The Challenge
we were tasked with addressing Gatorade’s declining penetration among teens. But as we looked deeper, we uncovered a far bigger issue: teens weren’t switching brands—they were leaving sports altogether. In fact, 70% of young athletes drop out by age 13. We realized this wasn’t just a cultural problem; it was a business one. When teens leave sports, they also leave the moments where Gatorade naturally exists. To understand why, we examined the reality of modern American sports culture: hypercompetitive systems, constant social pressure, and a growing fear of failure. Winning had become everything, while losing had become something to avoid at all costs—pushing many young athletes out before they could truly enjoy the game. That insight reframed our challenge. We didn’t just need to improve how teens perceived Gatorade—we needed to change how they perceived themselves in sports, and remind them that there’s still value in staying in the game.
The Solution
e set out to understand why teens were walking away from sports—and uncovered a core issue: a win-at-all-costs culture that was exhausting rather than motivating them. Looking for a way to challenge that mindset, we turned to Gatorade’s own origin story. In 1965, the struggling Florida Gators inspired the creation of Gatorade, proving a powerful truth: loss isn’t the opposite of winning—it’s where winning begins. This became our strategic foundation. To reconnect with teens, we needed to reframe losing as an essential part of growth and success. We built a cultural platform that responded to moments where winning dominated the conversation and flipped them through the lens of resilience and setback. We amplified the voices teens look up to most: Shedeur Sanders, after his unexpected NFL Draft fall Kendrick Lamar, sharing his personal relationship with loss during a peak cultural moment A resilient high school football team featured in a docuseries with NFL Films after enduring a decade-long losing streak By embedding the idea into culture, we transformed loss from something teens feared into something they could see as part of becoming great.