The planet is heating up and so is the marketplace for hydration. Past plain-old water, the class contains enhanced waters, sports activities drinks, hydration powders and zero-sugar choices. Coca-Cola-owned model BodyArmor performs in every of those areas, and is trying to break by means of an more and more (pardon the pun) saturated market with advertising and marketing pushed by main partnerships and a shift to digital channels.
Tom Gargiulo, CMO of BodyArmor Sports activities Vitamin
Courtesy of BodyArmor
“While you take a look at model fundamentals, BodyArmor has actually excessive repeat charges: We have now very excessive model love with the customers that attempt us,” mentioned Tom Gargiulo, CMO of BodyArmor Sports activities Vitamin, the umbrella the BodyArmor and Powerade manufacturers sit below. “However if you take a look at our family penetration and our consciousness, we nonetheless have a protracted methods to go to meet up with a few of the different rivals within the house, and even a few of the manufacturers inside our portfolio.”
Gargiulo joined BodyArmor in March 2023 after stints at Sort, Danone and PepsiCo. Throughout his time on the model, he is overseen the advertising and marketing of a spread of product improvements and inked partnerships with the NHL, U.S. Soccer and a spread of publishers and influencers.
“One of many greatest challenges that I had once I joined the group was making an attempt to shift the advertising and marketing combine for the model to be extra aligned with how customers are consuming media and fascinating with manufacturers,” Gargiulo mentioned. “We put a substantial push behind our social media presence in our digital investments — that is been one in all our greatest initiatives.”
Advertising and marketing Dive spoke with Gargiulo about what partnerships do for the model, the way it tackled synthetic intelligence (AI) with its Tremendous Bowl advert and the way Coca-Cola boosts its advertising and marketing efforts.
The next interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: BodyArmor this yr grew to become the official sports activities drink associate of the NHL and the official hydration associate of U.S. Soccer, and has been a associate of MLS since 2019. How do these partnerships assist the model’s advertising and marketing?
TOM GARGIULO: Clearly, [the leagues] have very broad fan bases that we will faucet into and interact with on a complete completely different stage. However the sponsorships additionally give us credibility: If the world’s most elite athletes are ingesting our merchandise on the sidelines, it simply proves that we’re the fitting selection for folks on the lookout for a hydration answer.
The NHL relationship kicked off a few months in the past, proper earlier than the playoffs began, and we have been getting an amazing quantity of publicity each in-game with the digital dashboards and we have been investing fairly a bit by way of media, so getting working spots with [Edmonton Oilers player] Connor McDavid through the video games. The response has been super, and extra importantly, the athlete response has been super.
The model has additionally inked offers with content material publishers. What position does content material advertising and marketing play?
GARGIULO: Much like how we take a look at sports activities sponsorships, these are properties which are giving us an amazing quantity of attain. Gen Z is consuming media and knowledge utterly completely different than Gen X or the older demographics. Content material is king: that is the place the vast majority of these customers are getting engaged and uncovered to manufacturers.
Discovering the companions that align with our values — clearly align with sports activities, which is core to our DNA — and provides us the flexibility to combine our merchandise organically and authentically into their content material was extremely necessary for us. Barstool Sports activities and Dude Good had been no-brainers for us; they had been simply pure suits. They utterly embrace the model and so they’ve achieved a implausible job of bringing our manufacturers to life by means of their content material.
BodyArmor just lately teamed up with worldwide musician Anitta on a social marketing campaign for the Flash I.V. product. How did you strategy that partnership?
GARGIULO: In the end, I feel athletes are a few of the most influential influencers yow will discover in out there, but in addition, life-style and music are two areas that we undoubtedly really feel like we’ve got a proper to win in. Not everyone is a hardcore athlete or a hardcore sports activities fan. However everyone loves music and everyone, to a sure extent, has some sort of life-style affect of their life. That is why we determined to broaden our purview just a little bit, and open our eyes to completely different companions and completely different alternatives. With a model like Flash I.V., it has a big penetration within the Hispanic neighborhood, and it was a terrific alternative for us to broaden past simply hardcore sports activities and go after a pop icon like Anitta.
BodyArmor final month introduced plans for LTO bottles with augmented actuality performance that characteristic athletes throughout the MLB, NFL and past. What’s the technique there?
GARGIULO: One of many key initiatives that we’ve got this yr is how will we convey our athletes to life in distinctive and alternative ways past simply social posts or being in our promoting. The apparent selection for us was to begin leveraging our bottles. We dipped our toes within the water final yr with a restricted version Joe Burrow bottle, then we began to do limited-time affords round key sports activities moments, like when Ronald Acuña Jr. received the MLB MVP.
This yr, we’re kicking it up a notch by launching various completely different collectible bottles. It goes past the look of the bottle: We need to ensure that our customers are in a position to have interaction with our manufacturers, and we all know gamification is a pattern that is alive and properly with Gen Z.
BodyArmor ran a regional advert within the Tremendous Bowl that spoke to the buzziest subject in advertising and marketing, synthetic intelligence. What was the intention with the spot?
GARGIULO: We noticed the Tremendous Bowl as a terrific alternative for us to convey our model in entrance of as many eyeballs as we probably can. Some of the distinctive factors of distinction that BodyArmor has versus the competitors is we’re a product that stands for actual elements: We do not use synthetic flavors or synthetic colours, and loads of our product is predicated on nutrient-dense elements. We figured this is a chance for us to go on the most important stage on the earth and talk that. AI is clearly a buzzword that’s popping up all over, it’s totally a lot within the mainstream proper now, and if you consider actual, what is the reverse of actual, it is synthetic.
With that mentioned, I do not need to make it look like BodyArmor is anti-AI. It’s the future. Quite a lot of alternative ways of connecting with customers are going to be opened up by means of AI. However we simply thought it could be a very cool technique to inform our story.
Coca-Cola accomplished its buy of BodyArmor in 2021. How has being a part of the corporate helped BodyArmor’s advertising and marketing?
GARGIULO: Coca-Cola is without doubt one of the most extremely valued emblems on the earth, and we’ve got a few of the finest marketeers on the earth managing that enterprise. We’re in a position to faucet into some actually implausible data sharing and best-in-class examples of methods to leverage media and relationships with completely different companies and companions and methods to capitalize on rising tendencies. The Coca-Cola group has opened up the floodgates for a model like BodyArmor.
As a part of the biggest activation that we have ever achieved, we’ll be partnering with Coca-Cola and giving freely a bottle of BodyArmor with each buy of a Coca-Cola 12 pack, and so they promote wherever between 55 and 60 million of these fridge packs a month.
The place does the BodyArmor model go from right here?
GARGIULO: We do really feel like there’s some tweaking that must be achieved with this model and a few of the model fundamentals. We’re taking a look at bettering a few of the visuals and content material that we’re placing on the market, and we’re getting higher and higher at it day-after-day. We’re being extra aggressive with that advertising and marketing combine and looking for extra new and alternative ways of participating with our customers by means of digital and social activations. I feel we’ll be popping out with some actually cool stuff over the following 12 to 16 months. It may be a really thrilling time for this model.
