From Dr Pepper’s perspective, Larry Culpepper is the ultimate college football fan. He’s got an opinion on everything — he even takes credit for coming up with the idea for the College Football Playoff.
Culpepper is that goofy, somewhat annoying, concessions guy toting Dr Pepper from the stands to the sideline and to the locker room in those spots from the soft drink.
The campaign, created by Deutsch LA, hasn’t been without some controversy, though. A lot of fans didn’t like it
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Dr Pepper worked wtih Deutsch LA on the ad campaign.
Photo by: Dr Pepper |
when Culpepper, in one of the commercials, said that this is the only season that counts.
“You don’t necessarily have to agree with Larry,” said Ryan Lehr, a creative director at Deutsch LA who worked on Dr Pepper’s campaign. “Some people got upset by that. But in the world of sports, you run into a lot of one-of-a-kind characters.”
{podcast}
SBJ Podcast:
College writer Michael Smith and Assistant Managing Editor Tom Stinson discuss Dr Pepper's hold on the college football postseason as well as Geico's move to sponsor the floor-apron space at college basketball courts.
Rob Temple, ESPN’s senior vice president of sports management who oversees the CFP sales, said the network grants sponsors “as much latitude as possible when they’re having fun and connecting with the fans.”
But Dr Pepper and Deutsch did run into a few delicate situations throughout the creative process. One of the commercials has Culpepper sneaking into a restricted area, where he comes across the playoff trophy. In the final spot, he reaches for the trophy but doesn’t actually touch it.
The original script had Larry hoisting the trophy like he had just won a championship. After all, he claims to have conceived the idea for the four-team playoff. But the CFP didn’t want the first image of the trophy being hoisted to come in a commercial spot, so they asked Deutsch for a rewrite. Organizers want the actual CFP champions to be the first ones on Jan. 12 to hold up the trophy.
Overnight, Deutsch writers crafted a new script that had Larry taking a selfie with the trophy, but not actually touching it.
