Few institutions in American culture have seen as much upheaval in recent years as college football, and that hasn’t gone unnoticed by “Fansville,” the football-mad town where everyone drinks Dr Pepper and pulls for State with the ferocious zeal of a true fanatic—only more so.

College football fans have seen the game they love go through significant change, from name, image and likeness laws to the transfer portal, jarring conference realignments and, beginning this season, an expanded 12-team playoff. This revolution has all but been writing the scripts for “Fansville,” its creators say, helping to keep the episodic ad franchise relevant into its seventh year while scoring points for Dr Pepper, which has seen its fortunes rise as the campaign has progressed.

“One of the great things about ‘Fansville’ is that it allows us to comment on the sport of college football. And college football in the last five years has gone through enormous change, the most in its entire existence,” said Ryan Lehr, co-chief creative officer at Deutsch LA, which created the concept for Dr Pepper. “Every time there’s a rule change or a conference realignment, it allows us to put that through the filter of how this would affect ‘Fansville’ and the characters. And that’s allowed us to keep things fresh.”

The first episode of the 2024 season made clever references to the return of the EA Sports college football video game, the Michigan sign-stealing scandal and the “Hype Train” of Colorado’s Deion Sanders. And it didn’t shy away from exploring the cost to traditions and rivalries the college shakeup has brought, as seen when the character Julia slams her laptop and dramatically exclaims, “I hate my new conference!” (Much of the “Fansville” dialogue consists of dramatic exclamations, from “There’s other sodas?” to “That’s his Dr Pepper hand!”)

“Fansville” debuted in 2018, succeeding four years of commercials featuring an oddball concessionaire named Larry Culpepper, a character who professed to have invented the College Football Championship. According to Keurig Dr Pepper Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Springate, parting with Culpepper caused some “hand-wringing” at the brand (some fans are still calling for his return today). “As the football landscape was evolving, we were ready to kind of freshen up how we approach things, and so made a difficult decision at the time, or at least what we thought was a risk, to say, hey, let’s at least explore other things.”

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Springate and Lehr were part of a team from the brand and agency that toured college football games and gathered fan insights in 2017 and 2018. A key stop was the 2018 National Championship game between Alabama and Georgia, where they interviewed tailgating attendees in the rain, immersing themselves in the culture of one of college football’s biggest rivalries, the kind at the center of the “State” vs. “Tech” war that fuels so much drama in “Fansville.”

“It was a lot of fun because it seemed like we were on an away field, being in Atlanta—the home field for another soda brand—and it felt like we were surrounded,” Lehr recalled, referring to Coca-Cola. “Dr Pepper is sort of the underdog soda, and in many ways college football is about the underdog.”

Deutsch’s idea was to portray fan passions by spoofing a serialized parody of teen dramas like “Friday Night Lights” (ads have since explored other genres including sci-fi, courtroom dramas, rom-coms and action movies). Dr Pepper marketing executives saw four or five different ideas from Deutsch, but “Fansville” “jumped off the page,” recalled Springate. “We immediately knew this was something unique in its approach. We thought it was a great way of celebrating college football fans and celebrating Dr Pepper fans. It was the perfect marriage of the brand and our interaction with college football.”

Many characters from the first season of the series are still with the franchise, including the Sherriff, played by former NFL linebacker Brian Bosworth; Logan, the face-painted everyman fan; rival lovers Ramon and Julia; Jay, the grilling ace, and his high-strung wife Natalie; rebellious CJ and his overbearing, tradition-bound parents.

“I don’t remember an ad campaign that has had storylines that we’ve introduced in season one, and they’re still paying off in season seven,” Lehr said.

Over the years, the series has become confident enough to invert its universe and acknowledge it’s an ad campaign. In one episode, characters tuning in to watch football on television encounter a version of the commercial they appear on called “Fanstown”—“They play these too much,” Logan complains. The season four finale of “Fansville” included an obscure tribute to the “snow globe” ending of the TV drama “St. Elsewhere,” but stacked an even bigger surprise upon that—the globe the “Fansville” cast inhabit appears to be in the living room of Culpepper, the concessionaire.

The real star of “Fansville,” however, is Dr Pepper, whose products, colors and details are woven deeply into the town and its residents, and figures prominently in plots, emphasizing the uniqueness of the brand and driving home its association with college football. And “Fansville” is doing its part in Dr Pepper’s ongoing momentum. The brand has gained market share in seven consecutive years—“that’s no easy feat,” Springate said—while surpassing $5 billion in annual sales and reaching 36% of U.S. households. The soda this year made Ad Age's annual America's Hottest Brands list.

