A nostalgic, mental wellness, blockbuster US campaign starring a team of athlete ambassadors linking sport’s past, present and future revives Gatorade’s iconic ‘Is IT In You?’ tagline from the 1990s in what is the PepsiCo brand’s largest-ever marketing push. Spearheaded by a 60-second video narrated by NBA hoops legend and brand icon Michael Jordan, the spot also features athletes currently at the peak of their powers such as Josh Allen and Jayson Tatum, as well as young stars such as the WNBA’s Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson just beginning their journey to sporting greatness.
Objective
The campaign sets out to combat the intense societal pressures placed on each generation of athletes and aims to add a fresh, contemporary energy to its classic, 1990s ‘Is IT In You?’ umbrella idea in order to encourage the next generation of athletes to ignore the noise.
This approach seeks to address the growing pressures and distractions faced by amateur and elite athletes today versus those stars from three decades ago. Indeed, it emerged from research showing that 53% of Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) athletes who stopped playing sports did so because of external factors led by ‘social pressure’ and ‘unrealistic expectations’.
Activation
The marketing-leading sports drink’s response to these insights was to revive the brand’s classic idea and tagline which ran through the 1990s and 2000s through an updated #IsItInYou? campaign developed with agency TBWA/Chiat/Day LA.
‘It IT In You’ was initially introduced and popularized through campaigns featuring NBA all-time-great and Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan dripping in Gatorade-coloured drops of sweat. And this latest marketing burst again sees Jordan reintroduce the concept of ‘IT’ – that mysterious character quality and personality trait which the brand defines as the “inner drive that fuels greatness.”
The flagship commercial debuted on 28 May during the NBA Western Conference Finals and then dropped online from 29 May and the campaign will run throughout the summer spiking around the NBA Finals, the new WNBA season, plus UEFA Euro 2024 and the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.
The spearhead 60-second spot, titled ‘IT Hasn’t Changed’, is narrated by Jordan – the brand’s longest-serving athlete endorser – and serves as a reminder to athletes that greatness isn’t about aspects like hype, clout or likes, but one’s own determination.
The film also includes appearances from a number of Gatorade’s roster athletes, including Josh Allen, Caitlin Clark, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Jayson Tatum, A’ja Wilson, and DJ Lagway, who share stories of how they’ve overcome personal obstacles by channeling their ‘IT’ while being seen dripping in Gatorade-colored sweat in a nod to the original ads.
The film’s soundtrack is ‘FE!N’ by Travis Scott (featuring Playboi Carti) and it encourages viewers to ‘Fuel up with what drives the game at Gatorade.com’
@gatorade The game is changing, but what fuels an athlete never will. #IsItInYou? ♬ original sound – Gatorade
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Additional marketing strands within the campaign include a ‘colored sweat takeover’ on social media from Gatorade’s athlete stable, and custom filters on Snapchat and Instagram, plus billboards in key cities across the USA.
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“The return of ‘Is It In You?’, our biggest campaign of all time, is about acknowledging how much the sports landscape has changed, while reminding athletes that one thing hasn’t – the inner drive that fuels you – and that’s what matters most.”
Gatorade Chief Brand Officer Anuj Bhasin
Outcome
As well as reachin ESPN’s 6.6m average viewers for its TV premiere during the NBA Eastern Conference Finals (Game 4), within 24 hours of its social launch the hero spot had notched up 8m views on TikTok, 1m on Instagram and another 250k on the brand’s own YouTube channel.
This campaign touches upon several current sports marketing trends.
Unsurprisingly, it is one of several major brands putting the well-being of athletes at the heart of their marketing: other examples of this include Dove (with its ‘Hard Knocks’ project) and Athleta (through its ‘Find Your Movement’ campaign).
It is also one of an avalanche of ads currently featuring current hoops phenom and WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark: other notable examples include State Farm’s ‘Inner Baller’ and Xfinity.
In fact, this is the third Gatorade campaign to feature Caitlin Clark since she joined the drinks’ brand’s sports ambassador roster in December 2023 with other campaigns including ‘You Can To’ and ‘It’s Just getting Started’.
Perhaps more interestingly, this campaign is part of marketing’s current ‘nostalgia’ trend.
This revival of Gatorade’s decades-old tagline follows in the footsteps of many marketing strategies: including that of sister brand Pepsi which celebrated 125 years by resurfacing past ads, as well as the return of nostalgia platforms from Coca-Cola brands Sprite and Fanta.
Gatorade’s blockbuster campaign also reflects the ‘go big’ approach seen in several recent ‘biggest ever’ campaigns: other examples of this ‘biggest ever’ campaign range from huge investments from brands activating around the sports space (such as Gopuff) and brands at the heart of the sports space (such as Puma).
It also reflects recent figures suggesting that the purse strings are opening again in adland: with forecasters restating stronger growth than in their original adspend predictions for 2024 – the attest of these was WARC Media’s recent report predicting that global ad budgets will rise 8.7% in 2024.
It looks like, while caution remains, overall advertisers are more optimistic about the market.
PepsiCo in its first quarter earnings statement mentioned Gatorade for having ‘notable improvement’ in its market share trends as the period progressed.
Earlier this year, the brand expanded through the launch of Gatorade Water – the marketer’s first unflavored water – supported with a digital-first campaign titled ‘Always in Motion’.
Other notable recent Gatorade campaigns include ‘It’s Always Been You’ and ‘Every Last Drop‘.
Plus, in 2023 Gatorade also took a future-facing walk down memory lane with the reworking of its 1990’s ‘Be Like Mike’ campaign called ‘The Way To Be Great‘.