The planet is heating up and so is the market for hydration. Beyond plain-old water, the category includes enhanced waters, sports drinks, hydration powders and zero-sugar options. Coca-Cola-owned brand BodyArmor plays in each of those spaces, and is seeking to break through an increasingly (pardon the pun) saturated market with marketing driven by major partnerships and a shift to digital channels.
Tom Gargiulo, CMO of BodyArmor Sports Nutrition
Courtesy of BodyArmor
“When you take a look at brand fundamentals, BodyArmor has really high repeat rates: We have very high brand love with the consumers that try us,” said Tom Gargiulo, CMO of BodyArmor Sports Nutrition, the umbrella the BodyArmor and Powerade brands sit under. “But if you take a look at our household penetration and our awareness, we still have a protracted ways to go to meet up with a few of the other competitors in the space, and even a few of the brands inside our portfolio.”
Gargiulo joined BodyArmor in March 2023 after stints at Kind, Danone and PepsiCo. During his time at the brand, he’s overseen the marketing of a spread of product innovations and inked partnerships with the NHL, U.S. Soccer and a spread of publishers and influencers.
“One of the biggest challenges that I had once I joined the organization was attempting to shift the marketing mix for the brand to be more aligned with how consumers are consuming media and interesting with brands,” Gargiulo said. “We put a substantial push behind our social media presence in our digital investments — that is been one among our biggest initiatives.”
Marketing Dive spoke with Gargiulo about what partnerships do for the brand, the way it tackled artificial intelligence (AI) with its Super Bowl ad and the way Coca-Cola boosts its marketing efforts.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: BodyArmor this 12 months became the official sports drink partner of the NHL and the official hydration partner of U.S. Soccer, and has been a partner of MLS since 2019. How do those partnerships help the brand’s marketing?
TOM GARGIULO: Obviously, [the leagues] have very broad fan bases that we are able to tap into and interact with on a complete different level. But the sponsorships also give us credibility: If the world’s most elite athletes are drinking our products on the sidelines, it just proves that we’re the right selection for people on the lookout for a hydration solution.
The NHL relationship kicked off a few months ago, right before the playoffs began, and we have been getting an amazing amount of exposure each in-game with the digital dashboards and we have been investing quite a bit in terms of media, so getting running spots with [Edmonton Oilers player] Connor McDavid during the games. The response has been tremendous, and more importantly, the athlete response has been tremendous.
The brand has also inked deals with content publishers. What role does content marketing play?
GARGIULO: Similar to how we take a look at sports sponsorships, these are properties which might be giving us an amazing amount of reach. Gen Z is consuming media and data completely different than Gen X or the older demographics. Content is king: that is where the majority of those consumers are getting engaged and exposed to brands.
Finding the partners that align with our values — obviously align with sports, which is core to our DNA — and provides us the ability to integrate our products organically and authentically into their content was incredibly essential for us. Barstool Sports and Dude Perfect were no-brainers for us; they were just natural suits. They completely embrace the brand and so they’ve done a improbable job of bringing our brands to life through their content.
BodyArmor recently teamed up with international musician Anitta on a social campaign for the Flash I.V. product. How did you approach that partnership?
GARGIULO: Ultimately, I feel athletes are a few of the most influential influencers you will discover in in the market, but in addition, lifestyle and music are two spaces that we definitely feel like we’ve a right to win in. Not everybody is a hardcore athlete or a hardcore sports fan. But everybody loves music and everybody, to a certain extent, has some sort of lifestyle influence in their life. That’s why we decided to broaden our purview a bit of bit, and open our eyes to different partners and different opportunities. With a brand like Flash I.V., it has a major penetration in the Hispanic community, and it was an awesome opportunity for us to broaden beyond just hardcore sports and go after a pop icon like Anitta.
BodyArmor last month announced plans for LTO bottles with augmented reality functionality that feature athletes across the MLB, NFL and beyond. What is the strategy there?
GARGIULO: One of the key initiatives that we’ve this 12 months is how will we bring our athletes to life in unique and alternative ways beyond just social posts or being in our promoting. The obvious selection for us was to begin leveraging our bottles. We dipped our toes in the water last 12 months with a limited edition Joe Burrow bottle, then we began to do limited-time offers around key sports moments, like when Ronald Acuña Jr. won the MLB MVP.
This 12 months, we’re kicking it up a notch by launching a variety of different collectible bottles. It goes beyond the look of the bottle: We wish to ensure that that our consumers are able to interact with our brands, and we all know gamification is a trend that is alive and well with Gen Z.
BodyArmor ran a regional ad in the Super Bowl that spoke to the buzziest topic in marketing, artificial intelligence. What was the aim with the spot?
GARGIULO: We saw the Super Bowl as an awesome opportunity for us to bring our brand in front of as many eyeballs as we possibly can. One of the most unusual points of difference that BodyArmor has versus the competition is we’re a product that stands for real ingredients: We don’t use artificial flavors or artificial colours, and a whole lot of our product is based on nutrient-dense ingredients. We figured this is a possibility for us to go on the biggest stage in the world and communicate that. AI is obviously a buzzword that is popping up throughout the place, it is very much in the mainstream immediately, and if you consider real, what’s the opposite of real, it’s artificial.
With that said, I do not intend to make it appear to be BodyArmor is anti-AI. It is the future. Lots of alternative ways of connecting with consumers are going to be opened up through AI. But we just thought it might be a extremely cool option to tell our story.
Coca-Cola accomplished its purchase of BodyArmor in 2021. How has being a part of the company helped BodyArmor’s marketing?
GARGIULO: Coca-Cola is one among the most highly valued trademarks in the world, and we’ve a few of the best marketeers in the world managing that business. We’re capable of tap into some really improbable knowledge sharing and best-in-class examples of the right way to leverage media and relationships with different agencies and partners and the right way to capitalize on emerging trends. The Coca-Cola organization has opened up the floodgates for a brand like BodyArmor.
As a part of the largest activation that we have ever done, we’ll be partnering with Coca-Cola and freely giving a bottle of BodyArmor with every purchase of a Coca-Cola 12 pack, and so they sell anywhere between 55 and 60 million of those fridge packs a month.
Where does the BodyArmor brand go from here?
GARGIULO: We do feel like there’s some tweaking that should be done with this brand and a few of the brand fundamentals. We’re taking a look at improving a few of the visuals and content that we’re putting on the market, and we’re recovering and higher at it day-after-day. We’re being more aggressive with that marketing mix and trying to search out more recent and alternative ways of engaging with our consumers through digital and social activations. I feel we’ll be coming out with some really cool stuff over the next 12 to 16 months. It’s going to be a really exciting time for this brand.
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