To motivate sports people to overcome the six-week hurdle we created #SponsoredByGatorade: a sponsor program that encourages and rewards the athlete in you to keep training and win your personal battle. By connecting the most popular sport devices (Nike+, Strava, Runtastic, Runkeeper, Up, Fitbit and Fubles) to #SponsoredByGatorade, a simple algorithm converted all this sport devices data into Gatorade points which could be redeemed for different levels of rewards to support each athlete to stay active on his fitness program. In this way the more people sweat, the more they earn, the more they get motivated. Users could also invite their friends to put together a training team to turn peer-pressure into a positive influence. By this combined data, every 6 weeks a celebrative ad was dedicated to the most committed athletes, encouraging others to sign up or not give-up.

Working with the API of these apps we created a simple formula:

1 burned cal = 1 Gatorade point.

Every time they train they get Gatorade points, which can be exchanged for four different levels of rewards.

Level 1) Free songs to psych yourself up.

Level 2) Training Kit: Gym bag, towel and Free Gatorade to help quench the thirst for victory.

Level 3) VIP Pass: By creating a training team and combining point people can get tickets to sports event.

Level 4) For 6 six weeks a celebrative ad is dedicated to the most committed athletes encouraging others to sign up or not give up.

The campaign officially launched in June 2015 and the #SponsoredByGatorade hashtag has been used nearly one million times. Once released, #SponsoredByGatorade made headlines on the main sports magazines and climbed to the top of the chart to be claimed app of the week in the health & fitness Apple Store category. In 4 months it involved 736,417 amateur athletes who collected 4 billion minutes spent working out, claiming 53,280 benefits and sharing more than 100,000 #SponsoredByGatorade images and videos, proving an organic connection between the brand and the consumer. The sales of Gatorade rose 8,2% compared to the same period the year before and brand consideration rose by 9%. Most importantly, we started making the most sedentary country in Europe a more active country: 86,3% of registered athletes have continued their training past 6 weeks and 80.5% of them found it to be relevant to their training and nutrition habits.