Dive Brief:

• Gatorade has developed with Pandora, its digital audio partner, an increase in brand awareness around its Propel fitness water product, according to reporting by AdExchanger. The drink brand has noticed that, while consumer appreciation for Propel was still high, awareness had waned in the 16 years since its launch.
• To put Propel back in the spotlight, Gatorade and Pandora crafted a campaign that combined sponsored listening and sponsored station ad formats to target the music streaming services "fitness enthusiast" audience segment.
• The ads launch a workout station sponsored by Propel, and the ads themselves include an innovative element that takes advantage of smartphone’s gyroscopic feature to allow viewers to rotate their phone in order to read about different Propel features.

Dive Insight:

The Propel campaign is a prime example of careful audience segmentation, using engagement relevant to the ads via a sponsored workout audio station and taking advantage of a unique property of smartphones — the gyroscope feature — to build a creative, interactive and fun element.

Fitness enthusiasts were also targeted with dayparting and weather triggering, with a display ad leveraging smartphone accelerometers that unlocked an hour of uninterrupted listening when the ad viewer shook their phones four times. The entire effort ran from April to September and increased Propel ad awareness by 63% and purchase intent by 60% as measured by Millward Brown and reported on by AdExchanger.

The effort overall was a success, with the custom workout station launching 262,000 times over four months with users listening for 40 minutes on average, per AdExchanger. A banner ad included with the station had a 4.4% clickthrough rate.

Gatorade's campaign is also the latest example of how brands can leverage streaming music services to target specific audiences. Music has proven to be an effective way to emotionally engage with consumers, with elements down to the tempo of the song affecting mood and messaging. 

Pandora targeting the campaign around workout hours recalls similar tactics used by competitor Spotify, particularly through the latter's Branded Moments vertical video format, which similarly segments around six different listening "moments" of the day.