• Ad Age, Monday, March 23, 2009 11 AM

Coke's Powerade is undertaking a bold and innovative print and outdoor effort that positions category leader Gatorade as only half the brand Powerade is, writes Natalie Zmuda. It plans to blitz the market with messaging that Pepsi's Gatorade is an inferior method of hydration, and it says it has the science to back it up.

Powerade has been in the lab reformulating its trademark sports drink to include four electrolytes -- sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium -- lost during exercise. Gatorade's formula contains just two electrolytes, sodium and potassium.

"There have been great advancements in a lot of other categories in sport over the last few decades, and there's been little to no innovation in the sports-drink category," says Matt Kahn, senior vp-marketing for Powerade. "John McEnroe used to play with a wood racket, but you don't see Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer playing with a wood racket now."

As we used to say in the schoolyard: "Fight! Fight!" But Gatorade is shrugging off the attack, Zmuda reports, maintaining that all Powerade has done is create a spinoff of its Gatorade Endurance Formula, developed in 2004.

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