Dr Pepper Scoops Up TV Ad Space

Can you recall the last time you saw a television spot for A&W root beer? It's been at least seven years. But new ads are appearing now, thanks to a deft bit of commercial ghoulishness on the part of Dr Pepper Snapple (DPS).

According to Bloomberg News (in an article not available online), Dr Pepper is buying up ad time that has been abandoned by defunct or troubled car dealers and banks in regional markets. The company is getting discounts of 5 to 10 percent for the spots, which will advertise A&W and Mott's apple juice - which also hasn't been advertised on TV for years.

The amount the company is saving on the discounted spots is being plowed into more advertising, marketing chief Jim Trebilcock told Bloomberg.

The ads are part of a cross-company rebranding effort for Dr Pepper, which was spun off from Cadbury last year and is the No. 3 soft-drink maker. Ads tout A&W's "aged vanilla" ingredient (which sounds pretty puffy), Snapple's "natural" ingredients, and flagship brand Dr Pepper's new cherry variant, which is being promoted in spots featuring Gene Simmons, the repellent Kiss guitarist who puts all his distasteful creepiness into his Dr Love character for the ads.

Spots for Mott's apple juice and applesauce are aimed at making the products appear less "boring" and more "sexy," Trebilcock said. Making applesauce sexy sounds like it would be either a very difficult or a very simple undertaking, depending on how it's done. It would be a bit creepy to think of the apple juice spot as "sexy," though, as good as Desperate Housewife star Marcia Cross looks in it, given the cute little kids running around:

This week, a Dr Pepper shares shot up after Goldman Sachs analyst Judy Hong issued a positive note saying that fundamentals "are trending even more favorably than we anticipated."