Powerade Shakeup Exec Warns: Rival 'Gatorade's Going Down' - Coca-Cola brand manager Rohan Oza - Brief Article - Interview

Brandweek, May 21, 2001

After nine years of being an also-ran to Gatorade in the sports drink category, Coca-Cola earlier this month pledged to turn up the volume for its sports drink, Powerade. The revamp includes reformulating and repackaging the drink along with a $60 million campaign by a still-unchosen agency with the likely tag: "Energy for Life."

The core brand, relaunching in mid-July, will be restaged as a nutraceutical with the addition of vitamins B3, B6 and B12. Powerade Light, with 25 calories, will also this debut summer with the B vitamins in two flavors. In October, Coke will likely bow breakfast drink Powerade A.M., herbally-enhanced Powerade Psych and a third unnamed SKU. All offerings will feature slick new packaging, produced primarily in-house, emphasizing the letter "P.'

Rohan Oza, the 29-year-old senior brand manager and former Sprite exec, spoke frankly about the "new brand" which currently only occupies 15% of the sports drink market. Drawing inspiration from MTV and Japan, among others, Oza expects the brand's new "energy+hydration=power" formula to register with consumers and eventually give Gatorade a run for its market share. Oza recently spoke to Brandweek senior editor Kenneth Hein.

Brandweek: What was the genesis of the radically new Powerade?

Rohan Oza: Powerade has always been an innovator and it did really well until 1998 when it hit an innovation flatline, [Historically],we did the PET bottle first. We did the Sports cap first. Gatorade had two flavors. We introduced a bunch of funky new flavors. Then they did. But then the brand slowed. In 2000, we did an ad push that let me just say wasn't my favorite. In August 1 approached Jeff Dunn [president, Coca-Cola North America] and said I wanted to revamp the brand and I said I needed money [to get back to our innovative roots]. He said come back with an idea and we'll come back with the money. We spent three months underground. We started with a clean sheet. We weren't even sure if we were going to keep the Powerade name. We weren't sure if it had too much baggage.

BW: How did you come up with the new packaging and concepts?

RO: We started with traditional focus groups where we looked at consumers' lives as a whole. We discovered having purely a sports drink does get into the full lifestyle of consumers, Then we went to the MTV music studios to try and understand how they develop shows and get insights. We went to the [fashion district] to look at visual trends. We spoke to sports psychologists. We spoke to influential athletes and not just in traditional sports because there's a fusion of both traditional and alternative. We looked at all of this to come up [with the final two taglines]: "Fuel for life" or "Energy for life."

We chose this because consumers are packing more into the day They're trying to do more and more. There's less time to sleep. They need more energy. Secondly there is a growth in wellness. People want to put in their body what they feel does well for them. Red Bull has picked one sliver of what you need from an energy standpoint.

BW: How are you going to introduce five different products with the same brand name without confusing consumers?

RO: It will be confusing if done wrong. If done right, no. If you introduce the products in a phased approach they won't be confused. You can't stick everything in a consumer's face day one. And you have to introduce the product in an environment where they are expecting it and are willing to accept it [such as nightclubs and gyms] We're working in a non-traditional Coke environment. We will do grass roots and traditional marketing. We're going to war. We will have an air attack and ground attack. If we just do a ground attack we will get annihilated from the air. We have great grass roots properties. [Gatorade's] going down. We're extremely confident. We have a team here who knows exactly what they're doing.