Gatorade Uses Social Media to Revive Itself - Severn Henry

PepsiCo has now reached out to the social media in order to revive one of their products that has been on the slide over the past three years – Gatorade. In making an attempt to sell more drinks, PepsiCo initiated a “Mission Control,” a collection of 4 full time workers who monitor buzz words like “Gatorade,” “G2,” or “G-Series” in Twitter updates or Facebook statuses.


This Wall Street Journal Article attributes the inception of “Mission Control” from the fact that the consumers view Gatorade in a different light – what was once marketed as the only drink that could replenish the fittest bodies of athletes now has just become an ordinary drink. However, when the less athletic begun to consume Gatorade, the exclusive list of people who drunk Gatorade became more muddled – Gatorade’s sole marketing campaign since then has diminished. Neither Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, nor the Florida Gators appear in commercials like before.


This diligence in online supervision that concerns monitoring hype over a company is certainly a breakthrough step in the telecommunications industry, in that Gatorade is now able to monitor the consumer’s issues with the product. Most companies are beginning to further invest in telecommunications to follow the “net hype” about their own industries, but such funding includes software that tracks these hypes or hiring advertising agencies to track for a company. PepsiCo, however, has an advantage in that it is able to respond to these “net hypes” because it can respond (not a machine) and can speak to represent its own company (agencies cannot do that as far as I know).


In the long run, I do not think that “Mission Control” will not be beneficial for PepsiCo for one simple reason – something like this has never happened for any other company (as far as I know). We have to remember that the Internet is a great business tool to transform the smallest company into a large enterprise – it was not meant to rebuild a business. In our fast, technology driven society, we have learned to leave straggling businesses behind if they cannot update their products. And although Gatorade’s sales rose 2.4% in the past 6 months, most of it is attributed to the fact that the summer of 2010 was abnormally hot. In fact, I would not be surprised if Powerade (Coca-Cola Co.’s version of the sports drink), the cheaper and healthier alternative that still has the athletic image that Gatorade is losing. Powerade should invest further in social media tracking to grow and overpower Gatorade.


Article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703466704575489673244784924.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews#printMode