How Gatorade, with a boost from Kendrick Lamar, and Bodyarmor are refueling sports-drink marketing

As the threat from an influencer brand fades, and having chased down and replicated a runaway product innovation, the sports-drink market once again looks very much like a battle between Coke and Pepsi. Now, if they could only get the category to grow. As they prepare for another summer of competition, both PepsiCo-owned Gatorade and Coca-Cola-owned Bodyarmor are launching new campaigns, hopeful they can build on recent sales momentum and take back occasions that waters and energy drinks have sourced from them. Gatorade is aiming to teach a lesson in overcoming adversity with help from a roster of sports superstars—and Kendrick Lamar, the first musician cameo in Gatorade creative, according to the brand. The rapper narrates an ad released today from TBWA\Chiat\Day called “Lose More. Win More.” Set to his song “Peekaboo,” it weaves in a metaphoric history of the brand and its role as a replenisher. Athletes Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, Jayson Tatum, Luka Dončić and Shedeur Sanders appear in iconic colorful Gatorade sweat, as does Lamar. Bodyarmor this week revealed a new packaging design aimed at bringing a new boldness to the category and making its product selection more distinctive and easier to shop. A new “Choose Better” campaign emphasizes Bodyarmor’s better-ingredients story by showing how sports and exercise can be freeing—and it takes a subtle but hard shot at its larger competitor. (More on that below.) It is a part of what Bodyarmor execs call the largest marketing program in the 15-year history of the brand, which includes working with agencies after many years of DIY marketing. The new marketing initiatives come as the sports drink rivals look to regain growth inside a converging beverage cooler also stocking enhanced waters (corporate sibling brands such as Coca-Cola Co.’s Vitaminwater and Pepsi’s Propel among them) and fast-growing, fitness-focused energy drinks such as Ghost, Celsius, C4 and Alani Nu. (PepsiCo has an ownership stake in Celsius, which recently acquired Alani Nu.) The sports drinks brands are also rebounding from internal issues—Bodyarmor’s integration into the Coca-Cola family, and Gatorade’s move to self-distribution, both of which were bumpy rides, said Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. Overall volume in the sports drink category fell by 4.1% last year, according to Beverage Digest figures, with Gatorade falling by 4.4% and Coca-Cola Co. brands (the mainstream Powerade and premium Bodyarmor) together outperforming the category despite a 0.8% combined volume dip. The category’s biggest share loser in 2024 was Prime, the sports drink backed by YouTube stars Logan Paul and KSI. The third-largest brand in the category saw volume plummet by 22.8% and dollar sales dive by 26.5%. Stanford pinned the drop on insufficient brand building. “Prime is an example of a brand that was very smart in how it capitalized on popular influencers. The thing they fell down on was building a brand beneath that,” Stanford said. “They had a meteoric rise but didn’t give people enough reasons to drink it other than just the influencers, or to get on board with what their friends were doing.” The biggest growth belonged to Grupo Pisa’s Electrolit, the electrolyte-packed “rapid rehydration” drink. Now distributed in the U.S. by Keurig Dr Pepper, the Mexican brand grew volume by 22.4% last year. Gatorade (with Gatorlyte, introduced in 2021) and Bodyarmor (Flash IV, rolled out last year) have each added square-bottled rapid rehydration formulas to their ranges. Both brands also tout a branded water offering. Modernizing the brand Founded in 2011, Bodyarmor has made a number of packaging refinements over the years, but had never had the kind of facelift as the one rolling out now, said Tom Gargiulo, Bodyarmor’s chief marketing officer. Led by Jones Knowles Ritchie, the redesign changed the typeface on the Bodyarmor wordmark, resulting in a more “dynamic and precise” presentation, according to the brand. The redesigned bottles are considerably less cluttered, allowing users to more easily identify various styles and flavors called out on the label, Gargiulo said. Bottle caps are now color-coded and have a distinctive embossed logo. “We’ve been in the market for about 15 years, and we just felt it was time,” Gargiulo said in an interview, noting the brand has risen along with the booming health and wellness trend in that period. “This is a great opportunity for us to take a step back, modernize the brand, refine some of our brand language and create a visual ID that was more in tune with the times.” The brand refresh is accompanied by provocative creative from Cartwright called “Choose Better.” The spot begins in a creepy subterranean basement where orange drips are mopped off the floor, and slowly pans up to reveal darkened rooms full of exercisers in dreary lockstep—each illuminated by glowing orange sports drinks that would strongly resemble Gatorade. Finally, the pan pops through the earth to a sun-dappled wooded bike trail where a cyclist with a Bodyarmor bottle races down a hill, starting a montage of athletes following their own exercise routines, including pro athletes Joe Burrow, CeeDee Lamb, Sabrina Ionescu and Connor McDavid. Bodyarmor, which had rarely used agencies before Coca-Cola acquired it entirety in late 2021, engaged Cartwright to create its new campaign. “This was the first time we actually put out a pretty massive initiative behind an agency, and leveraged some of the relationships we have from Coca-Cola,” Gargiulo said. “We met with a few agencies within the [WPP] network and felt Cartwright was right for us because of their storytelling and the beautiful work they’ve put together with Coke and Coke Zero, especially on the sports side of the business,” Gargiulo said. Bodyarmor will make a large buy for the NHL playoffs and Stanley Cup finals, in addition to heavy spending on digital and social, notably Meta, TikTok and programmatic, Gargiulo said. The company plans to spend 40% more on marketing this year than last, he said. Bodyarmor spent $17 million in measured media in 2024, according to MediaRadar. The brand has encountered recent success with influencer marketing, launching a sour apple flavor in cooperation with the YouTube group Dude Perfect. The same pairing last summer produced a “Perfect Pop” variety that quickly became a top seller at Walmart. The brand is also preparing to launch Bodyarmor Chill, a line of drinks made with a cooling agent similar to chewing gum, meant to impart a cooling sensation when consumed. The innovation follows the launch of Sprite Chill, which was Coke’s best-selling new item last year. The challenge is real Gatorade last summer revived its famous “Is It In You?” slogan, sounding the alarm that young people were dropping out of organized sports (and presumably, the sports drink category) in alarming numbers. “That challenge is more real today than it was last year,” said Anuj Bhasin, Gatorade’s chief brand officer. The approach is based on the insight that star athletes channel the disappointment of losing into the energy to win, which can inspire young people from becoming discouraged with sports. “The greatest in the world, no matter what they do, harness loss to win,” Bhasin said. “We spent a lot of time with our athlete roster, having conversations with some of the greatest talents in the world, and each and every one of them talked about how loss fuels them to come back stronger. We want to celebrate that.” The brand spent $173 million in U.S. measured media last year, according to MediaRadar. Bhasin said consumers responded strongly to last year’s campaign, with the brand gaining 1.5 points of market share after June 1. It also saw significant increases in social engagements and scored better on internal indicators around relevancy and preference, Bhasin said. “What we learned is if consumers believe sports drinks are a superior solution and they understand why it’s superior to water or other products out there, they will come into the category,” Bhasin said. “That one metric has been depressed for five to seven years, and it’s our job as a category leader to raise it up.” Bodyarmor’s performance also improved over the course of the year, Beverage Digest figures show. Stanford said he expected the category would recover. “Every so often, consumers get distracted, and you have to freshen things up and remind consumers why they drink these beverages in the first place,” Stanford said. “With smart marketing and good retail positioning, and making sure you are responding to the functionality and ingredients consumers are asking for, there is growth in the category. It’s been around for a long time.”

How Gatorade, with a boost from Kendrick Lamar, and Bodyarmor are refueling sports-drink marketing

Featured Stories