See Gatorade bring back ‘Be Like Mike’ in new campaign

Gatorade revived its iconic “Be Like Mike” campaign in a star-studded ad featuring Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and Lionel Messi alongside a new generation of sports greats, including NBA phenom Jayson Tatum, MLB standout Bryce Harper, WNBA star Elena Delle Donne and Olympic gold medal-winning track athlete Sydney McLaughlin. Narrated by Eminem, “The Way to Be Great” from TBWA is the first of a two-part summer campaign for Gatorade that seeks to portray the brand as fueling greatness for athletes and everyday exercisers. It is also the first campaign launched under Gatorade's chief brand officer, Anuj Bhasin. A 12-year Gatorade veteran, Bhasin assumed his new role in January. The role, a first for the PepsiCo-owned brand, involves overseeing not just Gatorade but a range of brands beneath its umbrella including Propel, Muscle Milk, Evolve and Fast Twitch, which debuted earlier this year and marks the brand's entry into energy drinks. (Kalen Thornton, Gatorade’s previous chief marketing officer, is now VP of sports, entertainment, and gaming at PepsiCo). Read more about Fast Twitch here Cannes Lions coverage Follow our live blog here Sign up here for email updates See all of the Grand Prix winners here Scheduled to make its linear TV debut tonight on ABC during Game 4 of the NBA Finals, “The Way to Be Great” kicks off with a nod to one of Gatorade’s most iconic commercials, “Be Like Mike,” before transitioning to the future. This is Gatorade’s first spot with Jordan since 2021, when the brand tapped him to recreate the iconic “I Can Do Better” spot with Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach and Usain Bolt. “Be Like Mike” first ran in 1991 and became one of the most famous sports ads ever. The spot, from the agency Bayer Bess Vanderwarker, has occasionally been revised by Gatorade, including in 2015 when the brand restored and relaunched it to celebrate Gatorade's 50th anniversary. But while that classic ad portrays children desiring to be like the NBA legend, the new approach is a bit more grounded in reality. “The new campaign is all about putting a point down to broaden Gatorade, its relevance to multiple athletes in multiple spaces, and showcase that you don't have to be the most elite athlete, you don't have to put up the most points on the scoreboard, to be a great human, to be a great individual, to be a great at what you're doing,” Bhasin said. In the below interview, excerpted from a conversation on June 5, Bhasin talks about his vision for the brand, how Gatorade’s move into energy drinks is faring, as well as how the brand is looking to “personalize” the workout and recovery fuel for elite athletes and everyday exercisers. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Earlier this year Gatorade brought PepsiCo’s sports and fitness brands together under the Gatorade master brand. Why? We are really focused on modernizing and evolving what athletes and exercisers need, and what they need to be to be the greatest version of themselves. And what we’ve learned is that there’s a broad range of needs across performance, across wellness, and across personalization, for all athletes and exercisers. And we did create a new kind of entity around the organization where we’re bringing a number of brands together underneath the Gatorade master brand to create anything an athlete or exerciser might need for performance, for wellness, and actually orienting ourselves to deliver personalization in the future, across all the various states somebody might need in the future. What’s your vision in the role of chief brand officer? My vision is to be able to deliver and inspire our athletes and exercisers to be able to deliver solutions to them, no matter who they are, no matter where they are—we have a solution for you to make you a better version of yourself. And we truly believe in the power of the brand to help you along your athletic journey, around your exercise journey. We also believe in the power of the brand to create a better future for our consumers. And we are investing a lot of money in equity in sport, equity in access, to create more opportunity, and we’re investing a lot of money to orient ourselves to be a sustainable difference maker in the future. And so my vision for the company is to provide a solution for you to make you better along your performance journey, while also helping to improve the world around you. What do you see as your challenges day to day? The biggest challenge is going to be how you orient an organization to become broadly relevant to a large swath of the population. And at the same time, being able to personalize and deliver unique solutions to individuals. And so, how we set ourselves up to create the best versions of athletes and exercisers across the world is our biggest challenge. And it’s because we want to be able to offer things everybody will need at different moments. So bringing our brands together, being able to personalize, it’s going to be a big point of emphasis for us. Can you explain more about personalization? Every athlete exerciser is unique. So, what I might need for competitive sport, or for my exercise routine, might be very different than somebody else. And so, no matter where you are on your athletic journey, we have a solution for you. And we are intent on delivering a personalized outcome for you. From the products we serve you to the actual way we can engage with you in a digital world where we can offer you digital fuel plans, personalized training programs, real outcomes that might be specific to you in the future. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Do athletes want that? What we’ve seen is that the most elite athlete athletes absolutely do. And they’re really focused on any edge they can get from a personalization standpoint. And as we’ve looked more broadly, what we've also seen is that a more everyday athlete, someone that that’s training for their own personal goals, they actually don’t know what they need. And that’s a big challenge. So while we might never go in deep personalization with every athlete that’s out there, every athlete needs education. They need to understand what they might need from a wellness standpoint, outside of the point of sweat, or field of play, and then they need to know what they need when they’re actually in the moment as well, no matter the level that they’re at. And there's a real lack of clear education, lack of trusted partners that are educating out there. So there’s something for the for the everyday athlete as well? That’s a big part of our big growth thesis. We think we can expand significantly for all athletes, exercisers, beyond the point of sweat and beyond the field of play. And to be honest, that’s a lot of where we’re going with our greatness campaign that we’re launching this summer. … We're going to talk a little bit about how we believe greatness is more than just what you achieve on the field of play, how being a good human is being great, how hard work is being great, and how that personalizes to everybody out there. What’s the business case for the new campaign? The new campaign is all about putting a point down to broaden Gatorade, its relevance to multiple athletes in multiple spaces, and showcase that you don’t have to be the most elite athlete, you don’t have to put up the most points on the scoreboard, to be a great human and be great at what you’re doing. [It’s also] to make the brand, and the suite of brands, more relevant broadly, to bring more consumers into the franchise and enable us to help them to be able to perform. Can you give an update on Fast Twitch? It’s doing really well. It’s becoming a lot more broadly relevant than maybe even we anticipated right away. We’re seeing very strong repeat rates and we’re seeing strong incrementality to the energy category in the sports drink category. And what that’s telling us is that people like the product, but it’s also bringing in new users. And we’re pumped as we move into the next season of the NFL, we’re going to be leveraging a great partnership with them to continue the growth. Fast Twitch tracks a broad range of people between 18 and 35. But what it’s done is it’s brought in new users to the energy category that maybe didn’t feel like there was a brand for them before. And that’s what’s the unique reason for this portfolio to exist, because we can bring solutions that other people can’t, in ways that people can trust.

See Gatorade bring back ‘Be Like Mike’ in new campaign

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