Socionomics

Socionomics

Marc van Hal

Individual assignment

By Reinoud Tjallema

Gatorade

Gatorade is an all American brand that uses social media in the best manner possible. Instead of launching an ordinary marketing campaign, they used a real life situation to create a hype around the brand.

Differentiation is key, while consumers already are overwhelmed by huge amount of media, and due to this, consumers try avoiding this media push. A company should create a pull, where people create a sense of appeal towards the brand.

Gatorade did this in a completely unique and sporty manner. This sporty aspect is very important while Gatorade is the manufacturer of sport drinks; the Gatorade sports drinks. That is why they chose for a sport event. The title of this event was "Replay", where a set of former football teams get another chance to win from each other. The nice aspect is that this match, which was player before 16 years back, ended in a remittance.

The football teams were presented with this opportunity and both teams did engage in the event.

The football players are all 16 years older, slower and fatter and it would be a huge challenge for both teams. The media did notice what was happening and followed both teams during the months of preparation. The planned game became one of the most mentioned game in the United States of America. An amateur game that is!

Of course Gatorade was the force behind this media hype and used all this free publicity to its advantage. The Gatorade game was the talk of town and when the sales of the ticket started, it only took 90 minutes to sell 10.000 tickets. All the media giants like CNN, but also BBC.

CNN even called the game one of the top stories of 2009. The internet, as the traditional media were overrun by the game and there was not a blog or news bulletin.

Gatorade targeted all the football and sport fans, which are their customers. Next to this they also engaged other curious customers towards their brand.

They...