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The Super Bowl Dunk

Gatorade

Issue 39 | June 2016

Agency

VML

Creative Team

Global Chief Creative Officer Debbi Vandeven Executive Creative Directors John Godsey Tony Snethen Group Creative Directors Derek Clark Glen Scott Creative Directors Nick Allegri Mark Philip Nacho Coste Senior Art Director Jeff Schroer Art Director Austin DeJonge

Production Team

North American Managing Director, Channel Activation Amy Worley Managing Director, Brand Planning Ian Davidson Associate Director, Channel Activation Kyle Rogers Channel Manager Charles Gooch Group Director, Client Engagement Stephanie DeCelles Senior Account Manager Maggie Glenski

Other Credits

Gatorade Chief Marketing Officer Morgan Flatley Sr. Director, Consumer Engagement Kenny Mitchell Director of Digital Marketing Jeff Miller Assistant Marketing Manager Emily Morrison Krall

Date

February 2016

Background

As the game's official drink, Gatorade had been inextricably linked to American football for years as well as with the Super Bowl for the last 30, when the winners celebrated with a team dunk – splashing blue, green, orange sticky liquid all over each other.

The dunk is a national event, even parodied by The Simpsons.

Yet, although the dunk had been seen by millions, it had only ever been experienced by the winners, not by the fans.

Idea

Gatorade wanted fans to experience the dunk for themselves. The answer was an AR experience based on Snapchat's 'lens' facility.

Going live on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, Snapchat featured a branded 3-D representation of the Gatorade cooler so familiar from its place on the touchline of the game.

Using facial recognition technology, fans could select the Gatorade lens and, by opening their mouths, activate the AR Gatorade cooler to splash themselves – heads, bodies, whatever – in the style of the dunk.

Via Snapchat, they could then share their experiences and generate their own videos. Children, dogs and celebs like Gigi Hadid and Kate Hudson joined in.

Results

The Gatorade dunk generated over 165m views, more than actually watched the game on TV, and nearly 61m engagements. All told, dunkers created 8.2m videos.

In terms of preference metrics, Snapchatters who saw the lens were 21% more likely to describe Gatorade as their go-to drink when exercising, and purchase intent was twice the norm for social campaigns from packaged-goods advertisers.

Our Thoughts

The Super Bowl is, in some ways, just an advertising shouting match. With so many big brands staking so much on it, and with as much associated hoopla as they can generate across as many platforms as they can find, it's very hard to stand out.

Gatorade's strategy had two major points of difference: one was to use Snapchat as the platform of choice. This was based on the fact that its 13-34 age-group consumers favoured Snapchat as their social platform over Facebook and Twitter.

The second was to eschew TV in favour of social media. But if you're going social, you've got to make it worth the fans' time: that means making it as much fun, real, interactive and shareable as possible.

The verdict of some commentators was that, ranking the Super Bowl performance of advertisers, Gatorade won without using TV. If that's the case, we may see a shift towards more social-only activity around the Super Bowl over time.

Here's a one-way bet too: there'll be more brand Snapchat activity next time round.