09.16.09Gatorade taps Red Circle for Native American campaign.
PepsiCo recently asked Red Circle agency to help them create a TV campaign to be shown at the Native American ‘Gathering of Nations’ celebration in Arizona this past spring. The effort was the brain-child of Francella Giatrakis of PepsiCo who is director of an internal organization at PepsiCo committed to raising awareness for Native American issues at the corporate level.
Ms. Giatrakis’s idea was to connect the heritage of athleticism for the Gatorade brand to pow-wow dancing. At the same time, PepsiCo was re-branding its line of Gatorade products with a visually stunning campaign created by Spike Lee and premiering on Super Bowl Sunday 2009. Red Circle met with the Gatorade brand team and the agency TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles and developed its own ‘Native American’ flavored message for this great brand. Red Circle asked championship pow-wow dancer R.J. Smith of Wisconsin to be the spokesdancer, and received permission to use the track “Crow Hop” by Red Bull.
The campaign was a big hit at its debut at the Gathering of Nations last April and has an afterlife on YouTube.
