How the Aflac Duck flew to Dr Pepper’s ‘Fansville’

Garth Knutson was out driving—he can’t recall where to—with his dog Scout in the passenger seat sticking her head out the window. That’s when it came to him like a vision. The Aflac Duck should star in another brand’s commercial. For Knutson, chief marketing officer of Aflac, it all made perfect sense. Over nearly 25 years as the brand’s smart-alecky mascot, the Duck had become a television star in his own right—so why not leverage that star power? A-List & Creativity Awards Enter for a chance to be recognized as the best in advertising Submit your entry here “The Aflac Duck is a celebrity,” Knutson said. “We and many other advertisers out there pay good money to have celebrities in their advertising. So I was like, other brands should want to use our celebrity in their advertising.” Knutson’s vision comes to life this week as the Aflac Duck makes a hard-hitting cameo in Dr Pepper’s “Fansville” franchise. “Feeding the Ducks” from Deutsch will air during college football games beginning this weekend. Like many “Fansville” ads, it makes ironic commentary on the state of college football—in this case, two big college football advertisers in an ad purporting to decry the effects of brands in college football. In many ways, brand collaborations and mashups are the new normal—Hagelslag and Heinz; Netflix and GM; Coke and Oreo and Grimace and the New York Mets, to name just a few. It’s less common for brand icons or mascots to invade one another’s properties—exceptions include Isaiah Mustafa, the Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” making a cameo in a Tide Super Bowl ad in 2018. Geico several years ago ran ads including the Pillsbury Doughboy and an M&M's spokescandy, which was paired with the insurer's gecko. The colliding worlds of Aflac and Dr Pepper make sense in aligning brands with different products and audiences but a shared sensibility that should be apparent to viewers, said Brad Rakes, Dr Pepper’s senior director of brand marketing. “If you’re a consumer and you see the Aflac Duck in the spot, the reaction should first be surprise—‘Wait, what? That’s the Aflac Duck?'—but then it’s, oh, of course the Aflac Duck would be a part of ‘Fansville.’ It just makes sense.” The companies are looking to build equity together better than either brand could do alone. The pairing could also have a beneficial payoff for Aflac as it looks to increase awareness among the younger audiences of Dr Pepper. “It’s hard to find a 50-year-old in America who doesn’t know the Aflac Duck, but you can certainly find plenty of 18- and 20-year-olds,” Knutson said. Pitch deck Knutson’s revelation came nearly a year ago as he was formulating Aflac’s college football plans for 2024. The supplemental insurance giant has been long associated with the sport, known for its ads with Deion Sanders, Nick Saban and the Duck running on fall Saturdays, as well as its title sponsorship of the annual Aflac Kickoff Game. Like Aflac, Dr Pepper is deeply associated with college football, including via its long-running “Fansville” campaign, which tells the story of college football fandom through an episodic drama set in a football-mad town. In recent years, the campaign has begun adding celebrities to the cast in the form of name, image and likeness athletes. Could the Duck be another? “The fans love Fansville. The fans love the Aflac Duck,” Knutson said. “It feels a little crazy to me, but I was like, maybe this wouldn’t be a bad thing.” Knutson thought enough of his idea to get Aflac’s creative agency, Dagger, involved. Dagger created a tongue-in-cheek pitch deck intended to interest other brands in hiring the Duck while zeroing in on an opportunity for Dr Pepper. It described an offer to pay the additional production costs the Duck would incur (“It’s like getting a celebrity for free,” Knutson said) along with a few creative “thought starters.” Knutson sent the 20-page deck to Brian Mead, a former colleague now with Dr Pepper’s in-house agency, Liquid Sunshine. Mead replied in just five minutes. “What can I do to make this happen?” Knutson was soon in a meeting with his counterpart, Keurig Dr Pepper CMO Andrew Springate, and Rakes. Dr Pepper had never brought another brand into “Fansville” before and executives were naturally leery of interfering with its success. But their regard for Aflac’s marketing, particularly the way the company handled college football, made them consider it, said Rakes. “We have a lot of admiration for the work that they do,” Rakes said of Aflac. “They get college football. So as we got chatting with Garth about ideas and and putting something together between these two brands, it just seemed to make a lot of sense. Even our voices, perspective and brand tones were alike, there was a lot more similarity there than differences.” Knutson nevertheless was surprised to see a second meeting had been called by Dr Pepper—along with Dr Pepper’s creative agency. “We come into the meeting, and they say, hey, we’d like to share with you a script. We’re going into production,” Knutson recalled. “Ryan [Lehr, Deutsch’s chief creative officer] starts reading the script and at 15 seconds in I go ‘Sold!’ I loved it so much.”

How the Aflac Duck flew to Dr Pepper’s ‘Fansville’

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