That didn’t take long. Remember all those mysterious “What is G?” ads that ran back in January of this year featuring everyone from Lil Wayne to the Jabawockeez? The concept was to use the “What is G?” campaign to extend Gatorade’s brand to lifestyle including urban lifestyle and not just athletes.
The urban lifestyle campaign included promotions highlighting the Jabawockeez with Kevin Garnett, Murs in a series of short music videos, The Neptunes/ NERD Chad Hugo with an exclusive What is G song and a sponsorship of Talib Kweli’s “Blockhedz” cartoon. So how did the “What is G?” campaign turn out?
Sales and market share both fell in the first half, when the “What Is G?” marketing campaign was in full effect. In the first half of 2009, volume dropped 18%, according to Beverage Digest, while market share dropped four points to 75%. So yea…not good. Not good at all.
Although Gatorade spent millions in rebranding their famed drink, all it did was alienate the existing Gatorade consumer who was loyal to the brand and confuse the hell out of the target demo they were trying to capture. Gatorade learned their lesson and plans to drop the “What is G?” campaign and focus on what they are good at….connecting with athletes as a sports drink and not a lifestyle drink.
“The whole sport-drink category was invented by Gatorade. The time has come for us to get back to meaningful innovation for the category,” said Massimo d’Amore, CEO of PepsiCo/Gatorade. “For too long [the category] has relied on flavor extensions. It’s time to really reset the clock, and that’s what we’re trying to do in 2010.”
The new marketing campaign will be called “G Series” but will re-focus on athletic performance. G Series Prime will be a drink targeting a pre-work out/training regime while G Series Recover will be for post-work out/training. Marketing and advertising will focus on athletes once again, both amateur and professional as the days of Lil Wayne, Chad Hugo, Talib and any other hip-hop artist working with Gatorade are now over. Except maybe Timbaland. That guy must hit the gym every day…he could definitely use some G Series Prime and Recover.
I hated that campaign in the first place. Using hiphop artists suddenly does not make your product “urban lifestyle.”
It says it all right there. The execs get the research that “Gatorade is old” for people under 20 so they go and destroy the brand they built up in one year. Then they do it the wrong way. Way to go.
I don’t know ONE person who liked that What is G campaign or understood it was supposed to reach us (us being guys ages 18-23). They blew it on this one and we all know it.