Gatorade Makes You Part of the Dream...and the Nightmare

Gatorade has been omnipresent in the world of professional sports for quite a while. First made for the University of Florida football team in the 1960s, it was the first sports drink to hit the market and has used its head start to stay at the top ever since. Today, images of professional athletes drinking Gatorade pop up all over the place, and the company's advertising seeks to exploit that success. One recent ad series uses the concept of athletes' nightmares to put Gatorade and the viewer into the game as much as possible.

Like any minute-long ad, the one I attached above features a few different appeals, but to me the most interesting was the way it tried to satisfy the need to achieve. The beginning nightmare sequence is not a normal view of a basketball game but rather a bunch of scenes cut together so that you move with Kevin Durant as he gets to the basket. All the court sounds are magnified, and at a certain point Dwyane Wade, in this ad the defender, stares the camera in the face so that the viewer gets the experience of being stared down. All of this serves to make it so that instead of rooting for Durant, you are him; you are the one trying to win the game. However, Wade blocks Durant's shot (your shot), and your desire for glory gets crushed.

This device differentiates the commercial from typical scenes of glory, as well as setting up a storyline that allows for a more satisfying finish. We see Durant wake up from the nightmare, and when the inspirational music cues we know that it is time to get to work. The training montage, interspersed with footage of Durant drinking Gatorade so that he can continue with his quest, keeps you in the ad as well. The noises of heavy breathing, weights moving, and feet jumping up and down on the ground are loud enough that you could be there in the oddly dark, garage-like gym. The shots are all close-up so that it is clear that you are not observing from afar, but a part of the road to glory, using your Gatorade to reach some greater goal. In addition, the workout scenes do not show anyone but Durant, so that no one is as intimately connected to what he is doing than you. When the game Durant was dreaming about finally arrives, only you know what it took to get there, and so when he dunks on Wade you are as wrapped up in his success as anyone else; having participated in the whole thing from beginning to end it almost feels like you were the one on the TV all along. However, the ad takes a sharp turn as soon as it reaches the climax: as soon as the ball slams through the net Dwyane Wade wakes up in a feverish sweat. Putting aside the questions this plot twist raises about whether or not anything is real, it delivers a clear message: everyone is fighting to get to the top, and everyone needs Gatorade to get there. Having been a part of the successes and failures, you know what you must do.

As effective as this ad may be in putting you into the story, it is still severely limited by the fact that you are sitting apart from the two-dimensional display Gatorade wants you to be part of. It works to a certain extent, but in the end you are still watching someone else do things. As virtual reality technology seems to be gaining in popularity, however, I wonder if the ads of the future will actually be able to make you feel like you are fully in the story. It may not be soon, it may not become popular enough to ever be the norm--remember Google Glass?--but it would be very interesting to see what advertisers would do if they were not so limited in their ability to make the advertisement about you.