Author: Xiaoshidai
With the vigorous development of the sports economy, sports for all has become an emerging cultural trend. The public's awareness and demand for sports nutrition have become more and more subdivided and professional, and functional beverages have gradually developed from a niche field to one of the main markets in the industry.
Due to the awakening of national sports awareness, when professional athletes work the field to win glory for the country, large-scale non-governmental events are also hot, and grassroots sports enthusiasts with unique skills are also looking forward to becoming the focus of the field.
In this context, many brands have entered the game and started a fierce battle of sports marketing. In this field, the "G-Tick Challenge", a non-governmental professional sports event created by Gatorade, a long-established leading brand of sports drinks, has a new number of participants and a new scale of competition every year. As a pioneer of sports drinks, how does Gatorade frequently go out of the circle and maintain the active ecology of its own IP? Let's find out.
58 years of scientific research
As one of the founding brands in the sports drink category, Gatorade was born in 1965 in the laboratory of the University of Florida. For the past 58 years, it has been used by athletes and amateurs around the world to replenish lost water and electrolytes during sweating.
In the environment of the local market, the "G-Tick Challenge" can continue to penetrate grassroots sports enthusiasts and expand its influence and appeal in the country, mainly relying on the following two aspects: unique scientific research background and long-term cooperation with international top sports events.
Unlike other similar brands, Gatorade prides itself on the scientific backing and scientific practices of its products. At present, Gatorade has cooperated with a number of internationally renowned athletes such as Zheng Qinwen, IELTS Group, Jayson · Tatum, etc. For more than half a century, Gatorade, a professional sports drink, has been providing athletes with science-based supplements[1] to help them achieve better performance.
Founded in 1985, the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) is the foundation for Gatorade to become a global leader in sports supplies. GSSI has nearly 30 scientists and nutritionists who are professional in the fields of hydration, metabolism, body temperature regulation, exercise supplementation, biochemistry, endurance and dietary analysis. Over the past 30 years, GSSI has tested hundreds of amateur, elite, and professional athletes [1].
On the other hand, friends who are familiar with professional sports know that Gatorade has been deeply involved in almost all well-known sports such as basketball, football, rugby, and badminton since its inception, and has been deeply bound to many top competitions around the world, including the United States Professional Basketball League (NBA), the UEFA Champions League, and the Beijing Marathon.
It is precisely because of decades of deep cultivation at the event level that Gatorade has been able to gather experience to organize the competition on its own, and also has the confidence to provide a professional stage for all grassroots and ordinary people across the country.
By building sports events such as the "G-Tick Challenge", it is not only to establish product use scenarios to broaden the target consumer group, but also to encourage grassroots sports enthusiasts with dreams to participate in sports and feel the charm of competitive sports while having a healthy lifestyle. So far, between these "folk masters" and the brand image of Gatorade, a two-way endorsement chain of trust has been formed.
Set off a movement storm
At a time when the demand for sports is becoming more and more diversified, more and more folk athletes with outstanding skills are gradually emerging. For many grassroots sports enthusiasts, they are no longer satisfied with the daily entertainment between friends in the sports field, they lack a professional stage to show their strength, be seen by the public, and get professional guidance and the opportunity to compete. Gatorade, a professional sports drink brand that has been committed to promoting the cause of national fitness, hopes to provide such a platform for these grassroots athletes.
As a result, Gatorade's "Grassroots Professional Event IP" - "G Moment Challenge" came into being, and the brand hopes to take this as the core focus to bring the hard-core products and services of science and technology to more ordinary sports enthusiasts, and realize the brand vision of enhancing the awareness of scientific sports among the whole people.
This year's Gatorade G-Tick Challenge continues the two major sports of basketball and badminton, which are highly participated and popular, and opens a badminton men's singles track, adding more categories to call on more seeded players to show their extraordinary style.
From April to September, this year's "G-Tick Challenge" was held in 27 provinces and 140 cities across the country, attracting more than 81,000 sports enthusiasts to sign up for the competition.
In the competition, 23 basketball teams, 15 outstanding badminton mixed doubles pairs and 9 badminton men's singles seeds stood out and launched the final attack on the highest glory. On September 7, the 2024 Gatorade "G-Moment Challenge" ushered in the peak moment of realizing the dream, and the national finals came to an end at the Beijing Jiaotong University Comprehensive Gymnasium.
In the "G Moment Challenge" National Finals, including basketball 3V3, badminton mixed doubles and badminton men's singles, all the participating players showed a super high level, with accurate three-pointers into the net, a charge smash flew to the ground, these so-called grassroots amateurs seem to be working hard to create their "ordinary but not ordinary" high-energy moments.
