Gatorade Reaches Gen Z Using Historical Sports Footage to Showcase Brand Superiority

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Brief: Brand Superiority

Gatorade approached their agency of record TBWA/Chiat Day with the exciting opportunity to work on a new spot that would premier during the 2023 NBA finals, hailing their product as the best sports drink of all time. It’s what the agency calls a “brand superiority” spot.

As an initial concept, the spot would showcase famous athletes. For the sake of time, they’d go after existing footage instead of shooting original production. Then came the questions, “Where do we find this kind of footage?” and “What exactly are we looking for?” What’s more, Gatorade — like many B2C brands today — wants to start resonating with Gen Z, a consumer group with fast-growing buying power. How do you achieve this while leveraging historical footage?

Challenge: Tight Deadlines & Lots of Players

Once the deadlines were set, it was all systems go. An aggressive timeline meant the project required tight management, right down to the wire. The actual brief never changed, but like with any type of high stakes project, the script went through a number of iterations. For the agency, one of the most interesting challenges was maintaining an engaging, central storyline whilst integrating footage from various sources. “Initially we hadn’t planned to feature Michael Jordan but it absolutely made this spot stand out. Plus, the final voiceover from Eminem — who happens to be a huge Jordan fan — made it even more powerful,” shared Alyson Buoncristiani, Senior Producer, TBWA\Chiat\Day who led the project on the agency side.

Solution: Collaboration & Communication

“I knew this would be a massive undertaking so I needed a partner that would bring a team of seasoned content experts and who would be readily available to support me at a moment’s notice,” said Alyson Buoncristiani. “I was delighted to use the Catch+Release platform, which turned out to be a huge help and is an excellent way to organize and collaborate through the process.”

Katie Shanks, Sr. Project Manager at Catch+Release worked closely with Alyson and her Business Affairs team to coordinate all moving parts across the production company, agency and the client. Things constantly changed, as clips were swapped through the editing stage, adding in new clips sourced by the client. The final spot is an amazing and seamless blend of content, featuring the old and the new, and layered with beautiful works of art. The design and animation fell into place, leaving us with the final spot on that first air date.

Results: A Great Story for A Superior Brand

Gatorade was extremely happy with the spot which garnered a range of media coverage:

The creative energy that the full team put behind this spot paid off. Here are the campaign metrics achieved after initial launch made this one a slam dunk.

15 Placements
4.9M Impressions
100% 2+ Key Messages
93% Branded Multimedia Asset Usage.

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