have, this ritualization that people have with this brand, and they've done a great job.
- [41:06]
A
So let's run around and get a summary before we wrap up here of your thoughts. When you look at BA and you look at Dr. Pepper, I'll start off with Steve, then I'll go to Matt, then I'll go to Vanessa, and I'll finish with Dan. So, Steve, when you look at both of these campaigns, do you. Can you give us a summary of what you like and then what you think are maybe opportunities for both of these campaigns or your overall impressions?
- [41:31]
B
I mean, on the BA Thing, I do really like the fact that they've managed to find a way around limitations. There's a ton of limitations on what we can and can't show. We found a way we're looking for that. I do think that some of it, I thought that that Windows especially, and this is just for me, spoke more to an advertising audience than an actual audience. So that, for me, it's really good when I get 500 reasons to fly. Not so keen on it when they go look at the art direction, but a really smart answer to a complex brief. And the Pepper stuff, I just love, because I love it when people throw logic out of the window and there's an understanding that there's an intimacy with the audience that kind of goes, we know this is what football looks like and feels like, and these are the kind of characters that you have. And even though they are caricatures, they're recognizable. And as you said, that idea of. I love content migration. I love the idea that characters created in a certain. I love the Pepperverse. I love the. That Dan. The characters created here don't have to live there. They can interact with other things. You've built these characters that, you know, on a Saturday, they're doing college football. I want to know what they're doing on a Thursday. And if that's driving a Nissan, I'm happy for that. But I love the idea of licensable characters.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah. Matt, how about You.
- [43:04]
D
Yeah, to that last point of Steve, it kind of reminds me of a previous episode we've talked about with Uber Eats and their activation through the Super Bowl. You know, like, really, really tying it to what is true for football fanatics, what is true to football fans, and how do you slot in in the right way, as opposed to trying to just throw your brand over the top of it? And Dr. Pepper, like, they are like nothing else, and they've been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. And so I think, you know, leaning into that and hearing you talk about, you know, the planning about what makes us distinctive, and that term distinctive is where Dr. Pepper is, is winning right now. You know, it's Dr. Pepper. It's not like anything else in QDOL to them for leaning into it and making it super relevant. And then ba, I mean, you look at the split in the audiences. Younger Brits absolutely loved what BA's come out with over the last 12 months, and preference is increasing. It's funny, it's humorous, it's a bit sarcastic. Whereas I think the older audience, maybe with longer experiences or remembering what BA used to be like, and it's not quite meeting up to those expectations. Maybe there's a job to be done there. So different, different brands, different audiences, different jobs to be done, but some quite interesting takes.
- [44:14]
A
Yeah.
- [44:15]
E
Vanessa, I really need to celebrate both brands. They're really both bringing the show pure entertainment. So, you know, in different, very different ways, but, you know, really, you know, brand, big brand, significant work. Um, that's crushing neutrality in the process, so I love to see it. Um, you know, one thing with British Airways is, you know, the branding, it. Sometimes it's, well branded, sometimes it's not. It's hard for me to say that they shouldn't have done Windows, because bending the rules is a really interesting way for a creative approach and definitely don't want to discourage any of that behavior on Dr. Pepper. Fansville. Honestly, no notes. It is crushing it against their goal of connecting it. Connecting with football fans. And with their creative consistency, they. They've. They've really achieved what they set out to do. So no notes. Just keep bringing the fun scripts.
- [45:14]
A
Nice. And, Dan, finally, I think both brands.
- [45:18]
C
Have done a brilliant job of reframing what they mean in today's culture. I think in New York, you know, you ask the question, you know, what changes is what matter changes? And I think the answer is unequivocally, yes. I think for brands, they have to adapt to the cultural environment, and I think in both cases, you had brands that maybe had created some distance between themselves and their intended users and in both cases they adapted. So in case of BA being part of the establishment, meant to Steve's point, being part of the wind down of post Brexit austerity, like this horrible feeling that Britain was losing and by sort of coming back and reframing it. This is a country that loves to travel, simply a country that just loves to travel and being on that side of things. Reframing the British Airways brand as one of identity, a British original, made all the difference. And I think the same with Dr. Pepper. You had a brand that for years had taken the difference in its taste and almost made its users outsiders. So do weirdos. And to bring it back and say, actually there's another place where you distinctively have a different sort of set of behaviors. As a fan, as college football fans, you're just, you know, you're a little bit different, but there's millions of you and sort of normalizing the brand within that also made all the difference. So, yeah, I feel like, you know, both brands did that job of, you know, getting closer to their audiences, you know, becoming more identity brands than, than they were before and done a great job entertaining people as a result.
- [46:53]
A
Love it. It is Vanessa chin from System 1, Matt Herbert from Tracksuit. We have Steve Walls, planner in Zurich, Switzerland, and Dan Ng is Chief Strategy Officer Johannes Leonardo in New York City. You guys are awesome. We'll put all of the work on the website and we will not forget to put Little Sweet up there too. For those of you who watch this episode, you've got to watch it because Little Sweet, which was the. Which was the Dr. Pepper, a diet Dr. Pepper character. Holy shit. That was amazing. That little dude, he's not coming back, I've heard, but it was great work for a couple of years. Little Sweet. Thank you all for doing this. It was brilliant to have Steve and Dan. I thank you guys for your time. And you guys better have a great week.
- [47:42]
C
Thank you so much.
- [47:44]
A
And we will see everybody on the next episode.