In order to better deepen the special attribute of the "Dream Ceremony" of the "G-Moment Challenge" finals, as the brand spokespersons of Gatorade, the badminton world mixed doubles champion IELTS pair Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong also came to the scene on the same day, bringing professional competition and professional commentary guidance to grassroots athletes. In the fierce competition with the grassroots players on the spot, the two badminton players contributed a number of wonderful high-energy balls to the audience, and the experience of competing with the world champion will continue to encourage these folk sports enthusiasts to continue to pursue their love in the future.
What's even more surprising is that Gatorade specially invited the fancy dunk team to bring a show with great visual tension at the finals, and in many jumps and dunks, Gatorade products were also combined with the performance in a special way, increasing the full sense of audience experience and fun.
In the off-site carnival, the sports atmosphere is still enthusiastic. Gatorade not only set up a variety of interactive games for the audience to experience and check in, so that the public can immerse themselves in the sense of participation, experience and satisfaction of national fitness, but also specially added a GSSI science education area to remind everyone to pay attention to how to protect themselves more scientifically and professionally in addition to sports.
With the wave of sports competition and national fitness, the realization of national sports needs to break through the professional athlete group, so that more ordinary people can feel the charm brought by scientific sports. Gatorade's "G-Tick Challenge" grassroots professional event is from hardware to software, building a stage for the public to build a comprehensive sports festival, narrowing the distance between professional competitive sports and the public, and accompanying grassroots athletes in the process of competition to meet their practical needs.
In terms of the communication of the event, Gatorade relied on its own strength and accumulation in the sports industry, and jointly launched a joint recruitment of the event in the early stage of the event with a number of vertical media. During the event, the brand also invited a number of top basketball KOLs to link up with the head media to carry out online promotion. On the one hand, Gatorade has fully mobilized the influence of sports role models to help G-Tick Challenge quickly establish its own communication ecosystem and reach a wider range of people, and on the other hand, the brand has further expanded its circle of friends in the field of sports events and helped it consolidate its leading position in leading the national health movement.
Sustainable value system
In fact, since 2020, Gatorade has opened this sports event where grassroots elites and professional sports meet. The event takes turns in many cities across the country at an annual frequency, and more and more grassroots sports enthusiasts have left their dreams and strength marks here.
This long-termism is a perfect reflection of Gatorade's sustainable value system in the brand's positioning.
From the development of the predecessor of the "One Throw Million" Midfield Shooting Championship in 2015, to 2018, Gatorade continued to increase its sustainable investment in the field of grassroots sports, upgrading "One Throw Million" to "Building Dreams and One Throw", and Gatorade provided a dream fund to realize the renovation of a court every year for people who are dedicated to basketball, and then to today's "G-Quarter Challenge", which also means that Gatorade has upgraded from helping individuals realize their sports dreams to building grassroots sports infrastructure.
It can be said that the "G-Tick Challenge" has become the brand IP that Gatorade has built for a long time, and it is an important bridge for Gatorade to connect professional athletes, sports enthusiasts, and pan-sports people.
From these professional sports events, we found that whether it is creating grassroots event IP or developing public welfare projects, Gatorade can always find the pain points of professional athletes and ordinary sports enthusiasts in the sports scene, and meet their all-round needs in a sustainable value-added space.
In addition to marketing activities, the brand also extends this philosophy to the product strategy side. On the basis of the success of creating a hardcore product of scientific hydration, Gatorade continues to push the boundaries of products, and recently launched a daily hydration line in the Chinese market, expanding the radiation breadth of the product from high-intensity to daily scenarios. In the future, Gatorade will integrate more innovative ideas and technologies into the product matrix, from 1 to 100 to improve Gatorade's comprehensive penetration into consumers' healthy lifestyle scenarios.
In order for a brand to occupy a place in the market for a long time, its products need to be able to bring unique value to consumers, and more importantly, the core values and actions upheld by the brand need to resonate with consumers.
Gatorade's breakthrough is a confirmation of this methodology, and it has also found a magic weapon to strengthen the brand's "scientific and professional" hard-core genes. From professional athletes to ordinary people, Gatorade has always paid attention to the public's demand for scientific sports, and has also built a sustainable brand value system of "promoting the sustainable and healthy development of sports for all", and continues to inject the brand's strong voice and resource empowerment. From providing products to building scenes, and then becoming a part of sports construction, in the process, Gatorade has built its own sports influence, and has truly reached consumers, becoming an indispensable partner in their sports.
In the future, as more emerging brands join the sports drink track and consumer demand continues to refine, we will continue to pay attention to how Gatorade will create innovative marketing campaigns.
[1] https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20211018A086NF00