WSF, Holdsclaw, Jones Get Minutes In Marketing Game for Gatorade

Brandweek, May 8, 2000 by Terry Lefton

In its most targeted effort at courting women to date, Quaker Oats' Gatorade has signed a three-year sponsorship of the Women's Sports Foundation and is breaking a TV spot featuring a quartet of female jocks.

The 30-second spot features soccer star Mia Hamm, runner Marion Jones and WNBA poster girl Chamique Holdsclaw, along with vintage footage of tennis great Billie Jean King. All except Hamm are making their initial appearances as endorsers of the leading isotonic brand.

"We like to say around here that sweat has no gender, so we're not as much changing the target as recognizing the growth of women's participatory and spectator sports," said Gatorade equity director Liz Bardetti. The brand has long supported female grass roots athletics and used generic female athletes in creative, even before the much-discussed "anything you can do I can do better" ad with Hamm and Michael Jordan last year. Some 40% of tween/teen teen Gatorade consumers are female, Bardetti said.

The spot, from Foote, Cone & Belding, Chicago, continues to use colorful sweat; in this case, red, white and blue perspiration tying in with "American Woman," the Guess Who's '60s hit which is used both as a soundtrack and thematic for the ad. Is it in you?" remains the tagline.

Gatorade will leverage its new sponsorship of the Women's Sports Foundation--perhaps not coincidentally founded by Billie Jean King--with a yet-unnamed Web site that will help girls find and participate in local sports programs. An "American Woman" T-shirt will be sold online to raise funds for the foundation.