Aflac CMO Garth Knutson was driving around Seattle late last year when he had an epiphany about his company’s most enduring pitchman. The Aflac duck is a celebrity, he thought, and we pay celebrities to be in our ads. Why can’t the duck be in some other brand’s commercials?
Knutson teased the idea out in his head and arrived on a likely partner, Dr Pepper, whose ubiquitous “Fansville” ads are among his favorite non-Aflac campaigns. A number of phone calls and one low-res PDF later, he was in a meeting with his counterpart at Dr Pepper.
The result of that idea was unveiled Friday, a new 30-second Fansville commercial that features the duck waving an Aflac flag. It’s a rare crossover between two of college football’s most prominent advertisers, and a first for the insurance company. Aflac has never, Knutson said, used its own branding or IP in this way inside another company’s commercial.
“They sell soda, we sell supplemental health insurance—from a competition standpoint we couldn’t be further apart,” Knutson said in an interview. “But we’re both selling to a broad base of America, and we both choose college football as one of the ways we talk about our products.”
The ad will air on television through the end of the year. Aflac (NYSE: AFL) covered the production costs associated with the duck’s involvement, Knutson said, with no additional licensing or talent fee. Keurig Dr Pepper Inc (Nasdaq: KDP) is handling the bulk of the ad buys to run the spot, he added, though Aflac is pitching in to pay a small portion of those costs. Knutson didn’t provide financial specifics, and a Dr Pepper representative didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the process or the financials.
After having the original idea late last year, Knutson said he mentioned it in his next one-on-one with Aflac president Virgil Miller, who encouraged him to try to make it work. The next step, Knutson said, was to speak with folks at Dagger, Aflac’s creative agency of record in Atlanta. They worked together to build a roughly 20-page pitch deck for Dr Pepper, a tongue-in-cheek breakdown of the duck’s accomplishments in the 24 years that Aflac has been using it in ads. The deck mentioned the duck’s history, its various co-stars through the years, plus its other accomplishments, such as a 2004 induction into the Madison Avenue Walk of Fame and its philanthropic work with children suffering from cancer or blood disorders. The duck, the document said, is open for work.
In early 2024, Knutson said he texted a low-res PDF of the duck deck to Brian Mead, a former colleague, who currently works as an account director at Liquid Sunshine, Dr Pepper’s in-house creative agency. There were no accompanying words in the text message, just the slideshow file. Knutson said Mead responded almost immediately: How can we make this happen?
From there Aflac’s creative team had a call with counterparts at Keurig Dr Pepper, including CMO Andrew Springate. The meeting went well, Knutson recalled, but then conversation went quiet for a number of weeks. On June 17—Knutson knew the exact date off the top of his head—reps for Dr Pepper and its agency pitched Aflac on a rough script of the ad released this week.
“They got like 18 seconds into a 30-second script and, I remember this, I audibly said, ‘Sold!,’” Knutson said. “It was exactly what I was hoping for.”
Dr Pepper and its agency then made the ad, with some input from Aflac.
While cross-brand marketing is rare, it’s not unheard-of. It’s perhaps most common in the entertainment world, where new movies or TV shows will sometimes partner with consumer brands to promote both.
Aflac has done a bit of this, Knutson said. The Aflac duck has appeared in the Toy Story universe, alongside Jim Carrey in a promo for a Lemony Snicket movie, in an ad for a 2017 reboot of Disney’s DuckTales, and most recently, running on a rooftop alongside the cat from Puss in Boots. Knutson said it was those types of partnerships that gave him the idea for reaching out to Dr Pepper.
Eagle-eyed TV viewers might also notice sister brands from the same parent company advertise together. Doritos and Pepsi, for example, both owned by PepsiCo, have been co-featured in commercials in the past.
This collaboration between Aflac and Dr Pepper doesn’t fit either bucket. It works, Knutson said, because the two companies are not competitors and college football fans are already familiar with their IP.
Aflac’s college pitchmen include former Alabama coach Nick Saban, who is entering his sixth year appearing alongside the duck, and Colorado coach Deion Sanders, who is entering his fourth. Dr Pepper’s serialized “Fansville” ads, now in their seventh season, have featured current and former college stars, including Caleb Williams, Bryce Young and Quinn Ewers. Dr Pepper is the name sponsor of the Big 12 football championship game, with a halftime scholarship contest that has taken on its own viral fame; Aflac is the name sponsor for the Peach Bowl’s kickoff game in Atlanta, with a long-running trivia segment that pops up on broadcasts of all sorts.
In terms of TV ads, Dr Pepper is one of the five biggest spenders on college football, alongside a group of insurance companies—Allstate, State Farm, Geico and Progressive—according to media buyer estimates. Aflac is in the Top 20.
The partnership has other pieces, including social promotion that includes the duck in the Fansville universe. Aflac employees, Knutson said, will show up to work on Monday across the company’s main five campuses greeted by supermarket-style Dr Pepper activations and fridges stocked with soda.
Knutson said Aflac has no plans to do similar co-branded ads, but is open to them in the future if the right situation arises.
“Next year is the Aflac duck’s 25th anniversary, and that’s a pretty big year,” he said. “We haven’t started any conversation with anybody on other partnerships like this, but it’s definitely getting the wheels turning.”
With assistance from Anthony Crupi.
