An analysis of the worst sports talk radio commercial ever

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I was tuning in to my Mike & Mike program on my ESPN radio ap this morning folks when I heard one of the most poorly-researched, poorly written commercals in the history of mankind. The commercal was for Dr Pepper, and was read aloud by Ryan Rusillo. I dont blame Ryan for reading it, in fact the exectuton was pretty good, but the comercal which was some kind of lengthy flaling attempt for Dr Pepper, a soft drink, to make you associate it very closely with college football, a sport.

This type of thing is pretty common for brands who're exclusive sposnsors of sports leagues, or in the case of the NCAA, a governoring body that makes money off of something that is definitely not a business. However, few attempts are bad enough to require a full breakdown of just how terrble they are. This one was basically a series of no sequitor lines of dialogue that were like they asked there 10 worst copywriters to hit themselves in the forehead with a knife and then write one sentence on a strip of paper about football and soda, and then arranged them by putting them into a toilet and sticking a leaf blower in there and placing them in order that they flew out and stuck to the panel ceiling.

Here it is:

The one of a kind taste of Dr Pepper and college football go way back. As long as people been tailgating they've been doing it with dr pepper. Watching college football wihtout a delicious Dr Pepper is like watching the game at home without throwing a party, or even worse, throwing a party on gameday without a Dr Pepper. If college footballs a quarterback,  Dr Peppers its favorite wide receiver. Thats right, the same Dr Pepper you can pick up at Dollar General, take home, and watch your favorite football team with.

Lets break this down.

The one of a kind taste of Dr Pepper and college football go way back.

This is true. Allthough listing the taste of Dr pepper as "One of a kind" may be incorrect to anyone whose ever drank Mr. Pibb, Pibb Extra, Dr. Perky, or mixed Cheerwine with wintergreen skoal. You could make the case that it goes way back to 1885.

Likewise college football goes way back. So far, so good.

As long as people been tailgating they've been doing it with dr pepper.

Besides the fact that this statement is ludicrous, its also flagrantley false. You know what I think when I see a Dr Pepper at a tailgate? Who brought there kids here and do I have to put my shirt back on. Lets take a look back at the history of the soda itself to see if there claim is true.

It was first sold as a "brain tonic" in Morrisons Family Store in Waco, Texas in 1885. And who dosen't want to drink a neuro-altering psycho-cognitive formula from the same town thats give us David Koresh, Timmy McVeigh, and Robert Griffins me-first attitude? It wasnt even avalable nationwide until the 1960s when a federal judge ruled it was not a cola and therefore not subject to monopoly deals that Coke and Pepsi had in place.

Tailgating, on the other hand was invented when acenstors of Ryan Fitzpatrick and Tyler Varga threw a party at the tai end of a train that was taking people to a Harvard-Yale football game, hwich is interesting because Dr Pepper wouldnt distribute from the Northeast for another 60 years, and the chance that anyone from Waco Texas would ever attend Hardvard OR Yale is highly to infinitely certainly unlikely.

Now heres the intresting part- Wade Morrison, the original proprietr of Dr Pepper, spent his early life in rural Virginia, right outside Blacksburg. He worked in a pharmacy there and fell in love with a local fellas teenage daughter. Morrinson was 17  and yadda yadda yadda, Morrison had to amscray the hell out of town and move to Texas when the girls dad found out.  The name of the angry dad- you guest it, was "Dr. Pepper".

So the name of the soda was given to just troll the abosolute hell out of his ex-girlfriends old dad. The company decided to drop the punctuation and just call the drink "Dr Pepper" which is the format that it still uses to this day, presumabley to honor Morrisons affinity for things that didnt have periods.

Watching college football wihtout a delicious Dr Pepper is like watching the game at home without throwing a party

I actually agree with this because either way your having way more fun. I hate throwing house football parties because no one will ever do the wave and you have a hundred pizza boxes to throw away later and its impossible to fit a pizza box into a trash can, especally when Ive allready filled the bin up with all my guests unopened Dr Peppers the instant they step foot on my soil.

Or even worse, throwing a party on gameday without a Dr Pepper.

