When I was a kid, the most exciting comic books for me were the ones where The Incredible Hulk would fight Thing of The Fantastic Four. They were the biggest, most exciting knock-down-drag-out fights you could get in comic books at that time. And when we think of these two great superheroes, their fighting and special superpowers make them a lot like elite athletes, don’t you think? So then why not incorporate these characters into advertising for Gatorade?
These two guys, the Hulk and the Thing, would be especially perfect for Gatorade ads because one of them is green, and the other one is orange, and those could correspond to the lemon-lime and the orange flavored Gatorade. And we could see Hulk sweating the green Gatorade, and Thing sweating the orange Gatorade, like in the other Gatorade campaign where athletes are sweating the color of Gatorade they drink. (And maybe they could explain how Thing is orange because he drinks the orange Gatorade, and when he sweats it out, it stains his porous stone skin orange; or they could say that Hulk becomes so green and ferocious because of all the energy and flavor in lemon-lime Gatorade.)
I wouldn’t think that comic book characters would cost any more to license for advertising than it costs to get a top-tier professional athlete to endorse and advertise a product. So I think this might work out well, especially since this ad could get non-athletic comic book fans to drink Gatorade too when they might not ordinarily see a reason to. And it could act as a tie-in ad for both The Fantastic Four and The Avengers movies. (It would also be the perfect tie-in ad for the Marvel Comics movie I want to see done: Hulk Vs. Thing.)
Then each character could do their own separate ads for the Gatorade of their choice, with The Incredible Hulk saying: “Gatorade help Hulk smash!” and Thing saying: “When I drink orange Gatorade, it’s clobberin’ time!”
(Actually, maybe this would work even better for Powerade, due to the product name having the word ‘power’ in it, and Hulk and Thing both being super-powered superheroes.)
