Messing with a successful brand is a bad idea. You know the expression: “You can’t argue with success?” Well, they’re being very argumentative with success, it seems to me. And you know the expression: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” It could be very well applied here. If you already have great brand identity, why screw it up, especially if it would cost a boatload of money to do it? All I can think is that someone from Powerade must have infiltrated Gatorade’s advertising department and convinced the higher-ups that this was a good idea, just so they’d ruin their brand. And despite their printing the “G” on everything in sight at sporting events, I still think they were way better off before they changed the name, and they were still known as Gatorade: one of the most recognizable brands/products in the world.
Here’s the website for Gatorade (Yes, it’s still called Gatorade, but just look at their products here: they’re all just “G”. Lame. And they had to spend a lot of unnecessary cash telling people about it, when they could have just continued to call it Gatorade. Duh.):
Here’s a college football-based “What’s G?” commercial (Notice how they don’t tell you what “G” is, which seems like a waste of money to me. The least they could have done would have been to use the “G” with a lightning bolt through it, so we could have figured it was Gatorade. But this was to set up their transition to drop the name Gatorade. But Gatorade was already well known and successful. Did they really think the “atorade” part was holding them back? Was confusing consumers really the best plan to expand their sales? And was it worth all the money it cost to run this expensive series of ads? I’d say no, but maybe it worked?):
And here’s the “Quest for G” commercial (part 1 in a series), which I found pointless and confusing when it came out. It’s fun now that I understand what they’re doing, but I still don’t see how this helps sell Gatorade, and I’ll bet it cost a fortune to make them (Sometimes high-concept stuff can be great, and maybe this worked for them. But for me, they should have added the “G” concept and kept the name Gatorade. But without referencing Gatorade, this kinda feels like an exercise in indulgence without much of a message. It is really fun and funny, but it doesn’t make me want to buy Gatorade.):
Now that I see this one again on a computer, I see that they have “Gatorade written on the top of the last screen. But I didn’t see it when it first ran, and I was just confused by it all. I did see the “G”, and thought it might be Gatorade, but the spot I saw was edited down from this, and they didn’t have the drinking from the water skins in it, so it was all just a big question mark. Maybe this is intended to make people wonder and look it up, but it was during a game, so I didn’t look it up, and then I forgot. But I did remember that this was confusing, and that I didn’t think it was a good strategy to sell Gatorade. But maybe I’m wrong, although I seriously doubt I’m wrong about changing the name from Gatorade to “G” being a losing strategy: even if they increase sales slightly, it probably won’t even make a dent in the budget of these commercials!
High-concept stuff can be fun sometimes, but you can also outsmart yourself with it. If people don’t get it (like I didn’t get this “quest” ad series until I researched it today to provide the links for the ads), you’re wasting your money. If you’re looking for sales and brand identity, sometimes less is more. The college football ad about what “G” means is great, but then they don’t even mention Gatorade, so it’s a wasted spot, unless people can remember it well enough later on when you tell them what G is (I didn’t, and I have a really good memory usually). All they had to do was to say at the end that G stands for Gatorade: they could have shown the letter G, and then spelled out the rest of the name from there, and it would have been a great ad that also lets people know what the product is. And generally, I’d say that if people don’t know what the product even is after seeing the ad, then it’s not a good ad, no matter how good it is. Because it’s an ad, and an ad is to help sell stuff and build a brand. If I don’t even know what the ad is for, then what’s the point of making it? (I understand teasers, but in order for them to work, we have to remember them, and we have to wonder what it is and care enough to still want to know later. I didn’t care with these ads, even though they were good other than the brand identity part. They could have helped by starting the quest ads with: “Gatorade presents: The Quest for G”! Then I would have known from the start what it was all about, and I would have liked it a lot more. Leaving me confused just makes me not like it. Maybe I’m weird like that, but I buy stuff just like anybody else, and I’ll bet I’m hardly the only one who doesn’t like to be left wondering what the hell was the point of what I just saw.)
