Gx Sweat Patch PR Campaign Executive Summary

By Andrea Torres
Our Communications Challenge
In September of 2020, my team was challenged by acclaimed PR agency FlieshmanHillard to create a
campaign for Gatorade’s Gx Sweat Patch set to release in June of 2021. The single-use patches are
designed for athletes to use during a high-intensity workout. With a simple scan of the patch using the Gx
app post-workout, athletes can unlock personalized hydration and nutrition recommendations based on
their sweat data that can boost their performance. To add to the challenge, we were given two target
audiences: teen athletes aged 13-18 and “forever athletes” aged 25-40.

Insights on Gatorade
We conducted a SWOT analysis for the Gatorade brand right away. Here’s what we found:

Strengths: Gx collaboration with Serena Williams, Weaknesses: Potentially viewed as a way to sell more
brand is built on a foundation of science drinks, unclear if app will be useful

Opportunities: First to launch this type of product, Threats: other health/fitness apps and brands
exclusive tech now available to public

We also conducted primary research to gauge how people perceived the brand and their interest in the
Sweat Patch. Between 75 online survey responses and 10 personal interviews, we found that 40% of
respondents were interested in buying the Patch. This data led us to one of the major guiding insights of
our campaign: our audience makes health decisions based on personal needs, not competition.

Target Audience & Insights

We conducted additional secondary research on our two target audiences and the popularity of media
platforms among them. The teen group gravitated toward Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube
while our forever athlete group favored Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and select magazine
publications. The overlapping platform between the two, YouTube, coincided with data that showed video
to be the most engaging multimedia in 2020, bringing in 48% more views on social media than posts
without video. This led to our second key insight: audiences are more likely to engage with video content.

Objectives
We based our objectives on our collective research and on three key goals for our audience: awareness,
acceptance, and action. Our first objective was to increase awareness by generating 5m traditional media
impressions and 300m social impressions by September of 2021. To gain acceptance, we wanted to
increase consumer recognition of Gatorade as a service providing thought leader by 20% by December of
2021. Thirdly, our action was to help sell 50k Gx Sweat Patches/app downloads by September of 2021.

Our Big Idea

With our research and guiding principles as inspiration, our theme is to #BreakASweat through an online
video challenge spearheaded by Serena Williams, who is already a Gx spokesperson. People worldwide
have had to get creative with their movement amidst the pandemic and this challenge will give them the
opportunity to show the world their style. The challenge is to create a 30 second video of creative
exercise (such as chasing your dog around the kitchen) on at least one social media platform. Audiences
will hear about the product and fuel the message behind it while engaging with the brand’s spokespeople.

Strategies
Our strategies mirror the three guiding principles for our objectives. To increase awareness, we wanted to
utilize sponsored athletes’ platforms to raise awareness of the Patch. To gain acceptance, we sought to
 Gx Sweat Patch PR Campaign Executive Summary
By Andrea Torres
link Gatorade to being a service providing thought leader for consumers. To get our audience to take
action, we decided to partner with an outside brand to provide consumers with access to the Patch.

Tactics
We brainstormed three strategically-timed tactics based on our research, objectives, and strategies.

Tactic 1: #BreakASweat Sneak Peek Event with Lifetime Fitness

To gain initial awareness, Gatorade will partner with Lifetime Fitness’ Chicago Spring Half-Marathon &
10k on May 23rd of 2021 to bring the Sweat Patch to consumers a week before the actual launch of the
product. Serena Williams, our key spokesperson, will commence a local media tour upon her arrival a few
days before the race to promote the Patch, including interviews with ABC7, The Chicago Tribune, and
famous YouTube show Hot Ones with Sean Evans. She will also run the first mile of the race with the
patch on to attract crucial online media coverage. Gatorade will supply goodie bags for each registered
runner that include samples of the Patch. Runners can opt to try out the patch during their race and can
get assistance from two Gatorade tents, one set up close to the starting line to assist with setting up
patches and one tent near the finish line to help athletes analyze their results. Gatorade social media reps
will be present for the entirety of the race to live stream and interview folks who tried the Patch out.

Tactic 2: Serena introduces #BreakASweat Challenge

Following the event, Serena will challenge several other celebrity athletes via a group Zoom call including
Mallory Pugh, Lionel Messi, and Gabrielle Union with her husband Dwyane Wade. Snippets from the call
will be uploaded to Gatorade’s social media pages explaining the challenge and challenging other non-
athlete celebrities to take part such as chef Gordon Ramsay, TikTok star Jalaiah Hartman, and actor
Sylvestor Stallone. Each influencer will challenge their followers to a unique way to #BreakASweat such
as recreating iconic Rocky scenes or learning a TikTok dance. Our 10 influencers will receive 100 Sweat
Patch samples each to give out to distribute to fans that participate however they want. Including non-
athlete celebrities will help spread the Patch with pop culture media such as Bustle and Daily Mail.

Tactic 3: The public’s turn to #BreakASweat!

Finally and most importantly, the public will then get to post their unique challenge videos on their
preferred social media platform. Toward the end of the campaign, Gatorade will gather snippets of their
favorite challenge videos using the hashtag #BreakASweat and compile them into a video montage full of
both celebs and consumers to upload to YouTube. Audiences will then be able to share the montage on
any platform, creating a snowball effect that gets the news about the Patch out even further.

Why It Works
By leveraging Gatorade’s biggest athletes and influencers, the power of video and the pandemic’s global
effect on athletics, our two target audiences will be inspired to get creative with their movement and learn
about the Sweat Patch at the same time. The public’s awareness of the Gx Sweat Patch will skyrocket
with each video that is created and consumers will be celebrated for interacting with the brand. These
unique challenges will also boost consumers' motivation to break a sweat and take their athletic abilities
to the next level, and they’ll see that the Gx Sweat Patch is the perfect product to do just that.