Selection Sunday for March Madness isn’t for another couple of days, but some brands just couldn’t wait any longer to kick off their campaigns.
Powerade, the official hydration partner of March Madness and official sports drink of the NCAA, rolled out its campaign in February. The central ad follows a fictional basketball player as opposed to a real college star, but Powerade also teamed up with a handful of current players to help amplify its message as it looks to compete with Gatorade.
Last year, Powerade partnered with Simone Biles for an Olympics campaign focused on mental health, and so far this year, has set its sights on soccer, becoming the official sports drink of MLS and US Soccer. Now, it’s turning to the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments in an effort to connect with younger consumers and go after the “leading brand” in the sports drink space, according to Tom Gargiulo, CMO of BodyArmor Sports Nutrition, which oversees the Powerade brand under Coca-Cola.
“We pride ourselves on being the underdog, what we call ‘underestimated to undeniable,’” Gargiulo told Marketing Brew. “We wanted to tell the story of not only this athlete, but also of our brand…With some hard work and some hard effort, we’ll be able to hopefully get to the top.”
Up-and-coming
The brand’s national campaign, “It Takes More to Get This Far,” features a 30-second TV spot called “The Ladder” that follows a fictional college basketball player through training, injury, recovery, and, eventually, cutting the net as a national champ. It’s set to run through the tournament on streaming, CTV, social media, and out-of-home, with accompanying retail and on-site activations.
Gargiulo said his team opted not to spotlight a real-life player in order to keep the focus on the brand in the commercial, but Powerade has tapped more than 35 athletes with NIL deals to amplify the campaign on social and other digital platforms. The lineup includes UConn forward Alex Karaban, University of Arizona guard Caleb Love, and NC State guard Saniya Rivers.
This year is Powerade’s third in a row as a March Madness advertiser, and Gargiulo said the broad reach of the tournament and the subsequent awareness boosts during what’s otherwise considered a downtime in the sports-drink market has kept the brand activating more each year. Increasing sales is always the main goal of any Powerade marketing campaign, he said, but the March Madness push is also geared toward raising the brand’s profile among Gen Z, an effort that’s been underway for a couple of years.
Get marketing news you'll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.
“They’re starting to enter the workforce, and they’re starting to generate buying power,” Gargiulo said. “We want to make sure that we’re the sports drink of choice when they’re reaching for their hydration.”
Don’t miss out
Powerade’s 2025 March Madness media spend includes a “substantial buy” in the women’s tournament, Gargiulo said, which last year saw record viewership and an influx of attention from advertisers. The women’s tournament broke records in 2023 as well, when current WNBA stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese rose to national prominence, but Powerade wasn’t investing quite as much on the women’s side that year, Gargiulo told us.
“We saw it as a pretty huge miss,” he said.
This year, in addition to running ads and activating on site at both the men’s and women’s tournaments, Powerade tapped LSU guard and rapper Flau’jae Johnson for an additional 30-second spot that features an original track by Johnson and Lyrical Lemonade.
Johnson, who’s currently out due to injury, has collaborated with Powerade for the past couple of tournaments, and this year’s work represents an increase in her involvement, Gargiulo said. As with all the athletes in the campaign, he said, the Powerade team was looking for players with an “underdog mentality” to match the brand messaging, as well as significant platforms; Johnson has 2 million followers on Instagram and 1.6 million on TikTok.
Her involvement will ideally help the brand further connect with Gen Z, Gargiulo said.
“Our goal is to tap into a much younger demographic, and I think this campaign, with the music video that Flau’jae put together for us, will help us do that, not only through our social channels, but even [through] the eyes that we’ll have during the tournament,” he said. “It’s going to help us do some awesome things and create a very sustainable path for growth for the future.”