Keurig Dr Pepper‘s Mark Shorey, its integrated social and communications director, said the brand’s “crazy, beautiful, unignorable” fandom has been one of the biggest gifts of his career.
Since its founding in 1885, the Coke challenger’s “irreverence” has struck a chord with customers. “It’s always gone a little bit against the grain. It’s always been a little abnormal, a little weird. That’s our special sauce,” the marketer said at ADWEEK’s Social Media Week 2026.
A decade ago, Dr Pepper decided to lean into its community, putting social at the center of its marketing strategy. It saw an opportunity to earn its way onto fridge shelves without matching its competitors’ hefty marketing spend, some of whom were investing “two, three, even four times as much.”
