Summer 2019 saw Gatorade launch a new app to ignite amateur athlete imaginations by enabling young athletes to showcase their sports skills.
Gatorade gave teen athletes the tools to out-highlight and out-hype each other: to make sure everybody notices.
This US grassroots sports initiative, which was developed in partnership between Gatorade’s Digital Transformation Team, design and tech firm Work & Co and social agency Swift, was designed to activate a new vision for the brand’s social and digital presence.
The app led campaign aims to both refocus the sports brand’s social presence and to strengthen its message with a core audience – high school athletes.
The primary focus is on connecting with 13 to 17-year-old high school athletes in the social spaces where they typical hang out.
It enables teenage wannabees and hotshots to share and celebrate their athletic skills – from dunks and bycicle kicks – and then combine with a library of motion stickers and effects which were created to be relevant to a user’s respective sport and with each users own names, numbers, teams or positions.
Although it is a tool that is available to every sports to remember, record and spread specific moments.
The free app, on both iOS and Android, uses the phone camera to capture and respond to specific movements and motions such as the height of a jump or speed of a sprint and thus enables young sports stars to create and share their very own high-quality athletic moments in a ‘lightweight, easy-to-carry way’.
Promoted through a #ThisHighlight campaign led by a social strategy for paid and organic content spearheaded by a a set of three self-described ‘disruptive, feature-forward’ videos showing a team of teen athletes how to use the app to showcase their skills and their creativity.
For the launch, another objective was to make the app’s functionality immediately crystal clear to teens as soon as they landed on @gatorade’s feed – so they would be compelled to download.
So the marketing team juxtaposed action footage with a sticker showcase, to inspire teens to make their own sports highlights.
Plus, to further build credibility, the team asked athletes from Gatorade’s own professional athlete ambassador stable to post their own highlights-edited videos to their social channels along with a CTA to swipe up and download.
The app emerged as a response to a Gatorade brief to tap into and support tech-savvy teen athlete culture in a way that would embrace.
A strategy not simply based on ‘what the target consumer put into their bodies, but what they put into the world’.
In the research phase, Swift engaged with Gen Z via its very own Swiftography social-first research platform: it interviewed 28 athletes in seven key markets to find out about their hopes, fears and motivations around sports and culture.
The findings fueled the campaign.
It was founded on the facts and findings that teens already try to outdo one other with edits through regular Instagram and Snapchat effects.
While their favourite professional sports stars
While high budget media outlets pull out all the stops and use all the effects of experiences media professionals to show off the skills of the celebrity big league sports stars.
Gatorade decided to change that and provide the power and tools to amateur sports stars.
The Swift agency team, which deployed strategic, data science and creative skills, included Don Shelford (Executive Creative Director) Frank Brooks (Director of Production), Pat McCaren (Creative Director), Chad O’Connell (Associate Creative Director), Shloimy Notik (Associate Creative Director), Jake Hollomon (Art Director), Raina Jung (Designer), Martin Warszawski (Animator), BreAnna Wilson (Senior Project Manager), Matt Berry (Account Director), Meagan Kiene (Account Executive) and Cade Wallace (Producer).
Comment:
An app that asks and answers the question – who put the sports networks in charge?
This social-first approach certainly synchronises with how so many young athletes create, share and engage with their teammates and friends.
Mirroring existing, authentic target market behaviors, while also injecting a little humour to the swagger.
Thus the Highlights App encourages teens to celebrate their own wins and fill their feeds with their highlights.
This approach reflects how parent company PepsiCo – which primarily leverages high profile, professional athlete ambassadors in its marketing – also wants to focus on utilities for amateur and grass roots athletes.
But taking on Instagram……now that is a challenge.
Links:
Gatorade
https://www.youtube.com/user/GatoradeUK
https://twitter.com/gatoradeuk
https://www.facebook.com/gatoradeuk
https://www.pinterest.com/gatoradeuk/
Swift
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