Dr Pepper outperformed the carbonated beverage category in the first half of 2024, with a 0.2% increase in volume and a 4.3% increase in dollars, according to Beverage Digest. It has surpassed Pepsi in dollar market share (7.5% vs. 7.4%) and has narrowed its volume share deficit relative to Coke and Pepsi.

Texas-based Dr Pepper has a 75-year association with college football, Springate said, including as a sponsor of the College Football Playoff (which began in the 2014-15 season) and presenting sponsorship of the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy in a deal that goes through 2026. It has been a Southeastern Conference sponsor since 1993.

College football is the second most popular sport by viewership and attendance in the U.S., said Springate. Moreover, he said, watching college football is a “treat” occasion for a “treat” brand like Dr Pepper.

“We’re seen as a leader in college football, which we love. I think we connect with people. And ultimately ‘Fansville’ has driven business results, which we really care about,” Springate said. “That’s been the most rewarding part of the campaign.”

Overdramatizing the dramatic

Lehr believes “Fansville” succeeds because, at its core, it’s a sports story not about athletes or teams, but about fans.

“Fans are always in the background—they cut to the fans cheering after the quarterback scores, that’s how Hollywood treats fans,” Lehr said. “We thought, putting the entire series through the eyes of fans has been such a fertile sandbox for us that’s allowed us to keep on creating new storylines.”

Parodying TV dramas “allowed us to overdramatize what is already dramatic—the experience of being a college football fan,” he continued. “College football fans live and die with their team, so there’s already an inherent drama there. Then you can take a normally mundane thing like a fumble and push it to a level of drama you might find on a CBS prime-time show—levels of absurdity that’s allowed us to a lot of fun.”

The drumbeat of change in college football—notably the 2021 implementation of NIL rules allowing college athletes to benefit from marketing appearances—gave “Fansville” athlete characters such as DJ Uiagalelei (2021), Bryce Young (2022), Caleb Williams (2023) and, this year, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, who appears as Bosworth’s deputy in an ad that debuted this morning. The spot makes reference to Texas backup quarterback Arch Manning, grandson of Archie Manning and nephew to Peyton and Eli.

Springate said the episodic nature of the campaign—seven or eight different ads throughout the season that together tell a story—was challenging to viewers in its first season. But the brand believed in the concept, and football fans were eventually won over.

Some “Fansville” enthusiasts are about as intense as the characters they love. One has dedicated himself to examining the cultural and historical significance of the campaign, along with a liberal dose of conspiracy speculation—his YouTube breakdown of seasons 1-4 is two hours long. The same fan has also taken to bite-sized analysis on TikTok.

“They’re called fans because of, you know, fanaticism, and so they take it to a level that’s sort of absurd,” Lehr said of the “Fansville” cast. “And so in ‘Fansville,’ we have to even go that much further to make these stories entertaining and funny. We have to go further than what fans will do. And it’s sometimes hard to compete, because fans already are kind of wild.”

“Fansville” spots will air throughout the college football season on ESPN, CBS and Fox. Ads will also appear across radio, out of home and on Dr Pepper social media accounts. Social and digital will be “critical pieces of our media channel mix,” a Dr Pepper spokesperson said, with digital spend increasing by 20% over last year.

The brand will partner with NIL athletes and TikTok influencers in support of the brand’s annual Tuition Giveaway program tied to its football advertising.

This season also features a custom merchandise tie-in. Nigel Xavier, the designer whose patchwork style and textile manipulation helped him win Netflix’s “Next in Fashion” competition, has created several pieces that will appear in ads throughout the season. The custom jacket shown off in the first episode will be available for fans to win through the brand’s Pepper Perks loyalty program. Dr Pepper’s college football marketing this season also includes a partnership with Krispy Kreme, which recently announced a seasonal doughnut line that includes some with Dr Pepper-flavored frosting.

In an industry that’s quick to move onto the next thing, “Fansville” is becoming notable for its longevity. But it’s more just the fortitude to stick with the campaign, Springate said, it’s about a willingness to adjust as needed. “I think the continuity has been a big part of our success. The other thing has been the ability to refresh, and not say the same thing over and over … [We] talk about what’s changing, and use that a way to bring humor.”

Lehr credits the brand’s focus on its audience and what it cares about—the events on and off the field that rock college football. “Dr Pepper, they know their role in the sport,” he said. “They’re not an athletic drink on the sidelines, they’re in the stands, with the fans.”