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Gatorade Has Launched Four Major Tech Partnerships To Drive Company Transition

AUSTIN, TEXAS — On a warm Saturday evening at SXSW, Gatorade unveiled four partnerships with major technology companies. The new initiatives truly had technology deeply embedded in them and were focused on making personalized workouts and training easier for athletes of all levels to achieve.

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The event was called Bolt Breakers and Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and CoreSyte were the four technology companies that each provided new methods for athletes to get the most out of their specific bodies. These four tech companies had met with Gatorade six weeks ago during Super Bowl week in order to conceptualize how their platforms and products could assist Gatorade athletes with their training.

At first glance, it may not feel like social media networks and a music streaming company could integrate with a sports fuel company but after hearing the proposed initiatives (of which Gatorade will fund the continuation) they certainly seem like they can legitimately help athletes.

Below are overviews of what Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and CoreSyte are going to create in conjunction with Gatorade.

Facebook

To start the night, Stephen Vallera, Facebook’s lead creative strategist from Facebook explained how they will collaborate with Gatorade to unite athletes through SPARK, which will aim to be an ‘Off the Field’ mobile playbook delivered in Facebook’s Feed. With this Facebook’s idea was to invite athletes to join the SPARK community to “gain access to a mix of personalized inspiration, information, utility, and community across a variety of Facebook formats such as Carousel, Canvas and 360 Video – to name a few.”

Vallera explained that the goal will be to use SPARK to try and fuel athletes off the field like Gatorade fuels them on the field.

Twitter

Bobby Grasberger, manager of brand strategy at Twitter announced the creation of #FuelAlerts. These alerts are push notifications sent through Twitter to athletes at strategic times during their daily schedules that will help guide their nutrition.

Twitter will identify elite athletes based on their profile and tweets and deliver strategic #FuelAlerts that are actually customized for each athlete’s personal needs. This will be done by working closely with Gatorade to better understand what each athlete requires.

An example of how this partnership would work for the athletes is if an athlete tweets about a tough practice they just had or an upcoming game that they are excited for then #FuelAlerts will proactively send them a nutritional action to take. Perhaps most importantly, this proactive guidance can take into account many factors like weather, season, region, sport and athlete needs.

Grasberger finished the pitch by sending an example #FuelAlerts to everyone in the audience:

 

Spotify

As you could imagine from a music streaming company, Spotify certainly had one of the more lively demonstrations of the night. They demonstrated their plan to the audience to work with Gatorade to use music to impact athletic performance by syncing certain songs and music types with specific training regimens.

Last year Spotify launched Spotify Running which plays music based on a runner’s tempo. Now they will bring this same concept to help athletes with interval training and high and low intensity workouts. The audience was given an example of various songs that had been analyzed to be best for stretching, weight training, running and more.

CoreSyte

Batting clean-up on the night was CoreSyte, a company that uses wearable sensors to provide insights about what’s going on inside the human body.  They will be providing a digital sweat patch that has tracking capabilities where “sweat profiles” can be created for specific users.

The sweat patch uses ion-selective electrode configuration that measures “sodium, potassium and chloride concentrations of sweat in real-time, non-invasively.” This ties back into Gatorade’s offerings by allowing athletes to know exactly what nutrients their bodies need based on the information their sweat is providing. Additionally, coaches and trainers can meet specific needs of their athletes and monitor hydration levels.

Looking Forward

All four of these projects are prime examples of how some of the largest brands and companies in the sports and technology worlds are finding ways to work together to make innovative ideas actually happen. For Gatorade, the start of these four projects is a crucial component of their overall company shift. While the world knows Gatorade as a sports beverage company, they are trying to evolve this perception into a sports science training company that gives athletes and coaches the best tools to perform.

We will be watching closely as these four new partnerships play out because it could certainly set a precedent for how companies from different industries can innovate together.

 

 

 

 

 

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