The Homa Files

Excerpted from Ad Age, “Gator Baiter: Powerade Jabs at Powerhouse,” By Natalie Zmuda, Mar 23, 2009

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The billboard shows the vertical half of what appears to be a Gatorade bottle on one side, with the other side open to the bare blue sky. But what might at first be taken for a mistake is explained by the text: “Don’t settle for an incomplete sports drink.” A few feet down the road perches another billboard, this one showing a fully intact bottle of Powerade. It’s tagged: “The complete sports drink.”

It’s a classic challenger strategy, except it comes from one of the world’s biggest marketers, Coca-Cola Co. The company might be a giant when it comes to soda, but in sports drinks, Coke’s Powerade runs in the shadow of PepsiCo’s Gatorade. So in true competitive fashion, the smaller rival is undertaking a bold and innovative print and outdoor effort that positions the category leader as only half the brand Powerade is.

Powerade’s plan is to blitz the market with messaging that Gatorade is an inferior method of hydration, and says it has the science to back it up. Since early last year, Powerade has been in the lab reformulating its trademark sports drink to include four electrolytes — sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium — lost during exercise. Gatorade’s formula contains just two electrolytes, sodium and potassium …

To get its message across, Powerade … developed a clever comparative campaign that pits the brand against PepsiCo’s Gatorade. “They’re the lion in the category, and we wanted to compare what our drink does for you vs. the competition,” Mr. Kahn said. “People associate [Gatorade] with the category. When you’re another brand competing, you want to make sure to give people a point of difference.”

Powerade also … will take over the cover of ESPN The Magazine, marking the first time the publication has mingled editorial properties with advertising on its cover. It will feature a blank flap obscuring half of the cover image but retaining the magazine title. The front of the flap states, “You wouldn’t want an incomplete cover.” And the back of the flap shows half a Gatorade bottle with the text, “Don’t settle for an incomplete sports drink.” Powerade is then held up as the “complete sports drink” on the inside of the front cover …

According to Beverage Digest, Powerade controls 22% of the sports-drink market, while Gatorade has a 77% share … For its part, Gatorade is shrugging off the attack, maintaining that all Powerade has done is create a spinoff of its Gatorade Endurance Formula, developed in 2004 …

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Full Article:
http://adage.com/article?article_id=135436

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