Dr Pepper has launched a new ad, tapping TikTok user Romeo Bingham’s homemade jingle for the drink brand, which took the platform by storm in recent weeks.
The jingle will be featured in a TV spot set to air twice during the College Football Playoff National Championship on ESPN.
“College football is the temple that Dr. Pepper is most closely connected to,” Ben Sylvan, senior VP of connected media for Dr Pepper said.
The 15-second ad, created by Deutsch, will air in commercial time that was originally purchased for Dr Pepper’s college football-themed ‘Fansville’ franchise. The change means that two 30-second ‘Fansville’ commercials will air during the game instead of the planned three.
Bingham’s brief but catchy jingle—“Dr Pepper, baby, it’s good and nice”—was posted to TikTok on 23 December and raced to more than 25 million views, inspiring other creators to generate remixes, dances and self-made commercials.
The explosion of activity and demands that Dr Pepper officially participate was a “brick to forehead” moment for the brand, Sylvan said.
“The signal was so loud that ignoring it wasn’t really an option,” Sylvan said.
Deutsch’s ad shows Dr Pepper varieties and a fizzing soda pour set to a remix of the jingle, with on-screen lyrics and the “doot doot doot” outro that was absent from some TikTok remixes and became its own subgenre of the song’s virality. @Romeosshow credits appear in the bottom corner in the style of a music video.
“Rather than overcomplicating the idea, we focused on honouring what made the jingle special in the first place. We kept the execution simple, built around the original hook, and let the earworm lead,” Deutsch’s co-chief creative officer Ryan Lehr said.
Bingham, a 25-year-old caregiver from Tacoma, Washington, told Ad Age that they were already a Dr Pepper fan before posting the video, with friends and family often teasing them for ordering the soda “no ice” when dining out.
Bingham said they expected the original post to top out at “maybe 200,000 likes,” but never spiral into a moment that would reach national TV. “I was blown away once it took off like that”.
Dr Pepper said it licensed the jingle from Bingham as part of the activation. The brand will be working with the creator on more social content over the coming months, Sylvan said.
Sylvan said the response underscores the importance of watching audiences in real time alongside more traditional ad planning tools.
“We spend so much of our time doing diagnostics on who our buyers are, where we have a right to win. And that’s work we have to continue to do. But you can’t lose sight of what people are just telling you. If you have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people telling you that this is resonating, it’s telling you this is powerful content, and could be really impactful for your brand,” he said.
