Rooting For The Underdog: Powerade Launches New Campaign, Tagline

Powerade is “unveiling a new tagline and campaign that highlights underdogs and hard work” in a nod to its own “second-place position in the sports-drink category,” according to Shareen Pathak of AD AGE. The campaign, which began with a TV spot shown on Saturday, will carry the tagline "Power Through," an extension of the "Game Science" campaign the brand launched last year during the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Powerade will leverage its designation as the "official sports drink of the NCAA" with print and digital iterations of the work “coming out later in the year.” Powerade VP/Brand Marketing Yolanda White said, "While the campaign was birthed out of brand and consumer insights, Powerade is also an underdog." White said that the campaign's “insight came from a brand positioning exercise that involved ethnographic studies, spending ... time on baseball fields and basketball courts.” The commercial, via Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore., shows “a coach giving a pep talk to his team after the game.” Wieden Exec Creative Dir Mark Fitzloff said, "Identifying with David in the Goliath story can be pretty inspiring to anybody." Powerade Dir of Integrated Marketing Creative Scott Hargrove said that the digital work is “still being wrapped up” (ADAGE.com, 3/2).