You literaly just said this.

If college footballs a quarterback,  Dr Peppers its favorite wide receiver.

Not edgy enough. Surge's favorite position is 69, and your not going to keep up with your competition by being scared to get a little freaky with it.

(Ad exec goes over copy). Hmmm, its good, but I feel like theres not enough refrences to watching or playing football in it so far,is there a way we can make the soda bottle a football player.

Folks when I buy a Dr Pepper from a vending machine the position Im thinking about is give me my nickle back. SMH.

And just in case you think this is but one example of Dr Peppers ad copy being sub par, here is a literal list of catchphrases Dr P has used in its lifetime. Again, these are not made-up this is literaly what they have used:

-"Good For Life"

-"Americas Most Misunderstood Soft-Drink"

-"It Tastes and it Looks"

-"Dr Pepper, so misunderstood "

-"Solves all your problems"

-"Dr Pepper, whats the worst that could happen?"

Love how they have gone back to the well twice of accusing the public for being too dumb to understand why there product doesnt actually suck. The only way these slogans could be any worse is if they somehow screwed it up so badly that they also advertised for a different company altogether in the middle of there own commerc-

Thats right, the same Dr Pepper you can pick up at Dollar General, take home, and watch your favorite football team with.

The hell are you talking about. Why are you even talking about Dollar General. Yes, I think I'll pick up a case of somehow-warmer-than-room-temperature Dr Pepper with the carrying handles allready broke off at my local dollar general where the outside pavement is more old pieces of black gum than asphault at this point. Way to cheapen your brand. Dr Pepper has lost control of the program here and is going out of its way to remind people that they can proudly buy it at a store that sucks.

By the way, great work for Dollar Generals brand to sneak into a Dr Pepper Commercial, its like Lincoln Chafee just kind of showing up at the debate and offering to help split the tab and Jim Webb said yea what the hell because he figured every other canidate would want to save a little cash as much as he would.

Outstanding work on there part sneaking into this ESPN radio commercial without having to do much of anything other then giving Dr P a little price break on a one-time volume purchase that there going to continue to sell for at least 5 years after the expiraton date. You dont get into bed with a swashbuckling company like Dollar General whose business model is literaly "we're the cheapest bastards in town" and walk away without getting your balls cut off with a sword:

Dollar General exec: So its a deal then.

Dr Pepper exec: Absoluteley. We'll sell you 100,000 cases of our scratch 'n' dent sodas where part of the outside of the package is allready partially torn off so there's like a ton of that half-ply cardboard thats white instead of the original graphics we had printed, for $300,000 and then you will sell them to idiots.

Dollar General exec: Tell you what. Just because I like you alot, and your a good guy, tell you what I'll do. I'll let you drop every case on your way into the store and have you guys put a little extra dust around the mouth of the cans for the low, low. additional cost of mentioning us during your nationwide commercials on ESPN and the ESPN Radio and implying that we're also a offical sponsor of the college football playoff in a ad-buy that will put our brand directly into the ears of tens of millions of our targeted demographic. God, my boss would kill me if I knew I was offering this deal to you.

Dr Pepper exec: Sounds extremely fair.

Dollar General exec: (Shakes hands then turns around laughing gently, then laughing a little bt harder and more evil as the camera starts to zoom in on him and dramatic music plays and he cracks a smile and has a gold tooth he took off the CEO of Sanyo in exchnge for buying there entire stock of curly cord car chargers.)

In conclusion

In conclusion, this commercial is maybe the worst written thing not published in the German Prison Press of the 1920s. It has no directon, and you know who else was all over the map?

It would be more effective to have The Admiral who ran for VP under Ross Perot just reading the ingredents list wearing studded condoms as spectacles. Its not like I didnt like Dr Pepper to begin with, in my experence its the best soda to mix with 151 proof rum, but now Im a Mr Pibb man for life. Mr Pibb is the working mans Doctor Peppter, the kind you can actually put in a lunchpail, plus I dont have to think about this GD ad everytime I take a sip. And even though some may say Mr Pibb is just a cut-rate imitation, at least its not bad copy.